Ep. 1024 - Position Preview: Illini DBs and Special Teams
Illini Inquirer Podcast: An Illinois Fighting Illini athletics podcast
247Sports, Illinois, Illinois Football, Illinois Basketball, Illinois Athletics, College Football, C
4.9 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2025
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Illini Inquirer's Jeremy Werner and Joey Wagner preview Illinois football's defensive backs and special teams for the 2025 season. The guys discuss whether the secondary is the Illini's strongest position group, how the cornerback rotation will look and some potential breakthrough underclassmen. The guys then discuss the special teams unit, the impact of Purdue transfer punter Keelan Crimmins, kicker David Olano's next steps and the return game.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the online inquire podcast. Jeremy Warner, Joey Wagner, happy Friday, happy weekend, whenever you're listening to this. |
| 0:19.4 | It's time to wrap up our position previews here on the Ilan Inquirer podcast. |
| 0:24.2 | Got to see in a little bit of training camp. |
| 0:26.8 | And let's focus what I think are two of the better position groups on Illinois football's roster. |
| 0:32.4 | That would be the defensive backs, which of course has been a strength throughout most of Brett Buma's tenure, Sands |
| 0:38.7 | 2023, and then the special teams unit, which we feel like got upgraded, but a couple good |
| 0:44.3 | pieces returning from that group as well. Joy Wagner, happy Friday. How are you, buddy? |
| 0:48.6 | Happy Friday, man. I am good. I'm ready to wrap these up, mostly because I've been dying to get to |
| 0:53.2 | our sign guys podcast. We'll get to that. Our guys coming up into this season. I'm ready to wrap these up, mostly because I've been dying to get to our Sign Guys podcast. |
| 1:00.7 | We'll get to that. Our guys coming up into this season. I do want to mention, before we dive into this, I did post some things I've been hearing about Illinois basketball workouts on the site. |
| 1:05.9 | VIP members take advantage of that. Go check it out. Some good insight on the personnel. |
| 1:44.5 | If you're not a VIP member, signed up now 50% off. So we got some buzz from the summer workouts there. But Illinois did officially announce they're returning to Madison Square Garden. This has been reported. They will return to put Yukon on Black Friday. So that's going to be a busy sports weekend for us, Joe. We got Illinois, Yukon, and Madison Square Garden. Don't know what time that kicks off Bears fans. So I'm guessing there will be some conflict there. 2 p.m. kickoff for the Bears Lions. And then I believe, I would imagine this is an afternoon tip-off. I don't think this is going to be late, but maybe I'm speculating too much, Joey. |
| 1:51.6 | Wait, Bears Lions is Black Friday? It's not Bears Lions, sorry. It's Bears, somebody else. |
| 1:57.0 | They play somebody else. Yeah, I'm not a good bear. Yeah, I don't know the schedule back and forth. Yeah, I don't even know where to begin speculating with the time for Illinois basketball. |
| 2:02.0 | Like, in my brain, Yukon, East Coast feels like a night, like you'd want to prime time that. |
| 2:08.3 | We'll see. |
| 2:09.2 | It's Bears Eagles. |
| 2:10.6 | Bears Eagles 2 p.m. kick off on Black Friday. |
| 2:13.9 | They're not winning that one anyway, guys, probably so. |
| 2:34.8 | Oh, man, optimism is in full swing. Hey, Caleb's having a good day. Caleb's having a really good day. So that's really good to see. Our wide receiver, Roma Dune's day is having a good day. I'm going to bring up a tight end. That looks pretty good, Joey. I don't know if he's Tucker Kraft good, but Colston Lovellon has been looking pretty good. |
| 2:51.3 | So I got some optimism. I just want to win. I just want to have a winning season. That's a bar I like to get. My quarterback just had thumb surgery, so, like, I'm not going to sit here and, hopefully. Yeah, I think so. No, so we don't know the time. I'm probably speculating too much on that. |
| 2:54.1 | But I imagine this |
... |
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