Illinois football projected to flip 4-star linebacker recruit out of Ohio

The Illinois football class of 2025 is nowhere near finished, as the program continues to work to build a top-50 group.

Just months ago, I remember typing that I thought the Illini were going to need the transfer portal to make the class of 2025 a good group. While we had good players, the quantity wasn’t there and there weren’t a lot of players left for the Orange and Blue to bring into the program.

Slowly but surely, Bret Bielema started to work his magic. Illinois landed tight end Logan Farrell from Arlington Heights. We then went in and flipped JJ Hirdes from Western Michigan and Tywan Cox from South Florida. Hirdes and Cox are two of our top seven commits thus far.

It seems that Bielema isn’t done with the flipping either. On Wednesday, a new Crystal Ball Prediction was submitted for Purdue commit, Grant Beerman. With a confidence of six out of 10, 247Sports writer Jermey Werner believes Illinois will be able to flip Beerman and bring him into the program.

This would be a pretty big flip for the Illini. Beerman is a 6-foot-4, 220-pound linebacker from Lakota West High School in Ohio. He is rated as a four-star recruit and ranked as the No. 436 player in the class of 2025. He is also the No. 47 linebacker in the country and the No. 15 player coming out of Ohio.

Illinois wasn’t even in the mix for Beerman when he originally took his official visits. He made stops at Cincinnati, Michigan State, West Virginia, and Purdue before eventually landing with the Boilermakers back in early July.

The Illini then snuck in and started doing work. We landed an officially visit with Beerman back at the beginning of November. This set in motion a great relationship between the two sides, and now it is projected that Beerman will make a new home in Champaign.

Bret Bielema has the Illinois football program flipping recruits at a high rate

I have followed Illinois recruiting for a long time. Honestly, we are usually the program that gets recruits poached. Teams see that we are struggling, and they swoop in and take our best recruits.

The shoe is on the other foot now. Illinois isn’t a losing program anymore, as we have had two eight-win campaigns in three seasons. Bielema is playing the recruiting game well, and he has been able to flip quite a few recruits this recruiting cycle.

So far, I believe Illinois has been able to flip four players in the 17-player class. The first recruit to flip to the Illini was cornerback Robert Jones III. He committed to North Carolina State in early June 2024. Later that month, he flipped to Illinois.

Tight end Logan Farrell was the next player to flip to Champaign. He was committed to North Carolina since December 2023. In October 2024, Farrell decided to change paths and come to Illinois.

The final two I mentioned earlier. Both offensive tackle JJ Hirdes and safety Tywan Cox flipped their commitments from Western Michigan and South Florida, respectively.

A flip from Beerman would make five for Bielema and the Illinois coaching staff. That would be an impressive number. Now, heading into early National Signing Day, we just have to avoid it happening to us. My hope is that we have our affairs in order and nothing changes for the negative.