Ep. 1085 - J Leman's 2025 season in review, offseason preview
Illini Inquirer Podcast: An Illinois Fighting Illini athletics podcast
247Sports, Illinois, Illinois Football, Illinois Basketball, Illinois Athletics, College Football, C
4.9 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 1 December 2025
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Illini Inquirer football analyst J Leman joins Jeremy Werner to discuss Illinois football's 20-13 win over Northwestern and review the 2025 season. The guys then discuss the offseason ahead and what Bret Bielema must do to take the program to another level, including with his coaching staff and roster. The guys also discuss a wild coaching carousel.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome in to the O'Anne Enquirer podcast. |
| 0:14.9 | It's Monday. |
| 0:15.9 | That means it's Jay Lehman Day on the Alana Enquirer podcast, bringing in our All-American |
| 0:19.6 | linebacker to talk about a fourth |
| 0:22.3 | victory over Northwestern in the last five years and just a nice way to end a season that was a little |
| 0:28.6 | bit up and down but you end eight and four sure feels a lot different than finishing seven |
| 0:34.0 | five jay a memorably fun game for whoever it was there because Illinois found a way |
| 0:39.4 | to pull it out, Jay. |
| 0:41.0 | Oh, you'll never forget that game, the most snow in Memorial State of history. |
| 0:46.7 | Snow games are just equalizers. |
| 0:49.2 | And what was even worse, it looked at least like it turned into kind of freezing rain |
| 0:53.4 | in the second half, which is the absolute worst. That's worse than snow. And you could, you could tell that by both teams how they played. But at the end of the day, you beat your rival. You finish eight and four. You have the most wins in Memorial Stadium history in a two-year span. You're close, I think, to the most wins in two years ever for a program. And so definitely head the |
| 1:12.3 | right direction. I know we all have these grand plans of being a playoff team. And I think that day |
| 1:19.4 | will come. But you also could be one of the five SEC teams or one of the big 10 teams that |
| 1:24.8 | changed coaches because they didn't get the results they needed. Most of those were changing because they didn't get the results they need most of those |
| 1:28.5 | were changing because they didn't get the results other than Ole Miss every one of those was |
| 1:31.9 | changed they didn't get the results they wanted and so we're in a much better position I want to |
| 1:35.7 | talk about the season in totality Jay I want to talk about the off season ahead which is what I |
| 1:40.2 | think everyone is thinking about and then we'll talk about college football at large. |
| 1:44.3 | You talked about the Carousel, five SEC coaching changes yesterday. |
| 1:47.8 | One in the Big Ten that I'm interested to get your thoughts about. |
| 1:50.2 | And then we still got two openings left in the Big Ten. |
... |
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