CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — “Eat crumbs,” Kevin Kane tells his players. “Stay hungry. Don’t eat the whole piece right now.”
As coaching cliches go, this is a new one. A necessary one, perhaps. Illinois isn’t just good on defense this year. It is flat-out dominant, leading the nation in yards per play and scoring and ranking near the top of a host of other categories.
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One of those categories? Total defense, where the Illini rank No. 2 nationally. Above them? Minnesota, which visits Memorial Stadium this Saturday.
Go ahead and insert your own joke about a pair of Big Ten West teams leading the nation defensively. (Of course they do. Look at the offenses they face.) It doesn’t change the fact that 5-1 Illinois has already matched its win total from last season, is ranked in the AP poll for the first time since 2011 (No. 24), and is the only school in the country that has yet to allow a touchdown at home.
Down starting quarterback Tommy DeVito, who left in the first quarter Saturday with an ankle injury, and whose status is up in the air entering this weekend, the Illini sized up an already anemic Iowa offense and rendered the unit even more obsolete.
They held the Hawkeyes below their season average in total yards (222), yards per play (3.36) and rushing yards (52). With a backup kicker, they escaped with a 9-6 win.
It was ugly.
Illinois likes ugly.
“I think it’s us versus everyone,” said Kane, Illinois’ associate head coach and outside linebackers coach. “I think Coach (Bret Bielema) has kind of built this mentality of nobody’s going to help us along the way. And I think our guys have really embodied that. This defense started building its reputation and identity a little bit last year, and then it has just continued to grow throughout the course of the winter, the spring, the summer, and now here we are.
“To us coaches, it’s not a surprise that these guys are playing how they’re playing, because they’re led by some good senior leadership. And they know what they’re doing. They’re a smart group.”
Linebacker Tarique Barnes tackles Iowa tight end Sam LaPorta in the second half Saturday. The Illini rank at or near the top in several defensive categories. (Ron Johnson / USA Today)Bielema, the second-year Illinois coach who oversaw top-20 defenses in five of his seven years at his last Big Ten stop, Wisconsin, has taken to calling the Illini’s defense the “fire department” for the number of fires the group has put out so far. And with the status of receiver (and former quarterback) Isaiah Williams also uncertain for this weekend’s tilt with the Gophers, the potential for more sticky situations offensively awaits.
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The defense remains immune to such conditions.
“I feel like it’s our job to do, honestly,” defensive tackle Jer’Zhan Newton said. “We take pride in, definitely at home, not allowing teams to score on us.
“We know, of course, if a team doesn’t score, they can’t win.”
The 6-foot-2, 295-pound Newton has made one of the biggest leaps on a unit that brought back six starters from a year ago, building off an honorable mention All-Big Ten season to lead the nation in quarterback hits (13) and tie for the lead in pressures (31), according to PFF.
He is one of four Illini players who have at least three sacks this season. No other Big Ten school has more than two such players.
He is one of three Illini players who have at least five tackles for loss. No other conference school can match that.
Illinois is tops in the Big Ten in TFLs (18), takeaways (13), fourth-down defense (12.5 percent) and red zone defense (55.5 percent). And the unit’s mindset is rather rudimentary.
“Their focus isn’t on anything on the periphery,” defensive coordinator Ryan Walters said. “It’s always about us. Any time the ball is put down and we’re out there, it’s just our time to do our job. It doesn’t matter where the ball is, it doesn’t matter how the ball got there. It’s the next play, and it’s our job to go execute, and our goal is to try to get the ball back to our offense as fast as possible without letting points get on the board.
“Really, defensive ball is that simple from a philosophy standpoint, and I think if you approach it that way, then the momentum and the ebbs and flows of college football won’t have as big of an effect on your psyche as a defense.”
Only three teams are better than Illinois at stopping points from getting on the board, as the Illini rank fourth in Max Olson’s Stop Rate, with 81.5 percent of their defensive drives ending without points. They blitz more than any Power 5 team in the country, per PFF.
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The 36-year-old Walters is considered a rising star in the profession, and his background as an All-Big 12 safety at Colorado means his name will be a popular one for the Buffaloes’ head-coach opening. He has been a master at limiting distractions, though, a mentality that figures to continue as Illinois’ defense improves each week.
Bielema lured Walters over from the same role at Missouri, and together they landed a pair of decorated assistants with coordinator experience in Kane and linebackers coach Andy Buh to form a veteran staff that has blended nicely with the additions of former Bielema Wisconsin proteges Terrance Jamison (defensive line) and Aaron Henry (defensive backs).
“We have a bunch of high football IQ individuals in the defensive staff room, but it works because there are no egos,” Walters said. “These are high-character men who don’t care who gets the credit. Everybody has a role on our defensive staff and everybody takes ownership over the final product and nobody has an ego. We’re comfortable with having uncomfortable conversations. We’re comfortable with having disagreements on how we fit on things, on how we play some coverages, but at the end of the day we can all come to an agreement when we leave that room on what’s decided and what we think will give our players the best chance to have success to help us win on Saturdays.”
That businesslike approach has worked for a roster that largely stayed intact after the Lovie Smith-to-Bielema transition following the 2020 season. There had always been some talent on this roster; it just hadn’t been clearly molded together with a defined identity.
Listen to players speak about their coaches now, and they sound almost robotic:
• Safety Jartavius Martin on Walters: “He believes in his players, man. Just when he came in from Day 1, he had a lot of confidence in us as players. We really believed in him, so we listened to every little detail he was telling us.”
• Outside linebacker Seth Coleman on Kane: “Each week he has something for us that we need to work on from last week, so we really just key in on those things that we need to work on and it really helps when it comes to game time.”
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• Linebacker Tarique Barnes on Buh: “I wouldn’t even call it fundamentals. Like, he’s straight to the point. He really drills you in everything linebacker from top to bottom. Tackling. We’re gonna tackle. If we don’t do anything else, we’re gonna tackle.”
Barnes had one of the biggest highlights of the season against Iowa, sacking Spencer Petras less than two seconds after the ball was snapped. Walters expected that hit, the way he has matter-of-factly expected most of these performances to date, especially since that wasn’t even the first time Barnes made that kind of play this season.
Walters doesn’t use the word “easy” to describe defense, or transitions, but he does allow that the buy-in period from this group last year was “fluid.” The numbers back that up. Illinois may have gone 5-7 in 2021, but it finished 3-2, with road upsets at Penn State and Minnesota, along with a season-ending rout of rival Northwestern. The Illini surrendered more than 300 yards of offense just once during those final five games, and their season-ending stretch of giving up just 280 yards per game would have finished No. 4 nationally if spread out across a full season.
They’re halfway through this season now, and they are making good on those early promises.
“We’re a more mature team now,” Newton said. “We’ve talked about it in the offseason. All offseason, break it down, ‘Big Ten Champs.’ I feel like the players we have on our team are NFL-caliber players. I just feel like if we decrease our mistakes every game, (we can) compete with the best.
“And, in my personal opinion, our coaching staff is like an NFL coaching staff. They’re really smart. So we just have to execute at a high level and I feel like we can beat a lot of teams.”
(Top photo of Illinois defensive lineman Keith Randolph Jr. sacking Iowa’s Spencer Petras: Ron Johnson / USA Today)
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