Ep. 1171 - Yogi Roth evaluates Illini football, QB Katin Houser and new defense
Illini Inquirer Podcast: An Illinois Fighting Illini athletics podcast
247Sports, Illinois, Illinois Football, Illinois Basketball, Illinois Athletics, College Football, C
4.9 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2026
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Illini Inquirer's Jeremy Werner chats about the latest in Illinois football recruiting, including three-star OL Mason Halliman's commitment. Then Yogi Roth, analyst for NBC Sports and Big Ten Network, joins Werner to give his thoughts on the growth of Illinois football and the Big Ten and what Bret Bielema and Barry Lunney Jr. do so well. He then breaks down new QB Katin Houser's game and the upside and downside of Bobby Hauck's new 3-3-5 defense.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome in to the online inquire podcast. It is Jeremy Warner, a lot of inquire publisher here with you. |
| 0:18.6 | Today, we're going to chat a lot of football. And one of my |
| 0:23.1 | favorite guests, one of my favorite football analysts, along with Jay Lehman, is a new addition |
| 0:29.3 | to the Big Ten conference over the last couple years. Yogi Roth, who's covered for the Big Ten |
| 0:36.5 | network, also NBC Sports, runs his own podcast, |
| 0:40.0 | the Y Option podcast. I found Yogi to be an awesome addition to the Big Ten because, one, |
| 0:47.5 | he brings some Big Ten area experience from Pennsylvania in Big Ten country a little bit, went to |
| 0:53.9 | Pitt, knows Larry Fitzgerald very, very well, |
| 0:56.6 | but also spent time on the West Coast with USC and a lot of those West Coast schools. |
| 1:00.9 | So, Andy's part of Elite 11, and he knows quarterback play, knows offense really, really well. |
| 1:06.4 | I just feel like he explains the game, breaks down the game incredibly well, and he did on this podcast. We talked about Illinois, the Big Ten, and its rise together. Big Ten and Illinois the last couple of years. What makes Brett Beulma so good as a coach so far? What's made Barry Loney? So good at development quarterbacks. What he thinks of Caten Hauser? He's known Caten for a while. So give some insight on him. But my favorite part of the discussion is |
| 1:31.8 | as an offensive guy, as a guy who's coached quarterbacks, is a guy who's played wide receiver, |
| 1:36.5 | what makes the 335 defense, which Illinois is now running under Bobby Halk, an issue? And what are |
| 1:42.5 | some of the problems or downsides of running a 335 so i found that |
| 1:46.7 | conversation fascinating i think you will as well you'll get to know a little bit more about this |
| 1:51.7 | defense and yogi very smart very articulate and breaking it all down and that is clearly the case |
| 1:59.6 | but also explains it in a way I think we all can understand |
| 2:02.5 | as an average fan. So he's coming up on the Lion Acquire podcast, but I do want to hit a little bit |
| 2:07.4 | on recruiting because we actually had some news over the weekend that is positive for Illinois. |
| 2:12.0 | It'd been a couple months. So yes, this was a little bit of a sigh of relief. I think not only for Illinois, I don't know if they were freaking out about their class 2027, |
| 2:22.2 | but for Illinois fans and us on the outside, you can sit there and go, okay, yeah, Illinois can still land good recruits. |
| 2:28.9 | And they only have two commitments in the class of 2027. |
... |
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