2024 Illinois football wide receiver preseason confidence grades

Luke Altmyer should be able to have a great year for the Illinois football program, as we are loaded with offensive talent.

The Illini quarterback has a year under his belt in the offense, and this offseason, we were able to bring in a nice piece or two to help Altmyer move the ball down the field.

Illinois’ wide receiver corps is flying under the radar. I fully expect there to be at least one All-Big Ten pass catcher on the roster in 2024.

Here are the 2024 Illinois football wide receiver preseason confidence grades

Depth: 8.2/10

One would think losing wide receivers like Isaiah Williams and Casey Washington would kill the wide receiver depth for the Orange and Blue. While those two losses hurt, Bret Bielema did a good job replacing them.

Zakhari Franklin was a huge addition to the wide receiver corps. He joins the program after five years of college football with 3,386 yards and 38 touchdowns. He will undoubtedly be a starter for the Illini.

I have Pat Bryant, the incumbent starting wide receiver, and Malik Elzy, a former four-star wide receiver, starting alongside Franklin.

Depth for the Illini goes deeper than that, though. Ashton Hollins and Hank Beatty are going to be the two main backups, and each player eclipsed the 100-snap mark in 2023.

Illinois has a ton of young depth behind those two veterans as well. Mario Sanders II, Kenari Wilcher, Tysean Griffin, Alex Capka-Jones, Carlos Orr-Gillespie, and Collin Dixon should all be vying for snaps, and each player is either a sophomore or younger.

Stability: 8.9/10

The stability grade is so high for the Illini due to two factors. The first factor is that the wide receiver corps has a nice balance of young and old.

Two big-time seniors lead Illinois’ wide receiver corps in Bryant and Franklin. The latter is entering his sixth year of college football as well.

I believe this is a fairly healthy wide receiver corps, which boosts the grade a bit too. The only injury issue this group has had was with Franklin last season. He only played in four games for Ole Miss due to injury. But he is now healthy and looks good during training camp.

Future: 7.9/10

I touched on this a bit earlier, but Illinois has a lot of young and talented wide receivers. While we do have a couple of seniors at the top of the ticket, the rest of the wide receiver corps has a bright future ahead.

Elzy is a future star. He is only a sophomore this season and showed sparks of greatest in 2023. Once he gets going, he is going to be an All-Big Ten pass catcher.

The bullpen Illinois has is pretty exciting too. Griffin, Orr-Gillespie, and Dixon are all freshmen, and they were all highly rated coming out of high school. This trio, along with sophomores Sanders II, Hollins, and Wilcher, should provide incredible depth for the Illini for years to come.