Ep. 1138 - Bret Bielema on offseason of transition
Illini Inquirer Podcast: An Illinois Fighting Illini athletics podcast
247Sports, Illinois, Illinois Football, Illinois Basketball, Illinois Athletics, College Football, C
4.9 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 11 March 2026
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Illinois football coach Bret Bielema joins Illini Inquirer's Jeremy Werner and Joey Wagner to discuss an offseason of transition. Bielema breaks down big changes to his staff and roster, what new DC Bobby Hauck brings, what retaining OC Barry Lunney Jr. meant, some of the new transfer additions and more. Then Werner and Wagner discuss what they've learned during their last few weeks of talking to the new Illini staff members and transfer additions.
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Transcript
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| 0:34.9 | Welcome into the Alain Enquirer podcast. |
| 0:55.0 | It is Jeremy Warner, Joey Wagner, with you today. And we're going to focus on Illinois football in the middle of March Madness. There's a lot going on with Illinois football. The Pro Day is on Thursday. We've caught up with a lot of the new staffers, a lot of new transfers. And you've got the NFL draft coming up. And spring ball starts on March 23rd. And, Joy, we got to catch up with Illinois coach bret beelma about all of it we usually get him on the pod about once a year and this |
| 1:00.1 | was a fun one man to catch up with him after a busy off season for bret belema yeah it was fun to just |
| 1:06.4 | kind of digest a little bit of all of the changes and that's been kind of the theme brett's put it out |
| 1:11.2 | there the offseason of change or transition however you want to put it and it's it's been the story |
| 1:16.7 | of the all season mostly on the defensive side of the ball so it's good to just have a little bit |
| 1:21.2 | more of a casual conversation not in that sounds so stupid from the outside but not even in that |
| 1:25.9 | podium you know seated everyone's got our phones because that's what we do now. Just to have more of a relaxed conversation about it really was good. Yeah. So we caught up with Brett Bielmo. We talked about the staff changes, Bobby Halk, being able to retain Barry Loney Jr. Some of the guys that we don't talk a lot about, they're kind of behind the scenes a little |
| 1:46.4 | bit, but also talking about a lot of new players and who fans should be looking out |
| 1:50.8 | for to take up, a step up into bigger roles going into the season. |
| 1:54.9 | So let's hear from Brett Biauma, Illinois head coach coming up next on the Alignanquire |
| 1:58.9 | podcast. |
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