Welcome into the online choir podcast as we continue our 2024 Illinois football positional previews.

And this is for the diehards, Joey.

This is the pod that, you know, these VIP members are asking us about long snappers

and really get into the Illinois Too Deep that actually read my 3,000 word piece on the backup

offensive line.

This is for you.

This is for you guys.

We appreciate you.

And this is fun for us because it's two big storylines, two positions, two areas of the team that cost Illinois some games, but also had some good moments as well.

It's the offensive line as Illinois really struggled early last season.

And then the special teams, which had some ups with Caleb Griffin and I thought Hugh Robertson last year,

but boy, that return game really cost them at times.

So, Joey, these are two areas that need more consistency.

That is for sure.

Yeah, that's the key for both of these two and two kind of, I don't know, there's some turnover,

some significant turnover in both of those rooms. So I'm excited to get into it. And I know we're going to stop with the offensive wine, Jeremy, because I don't know if you can wait any longer. Of course, we are, because this 5-9, 185 used to be 185, up to about two bills now. But, yeah, 185. Welcome to the club, buddy. In high school. Yeah, I'm into offensive line playing. It just

means so much, right? And it's part of why Brett Bielma has been successful in his entire

career is the trench play. But obviously it struggled last year, Joey, when Zai Chrysler didn't

work at right tackle. They really didn't have depth to make up for all of that. We've talked about how those injuries really impacted him

not being prepared for that role with a lack of reps in the offseason, but Illinois bet on it

and didn't have the depth to overcome it, and it really was a big contributor to their two and four start along with

the defense that struggled early last season. But it did get settled in late last year,

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