Welcome in to the online choir podcast. It's Jeremy Warner and Joey Wagner. And it is time, Joey, to start our position previews for the podcast.

We've done our position primers last month.

So you can check all those out.

We'll rehash some of that stuff as we go through these positions.

But where else would we start other than quarterbacks and running backs?

Obviously, two of the positions that have to succeed for this offense to succeed.

And I'm looking forward to these.

It's great to talk through these, Joey, and talk through them a month after doing the primers.

Because we've talked to more people, we've seen a very little bit of practice to kind of talk about these guys and see where they're all at.

So I'm looking forward to this, and quarterback's an easy position to start it. It's an easy position, and we said it last year, but there's no kind of insisted upon quarterback competition this year. So it makes life a lot easier for us trying to have this conversation, knowing it's Luke Altmeyer, and the fact that it's a big deal that it's Luke Altmeier for returning quarterback for the first time in Brett Bielman's tenure.

Before we get into the Altmire, Donovan Leary conversation, the long-term guys here, I just feel

like it is worth noting that Illinois has a real passing attack under Barroni Jr.

Because just going through these stats every year,

it was painful watching the Alani passing offense and quarterback play.

So I just want to go over a couple of stats just to put this all in perspective

because the offense still has a lot of strides to make, right?

Like two years ago, the red zone and short yardage situations were really bad.

Last year, the running game didn't work very well. And some of those short yardage things,

even though the red zone really improved, the short yardage issues still were there because of

offensive line and some running back injuries. But the passing attack certainly took off last

year, but it's been a two-year process for Loney.

So here's where Illinois ranked in pass efficiency in the seven seasons before Loney arrived in Big Ten, 14 teams, 12th, 13th, 13th, 12th, 12th, 14th, and 12th.

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