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BIG TEN CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA DAYS

July 18, 2019

Lovie Smith

Chicago, Illinois

LOVIE SMITH: First off, I'd just like to thank all of you that have reached out to us. We had a player that suffered a serious injury, Bobby Roundtree, and when you go through tough times, you really see the good in people, and so many of you have reached out to us. Bobby has a long road ahead. He's fighting every day to get back. We have a long-term plan for him, but again, thank you.

We at the University of Illinois are just very excited about, first off, the three guys that we have representing our football team, Alex Palczewski, play offensive tackle for us; Nate Hobbs, a cornerback; and Reggie Corbin, three players that have meant a lot to our program that are good football players. We're expecting, of course, big things from all three of them, but it's just good for them to get up here and get a chance to meet different people and hopefully get a chance for you to get a chance to know them better.

Year 4, when we first got here, we knew there were some challenging things that we had to take care of, and we attacked it. We went to work right away. We overhauled our football program. We have a lot of new players. Recruiting has gone well.

A few years ago we had 15 freshman that started. Those guys are juniors now and are running our football team, and that's a good thing.

Our recruiting is going well, and our guys' off-season workouts, our players are really working extremely hard.

Last year offensively, we did some good things. We had a new offensive attack that we brought in led by Rod Smith. Guys had career years, especially Reggie Corbin. So offensively I felt like we did enough to win more football games. Defensively we did not. We were one of the worst defenses in college football. We're embracing that, and we've -- a long time ago, right after the season, we went to work to correct that. Nate Hobbs and the rest of our crew will have a lot to say about how the season goes with that.

As I talk about recruiting and just the state of our program right now, this time of year, everybody is going to have a great year, and there will be a team that will come from nowhere that will have an outstanding year. We plan on that being us.

But the last part of our overhaul of our program is have a better product on the football field, and across the board, we feel like we're in the best position to do that.

As we look back on the last three years, you can look to a couple games that we let slip away, but for the most part, that's where our program has been, not being able to win enough, teams being better than us, but our stick is a lot bigger now.

I'll take your questions.

Q. When you came to Illinois, there was a lot of high expectations. Do you think people didn't temper your success in the NFL with just how big of a rebuilding job it was?
LOVIE SMITH: Well, I think whenever you come in new, there's a lot of -- there should be a lot of -- there's a reason, number one, for a change, and there's optimism that things will turn around immediately. Normally that doesn't happen, though, where things turn around right away. So I can't really say exactly how it was back then. I just know now it's been a few years, and we've had a chance to establish everything, and what we want to do is just be in the best position to really be able to compete. And as a coaching staff, we feel like we're in that position.

Again, I talked about recruiting. We've also taken the graduate transfer route, and we have about five players coming in that we think will really solidify some of those younger classes that have played quite a bit, and it's all about this year.

Q. How much different do you think the defense will be this year, and with you taking over, what do you want your stamp to be on that side of the field?
LOVIE SMITH: First off, we have to be a lot better in so many areas, things we didn't do well, gave up too many big plays. We weren't really able to stop the run. And our signature is about doing that and taking the ball away and scoring on defense. We weren't able to do all of those things. There were a few times during the course of the year, the Rutgers game, the Minnesota game, where we got a chance to see exactly what we can be.

As far as changes that we're going to make, we'll always tweak. You tweak from year to year. But the things we're talking about, it's whether you run a 4-3 or a 3-4, you have the same amount of people that you're dealing with. I just feel like we have a better understanding of what we're going to do and the individual improvements that we needed to make, we have made.

Our depth is better also. A lot of what happened to us is when you lose some of your front-line players, the drop-off is -- there's too much of a drop. We're in a better position with that. Even losing a player like Bobby, we have an excellent recruiting class coming in of defensive linemen, Jake Hansens -- I mentioned Nate Hobbs -- the Dele Hardings of the world. Milo Eifler being able to play. I feel like some of those things will really help us play better defense this year.

Q. Seems like the perception of the Big Ten West is it's getting stronger. Do you agree with that assessment, and does that make your rebound even tougher?
LOVIE SMITH: I do agree with that, and I'll -- we were at the bottom of the division. So as I talk about the football team that we're expecting to have, finishing where we did last year, for that to happen, it has to be a strong division, and that was the case. We have the people that have perennially been pretty good, and, of course, we know we have to catch them. But if you look at our conference as a whole, top to bottom, I feel like it's a strong league, and to make it, of course, you have the ones up top. But it's about the middle of the crew. Each week, of course, you have to be ready.

I'm just going to go back to us. We're a better football team, and by -- the team that finished at the bottom of the group last year, being a lot better should make the conference that much stronger.

Q. Two issue-related questions: How would you fix or change what's happening with the transfer portal right now? And is it time for the Big Ten to rethink the division setup?
LOVIE SMITH: The division setup first, I can't necessarily say that. I like the way it is right now. I like, of course, the division that we're in. There are good football teams on both sides, both sides of our conference.

And as far as the transfer rule, how would I fix it? You know, maybe more transparency as much as anything on how the process kind of goes a little bit when you deny it or grant it, you need -- immediate eligibility a little bit would maybe help it.

As far as -- sometimes divorce is a good thing in life in general, so for players to take that approach and have an opportunity to move on, as long as we're all going by the same rules, I'm okay with whatever we have in place and okay with the current rules that we have in place.

We had a couple players, of course, that were denied that are good football players. Eventually those players will get a chance, Luke Ford being one of those players. Luke Ford will eventually play three years for the University of Illinois, so we'll wait our time for him.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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