Illinois defensive players have seen and heard what has been said and written about their defensive coordinator over two years. They now hope this 2024 Citrus Bowl flips criticism into belief.

January 1, 2025

(Cover photo courtesy Matt Stevens/IlliniGuys)

ORLANDO, Fla. — Following what is arguably the most disciplined and physically dominant defensive performances in the last two seasons, Aaron Henry’s players weren’t done proving a point.

The leadership amongst the near two dozen Illinois defensive players who played snaps during the 21-17 win over South Carolina in the 2024 Citrus Bowl were intent on sending a post-game message as well.

“Oh yeah, we’ve heard what has been said about Coach Henry. We’ve seen it on Twitter and social media. We’re not blind or deaf when people who call themselves fans of ours take shots at our defensive coordinator,” Illinois safety Miles Scott said. “We’re even told inside our building to ignore some of the people out there who weren’t believing in Coach Henry. Do you know who we were told that by? Coach (Bret) Bielema. The guy who promoted him. He believed in Coach Henry. If you weren’t immediately sold, then Coach B’s belief should’ve got you all in.”

Following a 2023 season, which was Henry’s first full campaign as a play-caller in his 10-year college coaching career, that saw Illinois go from the national No. 1 scoring defense to one of the worst defenses in the Big Ten Conference, Henry’s popularity amongst the Illini fanbase was anything but high. Bielema immediately told the players to trust that his choice to promote Henry after Ryan Walters left Champaign for the Purdue head coach position would pay off in the 2024 season.

“Here’s what is real. [Aaron Henry] is not only our coordinator but he’s my (position) coach,” Scott said. “I wear the green dot on my helmet, which means I have the radio communication so I’m the one who Coach Henry is talking to before every play. When our fans were talking shots at Coach Henry, they might as well have been talking about me. You think I wanted to see or hear that kind of stuff about my coach from our fans? No way. I hope what we did today in this bowl game against a SEC opponent lets everybody know Coach Henry was the right choice and needs support, not criticism.”

After 60 minutes of the Illini’s first New Year’s Eve/Day bowl win since the 1994 Liberty Bowl (when Henry, 36, was just six years old), Henry has coordinated a defensive performance that allowed 17 points or less against a power conference opponent for the sixth time since he took over as the primary defensive play-caller at the 2022 ReliaQuest Bowl against Mississippi State.

In the only two bowl games that Illinois have participated in during the four-year Bret Bielema era, Henry has held down a pair of explosive Southeastern Conference offenses to under 20 points and under 400 yards of total offense and a caused a total of three turnovers.

I think they're just very well-coached. I've got a lot of respect for [Aaron Henry] and what he teaches his guys to do with their defense, because they do what they do, and when I say that, that's a compliment. You can see what they teaching when you turn on the film and it’s all about aggressive defensive fundamentals,” South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer said. “They're going to get up in your face, they're going to play man coverage. They don't bring a lot of pressure (but) when they do, like they did on the quarterback draw, where they got LaNorris down in the first half, they do it well.”

The Illinois gameplan designed by Bielema, Henry, defensive line coach Terrance Jamison and the rest of the Illini staff over the last few weeks was centered upon the idea of keeping containment on the SEC Freshman of the Year. South Carolina quarterback LaNorris Sellers wasn’t able to find room outside of the pocket to improvise scramble plays.

“The time that we had to prep, I said this has to be our advantage. We had three weeks of preparation, and we really designed our prep to take advantage of early-down situations,” Bielema said in his post-game media conference. “75 percent of the game is early downs, and we only did early downs for the entire first week. A lot of people don't understand what that means, but I wanted these guys to lock into the 1st down and 2nd down success and nothing else because we can't get to 3rd down on defense, unless we have early down success.”

South Carolina (9-4), which entered this bowl game with the fourth-best rushing attack in the SEC at 184.38 yards per game on the ground, finished with less than four yards a carry. The Illinois defense missed just six tackles over 67 snaps of action on Tuesday.

When new South Carolina offensive coordinator Mike Shula called for designed quarterback runs with his 230-pound signal caller, Sellers saw at least two or even three Illini defenders searching for No. 16 in a white jersey and forcing him back inside the hashmarks.

“We definitely switched up the game plan for this game with all the time that we had to plan for it," Illinois strong-side safety Matthew Bailey said in the post-game media conference. "It kind of just put me in that role to be kind of a middle safety about 10, 12 yards off and kind of play the run play the pass and react to whatever happens. I personally love that position, and hope it happens moving forward.”

The switch of the game plan was playing a little man coverage as possible to force Sellers to make pre-snap and post-snap reads and decision all over the field instead of worrying about being quicker or running away from a pass rush to create broken play situation.

“I'll tell you, Aaron Henry and the defensive staff did an incredible job of game-planning and Barry Lunney on offense, Robby Discher in the back end, special teams wise, really just a very, very special game plan here and the results are what you saw,” Bielema said. “On game day I get to do all the other stuff. I can kind of manage the deal, apparently piss off an entire sideline and half the stadium fans, but there's parts to my job that I just really enjoy because I know I don't have to over-coach other positions. It's really a fun job as a head coach here at Illinois because of the staff I have.”

While Sellers finished 24 of 34 through the air for 260 yards and a touchdown, Illinois (10-3) allowed just two pass plays longer than 17 yards. The defense - which is usually cemented in man coverage on the perimeter and loading the line-of-scrimmage pre-snap with big bodies - was tied for 73rd amongst 134 Football Bowl Subdivision opponents in allowing passing plays of 20 yards or more.

“We may have run about eight calls of man coverage the whole day and I know it was under 10 and that’s just a complete different philosophy that we’ve ever had,” Miles Scott said. “We played zone with a spy on Sellers and we dared them to beat us throwing the football. It kept everything in front and if they got in the red area, we just made sure he didn’t run around like a video game.”

Bielema said he told his players throughout the month of December during game preparation the same thing he was telling fans about trust in regard to his decision-making whether that be staff choices like Henry or specific play calls on game day.

“I think there were a lot of these guys in the room where this is their first bowl game,” Bielema said. “There's a couple of them that it was their second bowl game and two or three guys said this is their third bowl. I said ‘Well, great, congratulations, this is my 17th bowl game so just listen to what I have to tell you’ I don't say that often but I think everybody was kind of laughing because they're like, oh, (expletive) he probably does know what he's doing. I don't want to say I do everything right, but I appreciate people who have had belief without any hesitation in what we’re doing here at Illinois kind of and they don't ask a lot of questions.”