A Super Talk Mississippi Media Production.

As I said on Monday, it gets Reunion Week here on Thunder and Lightning.

We're bringing back some of our old friends. Matthew

Stevens covers Illinois for a Linai guy up there in Big Ten Country. Good to have you back on the

podcast, my friend. Illinois, you know, we're talking on today's pod about what Illinois is missing.

You know, they're missing some big pieces from opt-outs, from coaching changes.

Let's start with Ryan Walters. What does his departure mean for this Illinois defense

specifically for this game?

Specifically for this game, it means that Aaron Henry is

going to be the defensive coordinator

for the first time in his life.

And Ryan was a huge piece to why Illinois's 8 and 4,

why Illinois was ranked, why Illinois at one point had, you know, the, the, was in the driver's seat to get it to Indianapolis to have 60 minutes to possibly get to Pasadena.

You know, there's a reason why Illinois had statistically one of the best defenses in the country, if not the best defense in the country and in

FBI this year Ryan Walters was a huge part of that his ability to you know kind of do what

Leach did offensively I would say is that mean, Ryan's call sheet was on a note card.

It wasn't like the big waffle house menu you see these guys use either on both sides of the ball.

Ryan had a note card and it was like,

hey, this is what we're going to do.

I'm going to make it really, really simple for you.

And the guys just ate that up.

And then his aggressiveness is what kind of transformed

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