Did Illinois Just Moneyball Its Defense?

College Football Moneyball

I wanted to start off this season by discussing some of the ways Illinois may be trying to find advantages on the margins by doing things a little differently than other teams.

If I gave you $20M in NIL to spend on a college football roster, where would you begin? While I do have a love of long snappers, I'm assuming most of you are thinking quarterback. And yes, that should be the first player off the board and have the most money allocated to them. $2.5M for a good QB and pushing $6M-$7M for an elite one.

But where would you go from there?

For most teams, the next player off the board is DT, DE, and LT with $1M landing you an upper mid tier player at each spot. Which brings me to this upcoming Illinois team and their no name defensive line. Promising rising junior Angelo McCullom left for Texas A&M where he is in the two deep at DT. One can only assume Texas A&M paid McCullom more to be a backup than Illinois offered as a starter. Eli Coenen left for Michigan State where he is projected to be a starter. Same goes for Tomiwa Durojaiye at South Carolina and Curt Neal at Purdue. Maybe they left because of the coaching staff turnover but it also felt like Illinois did not have enough funds to pay market rate to defensive linemen in Champaign. Now this isn't to say Illinois is cheap or even that they read the market wrong. Going off 247 reporting, Illinois lands in the $20M to $29M tier, and only Minnesota, Purdue, and Northwestern are under $20M in the Big Ten.

Which brings us to the next item, and how it might connect to the scheme change: finding a way to be different from the market. If the value for defensive line is so high, what if you found a way to play schematically where you did not have to pay top dollar for linemen? It's tough to imagine, as the game is won in the trenches. Plus we don't know a lot about this new defense yet. But hypothetically speaking, if Bobby Hauck's 3-3-5 is able to utilize undersized defensive linemen effectively, that allows more NIL funds to be distributed to have more elite players in other positions the rest of the market is undervaluing.

If the options you could choose from were Team A with middle-low tier DL, mid tier LB, and mid tier DBs, or Team B who for the same money has low tier DL, mid tier LB, and high tier DBs, which option would you choose? It feels like Illinois is Team B this season.

This is all a thought experiment in how you would moneyball this thing. As a mid tier spending team, a 3-3-5 built on pressure could be just the ticket. Bielema has said it's a hard week of prep for an opposing offense that hasn't seen your defense before. If all defenses play in similar ways, the offense has seen it. They know the drill. They know what to expect. A unique defense is a tougher game prep. Not to mention that it might allow for players who don't fit traditional defenses, and are therefore undervalued in the market, to be perfect fits in Champaign.

I don't know how it will work out. I think back to the 2025 USC game and how small the USC defensive line was. Illinois leaned on them, ran the ball effectively, and that was a big reason the Illini won. So how does Illinois stop the run with a lower money allocation up front? I do like the unpredictability of it in terms of where the blitz is coming from. But I wanted to mention how this defense may be a great moneyball experiment. When everyone is zigging, how can you zag and find a market inefficiency?

The data for NIL rates per position came from the Numbers and Words podcast, part of the Phantom Island network, currently behind a paywall. Steven Godfrey interviews Parker Fleming, the same person behind CFB-Graphs, who takes $20M and shows how the typical team allocates its money and which positions are under and overvalued in the market. I believe it will eventually be available for free, at which point I'll share it and go deeper. Since it's behind a paywall, I only wanted to give you a taste and recommend Phantom Island if you're interested in listening now.

Preseason Chart Time

SP+ Rating

It's hard to take too much away from preseason data since it leans heavily on prior season information. With the transfer portal and coaching turnover, teams could be quite different. But it's always interesting to see how teams rank based on the information we currently have.

We start with SP+, a tempo and opponent adjusted efficiency rating. In layman's terms, it attempts to predict how good a football team actually is by weighing the things that truly matter.

Below is SP+ data for all Big Ten teams. The darker the shading, the better the team is in that category.

Where Illinois ranks among 18 Big Ten teams:

SP+ overall: 9th (+10.4)

Offense: 8th (32.0)

Defense: 14th (22.1)

Special teams: 6th (+0.4)

Big Ten Projected Wins

SP+ projects Illinois for seven wins, which seems fair with all the turnover. It could be volatile depending on how the new defense performs. On the positive side, you'd expect Barry Lunney Jr. to have the offense humming in his fifth season, and Illinois can surely do better than the bend, break, repeat defense of last season. On the negative side, the wide receiver room is banged up. The offensive line lost four starters and needs to build chemistry, and Katin Houser is stepping up in competition from the AAC. On the defensive side, if Illinois can't stop the run, it could be a long season. But at the end of the day, if they get to seven wins, I think that is a successful season.

Illinois Win Probability Game by Game

This is via Bill Radjewski and his new CORE ratings system, which just released its first preseason numbers this month. A couple of games Illinois should win in UAB and SIU, a couple Illinois should lose in Ohio State and Oregon, and a bunch of toss-ups closer to 50/50.

Never forget:

Big Ten vs SEC Strength of Schedule

This chart shows where each power two team ranks in strength of schedule in the FBS this season. While there's a good mix of conferences at the top, eight Big Ten teams have a weaker schedule than any SEC team. Penn State at 59th has by far the easiest schedule of the power two.

4th Down Go Rate

College football teams continue to get more aggressive on fourth down. At midfield or beyond, FBS teams went for it 41.3% of the time last season, the highest rate in the last decade. Here is the trend since 2015.

Bluesky Feeds

For those of you on Bluesky, you may or may not know that you can build your own customizable feeds. Essentially you create and control what the algorithm feeds you. I recently made one for Illini in the NFL. This feed shows all posts about Illini players currently on NFL rosters so you can keep up with their professional careers.

Step 1: Click this link

Step 2: Click on the thumbnail in the top right to pin this to your feeds.

Step 3: Enjoy. When you now go to your home feed, you can swipe through to find the Illini in the NFL feed always there for you to scroll.

I'm working on making an algorithmic feed for the current Illini football team, but it is not ready yet.

I do have an Illini Bluesky list you can pin to your feed which comprises all the Illini fans I find on Bluesky. A good feed to have up during games to see what all the other Illini fans are saying.