Illinois defensive coordinator Aaron Henry’s first humbling message to the players on the Illini’s 2024 roster was essentially an apology for his performance in 2023.

By Matt Stevens - IlliniGuys Football Writer/Analyst

August 4, 2025

CHAMPAIGN — When the University of Illinois football players all gathered at the team meeting room inside the Smith Family Football Complex, the defensive coordinator had a unique message.

Approximately one year ago prior to the Illini’s first practice last Friday night, Aaron Henry got up and spoke to the entire roster and the summary might be encapsulated in two words of ‘I’m sorry’ or better yet, five words: ‘I’m sorry, I’ll be better’.

Illinois was coming off a disappointing 2023 season where Bret Bielema’s third season followed a Jan. 1 bowl bid with a 5-7 overall record. Maybe more importantly, it was Henry’s first season as the defensive play-caller after he took over for Ryan Walters after Walters departed for the head coach position at Purdue. The Illini defense, which was a spine of a 8-5 season in 2022, saw a dramatic dropoff where Henry’s defensive unit went from No. 3 in total defense to No. 63 and from No. 1 in scoring defense in 2022 to No. 96 to 2023.

Henry was humbled by the struggles as Bielema’s hand-picked promotion to the defensive boss position and he knew exactly what he needed to say to his players.

“If anybody knows me, I’m pretty transparent whether it’s about how I grew up, where I’m from, about the steps I needed to take,” Henry said on July 31. “I remember giving up 49 points last win in a win and the first thing I said to (media) was that was my fault.”

Xavier Scott, who returned to Illinois as a two-year starter and a Jim Thorpe Award (given to the nation’s best defensive back) watch list candidate, said he wasn’t emotionally prepared for his former position coach and current coordinator to be that honest. In his entire football life, the then-21 year old had always assumed coach’s motivational speeches involved putting the responsibility on the execution of the players and not even privately admitting fault to their ability to develop and scheme.

“He walked up there and told us he was disappointed in his performance and I was like ‘whoa’,” Scott said while in Las Vegas last month for Big Ten Football Media Day. “It just showed me and a lot of the guys sitting around me what kind of man he was. I remember looking around at teammates going ‘I can’t believe he’s saying this to us but I love it.’”

Near the end of his individual podium time at Big Ten Football Media Day, a reporter poised a question to Bielema about improvements with the Illini defense he expects to see “under coordinator Aaron Henry”. The Illinois head coach allowed the reporter to finish the question but once there was a pause in the conversation, Bielema took the first possible opportunity to correct the gentlemen about how he perceives the chain of command within the Smith Family Football Complex in Champaign.

“Well, first of all, let’s get something straight and understood. The 2021, 2022 and 2023 defenses were under me,” Bielema said. “And the 2024 defense will be under me. As the head coach, I’m the responsible person, okay? So, that part is clear, right?”

The 42-word public response, which serves as Bielema laying a protective shield over Illini defensive coordinator Henry, was a likely trigger to Bielema being frustrated and a bit fed up with criticism coming toward his selection in December 2022 to replace Walters as the defensive boss inside the Illinois football program.

“I’m tired of hearing this stuff about not hiring somebody who was learning on the job. I think the fact of the matter is that everybody learns from mistakes of the past and then you mix in with the fact there’s nobody I’ve been associated with more prideful than our defensive coaches. Everybody in our building took moments to review what we did well and what we didn’t do well. There’s schematic things we need to take advantage of but also there’s the development of our roster that has to be considered especially in our (secondary).”

Bielema confirmed some “real conversations” took place between him and Henry, who began his coaching career as a defensive graduate assistant at Arkansas under Bielema in 2014 and 2015 after finishing his playing career at Wisconsin, with Bielema as his head coach, with seven interceptions, 23 defended passes and 181 career tackles.

“I think just going back into last spring I could tell a difference in his demeanor and everything I look for in a defensive coordinator,” Bielema said. “Look, I got better every year as a coordinator too, right?”

Scott said he felt the vibe and emotion among the team leaders for the 2024 season was firmly set following that speech from Henry.

“He played this game of football, played it for [Bielema] so he knows the feeling and knows when what it looks like when you don’t perform at your best on the field. I walked out of that meeting thinking ‘that man has the credibility of playing and he’s admitting to us he’s just as responsible as us. I just knew he was going to respond to this opportunity in 2024,” Scott said. “We all understood that (in 2023) I wouldn’t even say the players we had weren’t completely bought in but I can say we weren’t all together and we couldn’t let that happen again.”

Henry, who IlliniGuys.com has learned was the target of multiple defensive coordinator searches by power conference programs and was in the final process for a power conference head coach opening, just finished his second season has coordinated a defensive performance that has allowed 17 points or less against a power conference opponent six times since he took over as the primary defensive play-caller at the 2022 ReliaQuest Bowl against Mississippi State. Henry’s defensive scheme 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 including a 21-17 victory over South Carolina in the 2024 Citrus Bowl. The 36-year-old has gone from a $700,000 annual salary to an average annual value of $1 million over the next three seasons. Henry will draw a $900,000 salary for the upcoming 2025 season and get $100,000 raises each of the next two seasons. Henry’s new contract comes nearly two years to the date his two-year contract extension was approved by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees after he was promoted from defensive backs coach to defensive coordinator.

“Oftentimes, players think it’s just about them and to a certain degree it is, but as coaches we have to take ownership as well,” Henry said. “I can get all my players in the correct spot and have perfect execution but it won’t matter if that particular call in that situation wasn’t warranted. After studying the film, if it is obvious that was a poor call, that’s on me, not my guys. They need to hear that.”

Matthew Bailey, who because of preseason injuries and a season-ending injury in the home loss to Penn State early in the 2023 season was forced to watch all but 22 snaps of that season on the inactive list, had already gone through in his own mind the list of ‘what if’ scenarios that included Illinois obviously being a better defense, and then subsequently a better team, in 2023 if he’d been healthy. In that first team meeting before the 2024 campaign, Bailey was hearing his coordinator and primary safeties position coach, tell over 100 players that he let them down by his play-calling, weekly gameplan and player development job during that particular season. Immediately, the burden of blame was, at least, partially lifted off Bailey, who is seen as a team leader since taking over his starting safety position from NFL-bound Sydney Brown.

“It takes a lot of courage to do all of that in front of a team that you’re going to be working with for the whole season so I respected him a lot after that happened,” Bailey said. “It better allowed me to focus on what I needed to do. Think about it, if he’s taking about what he needed to do to get better as a coach and a coordinator, it forced me to ask myself what I needed to do to get better so I can properly hold up the standard that he’s setting for himself.”

In 2024, the Illinois defense responded to being 31st of 134 Football Bowl Subdivision programs in scoring defense and went from an average of 64 penalty yards per game in 2023 to just under 40 one year later.

“We needed to trust our coaching staff because it was clear they believed in us,” Scott said. “And I’ll say this, it was clear [Bielema] trusted and believed in Coach Henry. We look at that last season and all concluded that if all 11 players on the field were bought in, we could accomplish great things. And most, if not all of those leaders return for this season too.”