Welcome into the Ilan Inquirer podcast, and it is time to wrap up our position previews for the

2020-Illinois football season. These have been a lot of fun getting us kind of ready for the 2023 Illinois football season.

These have been a lot of fun getting us kind of ready for the season.

Let's be honest, we're towards the end of training camp.

And it's time to just play football at this point.

It's Jeremy Warner, Joey Wagner.

And I think we saved this one, Joey.

Not only because DB and special teams comes last on the depth chart and all those things,

but we probably have the biggest questions about defensive back and secondary,

and we've been trying to figure out as much as possible during training camp.

I don't know if we've said this, but we do not have a lot of access to training camp.

Have we made that clear to people?

But secondary has been like our biggest question throughout this entire thing.

Yeah, I don't remember ever mentioning not having training camp access.

So it's good to finally get that out there, I would say.

But yeah, dude, this is, this is the most questions we have in any position going away.

I mean, it's far and away the most questions. We've gotten a couple hence nuggets here and there. We know some main players. We'll get to those in a minute. But not only is it all new faces, there are a lot of new faces. Taz Nicholson returns Xavier Scott played late last year. You're replacing three draft picks in the top 70 and four guys in an NFL training camp. So it's big shoes to fill, and there's a lot of shoes that need filled. Well, there it is. That is the storyline. You are replacing arguably the best secondary in college football. Now, there's maybe ones you could argue were more talented, but three in the top 70. Nobody else had that, right? So you can make that argument that they were and they were the most productive.

I'll be it. You could argue we're more talented, but three in the top 70. Nobody else had that, right? So you can make that argument that they were, and they were the most productive, albeit in the Big Ten, and in the Big Ten West, where passing is not as crazy as in the SEC or Big 12 or Pac-12. But Devin Wintersman, number five pick in the draft. Quine Barton, the number 47 pick in the draft. Sidney Brown, the number 66 pick in the draft. Sydney Brown, the number 66 pick in the draft. And Kendall Smith, I mean, what a, what a story he was, really, last year. He's on the Washington commanders, and he had a nice interception in their night,

along with Juan Martin. He's in an NFL training camp trying to make that roster. You got

to replace all those guys, Joey. So Taz Nicholson, the only returning starter.

So you're not completely starting from scratch. And I think that is the one silver lining here

of Taz Nicholson's injury, of some other injuries that happened last year, Tyler Strain,

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