Before last season, Illinois football had won 10 games in a single season just once since the turn of the century. Over the past decade, the Illini had finished a campaign with a winning record just once.
On the heels of a 5-7 season in 2023, the narrative seemed unlikely to shift last year. But coach Bret Bielema’s squad raced out to a 6-1 start, then rebounded from back-to-back losses and what seemed the brink of a collapse. The Illini closed the season with three straight regular-season wins before capping a program-shifting campaign with an upset of South Carolina in the Citrus Bowl.
And although the accomplishment truly required a total team effort, there was a key to Illinois’ momentous turnaround: quarterback Luke Altmyer.
In 2023, Altmyer’s first season in orange and blue, he passed for 13 touchdowns and 10 interceptions – hardly eye-catching numbers – as the Illini stumbled a typical five-win season.
As a junior a year later, Altmyer took the field with a different level of sharpness, poise and confidence. Always under control, rarely flustered inside or outside the pocket, Altmyer looked the part of a winning quarterback – and he played it, too.
PAT BRYANT SCORES THE GAME-WINNING TD ON 4TH DOWN! 😱@IlliniFootball pic.twitter.com/ndso5u3X8B
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) November 23, 2024
Altmyer compiled 2,717 passing yards, 22 touchdowns and just six interceptions last season. He tacked on another 217 rushing yards and four touchdowns, despite being sacked a Big Ten-leading 32 times (all recorded as net rushing losses on the quarterback).
Altmyer’s exceptional campaign caught the eyes of not just conference competitors but also the nation – which is why he has earned a spot on a special list.
ESPN ranked college football’s top 12 returning impact players for 2024, all figures who have “beefed up their respective teams’ playoff chances” – and Altmyer made the cut.
ESPN’s Heather Dinich slotted Altmyer at sixth on the list and pointed to his return as the main reason that “Illinois can be a CFP sleeper team by competing for the Big Ten title and earning an at-large bid if it doesn’t win the league.”
Dinich then made an unusual but favorable comparison to a nontraditional conference powerhouse that won 11 games and stunned college football observers everywhere by making the CFP last season. The importance of Altmyer returning “can’t be understated,” Dinich wrote, noting that Illinois has a chance to be “this year’s Indiana.”
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