Illinois Football: Safety depth strengthening with 2024 commitment

Tuesday was another successful recruiting day for the Illinois football program.

The Illini started the day with 12 commitments, the latest being from cornerback, Amar Reynolds. Bret Bielema and the Illinois coaching staff were just coming off a big recruiting weekend, so there was a potential to add more talent in the coming days.

Joe Barna was the first domino to fall on Tuesday. The three-star defensive lineman picked Illinois over teams like Wisconsin and Oklahoma. But Illinois wasn’t finished with just one commitment for the day.

On Tuesday night, Chase Green took to social media to announce that he too was committing to the Illinois football team.

Illinois football is stacking talent at the safety position with the addition of Chase Green

Green is a 6-foot, 185-pound safety from Largo High School in Florida. He is rated as a three-star recruit and ranked as the No. 1340 player in the class of 2024. He is also the No. 108 safety in the country and the No. 182 player coming out of Florida.

Numerous teams were vying for Green’s commitment. Throughout the recruiting process, he would take three official visits. He stopped at Temple and Tulane before checking out Champaign this past weekend. Now the Illini are getting a solid safety who will help the program in the future.

Opinion

Despite losing some serious talent in Sydney Brown and Kendall Smith, the Illinois coaching staff is loading up at the safety position.

Illinois was able to pluck four freshmen safeties and three transfer safeties from the class of 2023. This haul should help fill the voids left by the talent that is now playing in the NFL.

Those seven safeties will be folded into the mix, and then Green will come in from the class of 2024 to put even more pressure on the players in the program. Pressure makes diamonds. Competition is a good thing.

I think Green can put pressure on the guys ahead of him too. He is a natural ball-hawk. He can fly all over the field and has great vision for where the quarterback is throwing the ball. I also believe he plays bigger than 185 pounds. Green’s size and great vision make him dangerous on the football field.

Bielema was able to snag another talented recruit for 2024. We now have a national recruiting ranking of No. 35 in the country. Let’s see if we can finish in the top 40 for the first time since the Ron Zook era.