Welcome into the Lion Inquirer podcast, Jeremy Warner, Joey Wagner with you for another position preview.

This is our penultimate position previews.

We look at the old outside linebackers and the linebackers.

The second level of the defense, though, the outside linebackers are basically on the front four, front five here for the

of the OI and I.

But we'll wrap up later this week with our defensive backs, which is probably the one we're doing the most guesswork on, and then the

specialists as well. But this is an interesting group, Joey, because we talked about the

strength of Illinois in the trenches, and certainly Seth Coleman gave backs and the outside

linebackers play a part in the trenches. But a linebacker unit that is interesting with some changes,

some new personnel there, personnel

rising through the ranks. But Phil Steele ranks this group together in his college football

preview and has them sixth in the Big Ten, which I think is a really good sign for Illinois.

But let's start with the outside linebackers, because obviously this is a very,

very talented crew with Seth Coleman and Gabak is back. But I think the main storyline here,

Joe, is Kevin Kane's now the defensive coordinator at Purdue. But Brett Beehlen was kind of

talking all offseason. Like he feels like he can upgrade the pass rush. That was a priority that they felt like maybe they left some meat on the bone and getting to the quarterback last year. And Charlie Bowen is hired to get more out of this group. Yeah, Charlie Bowlin, Kevin Kane did a really good job building this group. Like, we have to start there because this talked about the other day was it wasn't even a position that existed

before Brett Beelman and this coaching staff got there and they moved a few guys that really

kind of logistically that made sense right is A Geh Olin Carney and then they built this thing from

the ground up and Kevin Kane was a huge part of that and did a nice job bringing in talent but yeah you got

the sense Brett Beelman said he wanted pass rush

value. And you go get an NFL guy who's worked for some pretty darn good pass rushers in his

career, Hassan Reddick, Cameron Wake, among them. We'll see. I mean, that is the next step.

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