Illinois Football: The Future at Wide Receiver Is Bright
The Illinois football team has a nice history of producing talented wide receivers. Let’s look into the future and see what we have at wide receiver the next couple of years.
Illinois will have a nice core of wide receivers returning for 2017.
Malik Turner will be one of our leading wide receivers. He will be a senior and looked at as one of the top pass catchers in the Big Ten.
Alongside Turner, Desmond Cain will be stepping up into a more active role. Cain will enter the 2017 season as a junior and he will hopefully be coming off a great season the year before.
Turner and Cain should be joined by sophomore Mike Dudek. I assume that Dudek will qualify for a medical redshirt again, for the second season in a row.
Illinois fans had a chance to see how good Dudek could be his freshman season, but the injury bug bit the Illini and now we have to wait until 2017 to see him again.
Also in the mix for starting minutes will be junior Sam Mays.
May’s is a long wide receiver standing at 6-foot-3. His presence on the field is going to be huge to spell minutes and burn the defenders over the top.
These will be the four main wide receivers heading into the 2017 season. Lovie Smith is going to need to bring in some good talent in the class of 2017 to help these guys out as well.
Lovie has done a great job building the wide receiver core so far. He just received commitments from two wide receivers for next season.
Kendall Smith and Ricky Smalling will both join this cast of talented pass catchers.
Smith has great size at 6-foot-2. He should be able to see some minutes year one in Champaign.
Illinois beat out a lot of MAC programs to earn Smith’s commitment. He received 10 scholarship offers with the best schools being Illinois, Western Michigan, and Bowling Green.
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Smalling is supposed to be the better of the two wide receivers. He has solid size at 6-foot-1 and is also a dominant pass catcher. His game tapes look incredible.
Illinois had to beat out a plethora of schools to get Smalling to commit. He had 14 scholarship offers including Wisconsin, Iowa State, and Missouri. Smalling is the highest rated recruit for the class of 2017 thus far.
Illinois is still looking at some talented wide receivers as well for 2017.
While I doubt it happens, the No. 2 player in the state of Illinois, Jeff Thomas, is still available. He is a 4-star prospect that has a lot of programs after his services.
Illinois has been on Thomas’s radar, but he will probably head elsewhere.
Another wide receiver on the Illini radar is Jamir Whitelow. He is a 3-star from Peoria, Illinois.
Whitelow currently has 2 scholarship offers from Western Michigan and Illinois. He has good size at 6-foot-3 and I think he will be a sneaky pickup for the Illini.
Adding at least three wide receivers to the team in 2017 will help solidify that area of the field. We also have 2018 to look at as well.
Once the 2017 season ends, the Illini will see Turner depart but they will still have most of their main core intact.
In 2018, Illinois will bring back Cain, who should be our main pass catcher. They will also have Dudek and Mays back as well.
With these three great wide receivers, the class of 2017 pass catchers will have a full year under their belt too.
Illinois should have Smalling competing for one of the starting spots. If he doesn’t get a starting role, he will still get a ton of minutes.
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Smith will hopefully be in the rotation. I would expect him to see minutes every once in a while and in garbage time as well.
The class of 2018 will hopefully bring in a few new faces into the mix too.
Illinois had 2018 wide receiver Micah Jones already visit the campus multiple times and he loved it.
In an interview with Scout, Jones explains his thoughts on his most recent visit back in mid-April.
“It was one of the best visits,” Jones said. “It was great to see the campus with Caleb and Jalin (Tolbert) and then talk to some of the other recruits. Micah (Awodiran) was real cool and the other major recruits there were real cool too.”
These are some great words to hear from a recruit that could help change the Illini in the future.
Jones is already being recruited heavily by big time programs. He has 5 scholarship offers from Illinois, Iowa, Iowa State, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt.
Right now, none of the recruiting websites have Jones ranked because they are still focused on the class of 2017.
But you can tell by the interest Jones has already drawn, that he is going to be a solid 4-star recruit and one of the best in the state of Illinois.
Getting Jones to add to the Illinois roster would be huge for 2018. He would add to the already explosive wide receiver core.
The wide receiver position is developing into one of the strongest areas on the Illinois football team. The progression of the players mixed in with the recruiting ability of Lovie is going to make for one bright future.