Nebraska Football Recruiting: Illinois’s Defense Is Vision For Blackshirts

I know you guys watched that Illinois defense. They were swarming, fast, physical, suffocating, mean, nasty. Most importantly, their defense is loaded with recruits from Florida playing key roles.

Defensively, they have Johnny Newton, Gabe Jacas, Calvin Hart, Seth Coleman, Devon Witherspoon, Sydney Brown, Tahveon Nicholson & Jartavius Martin all starting & playing extremely well for them. None of these guys were rated particularly high & could have easily been recruited by Nebraska.

In the Illini’s 2021, 2022 & 2023 recruiting classes combined, they signed a total of 61 players. Of those, 18 came from Florida, the second most out of any state after Illinois, and the state only gave their flagship school 2 more than Florida.

We all remember the ghastly 2020 recruiting class. Nearly the entire group of Florida natives we signed were gone by Thanksgiving. Two of them remained. Running back Marvin Scott departed at the end of last season after former RB coach Ryan Held was fired. Defensive back Tamon Lynum is still on the Huskers roster but doesn’t play much, mostly due to injury.

I don’t know what happened in between then & now but someone in the athletic department became terrified of Florida players. I think we went through a calendar year without offering one. The Flobraska pipeline was forcibly shut by the Lincoln Water System. This was a terrible move.

Recruiting the state of Florida isn’t a want, it’s a need.

When you want to build a team ready to win, you have to recruit Florida more. The numbers do not lie. Illinois has been recruiting Florida tough all the way back to the Ron Zook days, and in their most successful years their teams were chock full o’ Floridians.

I have a homework assignment for you guys. Go to the CFP rankings right now. Look at the top 6 schools. If you add their current players + commits, do they all have 10 or more Florida natives on their roster?

#FloBraska