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 line-eye guys 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 is 8 and 4, why Illinois was ranked,

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

possibly get to Pasadena. Um, you know, there's, 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 FBS this

year, Ryan Walter was a huge part of that. Uh, his ability to, you know, kind of do what Leach did offensively, I would say, is that, I 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 this Alina defense. They obviously, when Bilema took the job in December of 2020, they immediately went to what they wanted in a three-four style, but Ryan never allowed the formation to dictate what they were going to do. He was going

to be aggressive no matter what they decided to do. And there were times that they showed an odd

man front. There were times they showed a four man traditional front. That was all Ryan. It was

just, hey, let's get our best 11 out there for as long as we can. And Ryan kind of played off the idea that

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