Illinois Football: Illini adding more depth with Matt Fries commitment

Illinois football ended up having a pretty good day on Friday as the program added another member to the famILLy.

Entering the weekend, the Illini had a total of 11 commitments and were just a notch inside the top 50 in national recruiting ranking. Illinois’ standing would increase with the addition of Matt Fries to the team.

Fries is a 6-foot-5, 275-pound offensive tackle from Cranford Senior High School and resides in Cranford, New Jersey. He is rated as a three-star recruit and ranked as the No. 1139 player in the class of 2022. He is also the No. 115 offensive tackle in the country and the No. 31 player coming out of New Jersey.

The announcement of Fries committing to Illinois came via his Twitter account. The Illini now have 12 commitments for 2022 and a national recruiting ranking of No. 40 in the nation.

Bret Bielema is clearly eyeing the offensive line as the starting point to building the Illinois football program.

I love the addition of Fries to the program. Having a solid, borderline top 1000, recruit like Fries pledge is only going to help build depth moving forward. I think this commitment starts to solidify the mindset of Bielema as well.

Bielema clearly wants to build to the offensive line. That seems to be his top priority. Two of the top three rated players Illinois has committed for 2022 are offensive linemen Joey Okla and Hunter Whitenack.

In addition to those two offensive linemen, the Illini also have Fries and Clayton Leonard pledged for next year. That means 33.33% of the Illinois class of 2022 consists of players from the offensive line. If you look at the 2021 class, they only had 22.22% of their class come from the offensive line.

The strategy by Bielema is a good one. Build the Illinois football team from the inside out. If you don’t have strong lines, then you won’t have a strong team. He knows what it takes to win football games.