1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Isaiah Williams (Illinois WR): July 27th, 1:45am

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

How is Bret Bielema and what are your goals for the seasonAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

You're listening to One-on-One with D.P. Sponsored by Mary Ellen's Food for the Soul on 93-7 The Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. Let's bring it back. One final second with a one-on-one. We're actually going to bring in some extra help. We just got better looking. Real quick. We just got better looking.

We probably got more athletic and we're definitely got younger. Again, we want to thank the folks who make this happen for us. Gary Michaels, Coldiers, who soon. suited and booted up to Huskers, Ben Blacker's professional realty group, and the folks from Marielas Food for the Soul, who let us get down the right way. When we eat, we can do the right thing. For Sean has been out in the stock. Always.

What did you bring back? Man, Isaiah Williams. Come on. Come on. Receiver. One. University of Illinois. Receiver one.

From St. Louis. Woke up to a flood. Right? Tell us about that, Isaiah. What happened? Man, so I'm at home in St. Louis, Monday, just for break, a couple of days to spend time with family. I'm in my grandmother's house, and I'm asleep. It's Monday night, Tuesday, and I just heard stuff falling.

Like, stuff just falling. I wake up, I'm like, what's that? So I take a step. Big puddle, just step right in the puddle. All my stuff, my MacBook destroyed. Damn. My core books destroyed. Some of my clothes was in the flood.

But I mean, you know, we're good. family doing good. My grandmother, she's back at home. She said everything doing better now. Give grandma a shout out, man. Let her know. Yeah, as long as grandma good, like we're good. All right. All right. So you made it in. Give me the vibe. What is the vibe that is Illinois football this year? Like this is when you have this thing where you can walk in here with all the swagger in the world, right? That means some work's been done. Tell me about the all-season work. What have you been working on? For me personally, I just been working

on my game from a mental and physical standpoint, you know, catching at least 250 passes a day and just attacking my weaknesses. And I think that's been really the goal for the team, like the things we're not good at attacking those days. Because I mean, sometimes it's good to work on the things that we're good at. But Coach B, he really challenged us this offseason to work on the things that we're not good at. And that's why we walk with a different type of swag. You know, we're confident this year. And that's just a reflection of like what he brings to the table.

what our coaches bring to the table. We were literally just talking about that. That off-season improvement season becomes about the things that you need to change to change your location and elevation. Talk to us about coach. Give me the persona. Who is coach? He a unique person.

One thing about coach, he loved people. So, you know, we had the car ride up here. It was about two hours. You know, you get in there, like, it's your coach. And, like, we talk to him every now and then, but, like, thinking, like, I'm about to have to ride in the corner in for two hours. Like, I'm going to be a little nervous. A little different, right?

Like, but the type of person he is, he made it easy, you know, um, just sitting in there two hours just talking two hours straight and really just getting to know him more. But, um, you could tell he wired different. Um, like, he got a certain swagger to him. And he, he won't, he want to do something special. And, um, like, being in the car room for two hours, it really showed me, like, he really a unique person.

And one thing, like, for sure, he's a great leader. And that's for stuff on and off the field. Like we have meetings. We have talk about football stuff. And then sometimes we just talk about life. And I feel like you can never get enough for that. Like just learning about life, life that's way big than football. I feel like he'd do a great job with both.

Isaiah, you came in as a freshman as a quarterback. Yeah. And actually got time balled out as a quarterback. Some records as a quarterback. Making that switch from quarterback to receiver, how was that transition? Um, honestly, I would say it was easy in a certain way because I, one thing I believe it's like hard work. Like, so when I moved the receiver, all I was like, bro, I'm going to learn this position

in and out. So it was kind of easy. Honestly, it was a little natural. Growing up, I did receiver drills. Yeah. It was a couple of camps in high school. I did receiver at the All-American game. Yeah.

I play a receiver. And a lot of schools recruiting me as a receiver at DB. So it was always kind of natural. So making that switch. The one thing that was hard, though, was just like the mental side of the game as a receiver, like learning how to set up routes. Routes, yeah, double moves, understanding, you know,

if the coverages, you know, winning to go inside, when to stay outside, how to stretch the covers, yeah. Yeah, stuff like that, I say, that was harder. And then, like, just making contested catch and stuff like that, but that's just stuff I've been attacking this offseason. and made a lot of improvement on. By the way, did you know he was the MVP, offensive MVP against Nebraska?

I kind of remember that. I kind of remember that. He was smack us around like that, man. That was Rutgers week. Was that Rutgers? That was the week before we played jobs. Okay. They got it wrong.

No, here's the work. In the pre-scouting, we said, here's the problem. You never know where he's going to be. He's the thing to defend to somebody where you know they were going to be. There was no location for you. You never knew what the play card was going to be.

I'll ask you this. Define the Illinois family, the football family. How would you describe it? Like one where I say a brotherhood. You know, family have its ups and downs. But I feel like sometimes that confrontation is good for us. Like we hold each other to a standard. And that's one thing that was big that we didn't have.

We didn't have a standard. So everybody was just doing whatever. ever but now like our family like it's a standard that's been said and like and if you don't meet it it's going to be problems like you're going to have to deal with it until you come to that standard but at the same on the other side of that we're going to encourage you also like we're going to push you but at the same time we're going to make sure we're encouraging you but um like it's a it's a standard that's being said and like you got to meet it what would define success for illinois football um i would say success is being better game 12 than we were game one

being better at the end of fall camp than we were at the beginning of the fall camp. And just constantly making progress. Sometimes it's hard to put a number on things. But, you know, our biggest thing is just we want to get better every single day. We want to learn more because we got a new offensive coordinator. So like the young guys that just came in, like we want to all know the playbook in and out. And, you know, like just really being player-led. It matters.

All of it matters. Standard. What's a goal of yours for this season? Personally, I want to have a thousand yards, but at the same time, like one of my biggest goals is just to get better every single week. Sure. Every single week.

But if you want to put a number to it, I would say, like, I want to have a thousand yards. Well, you know, I'm going to be watching, man. Now that I met you, you know what I mean? I'm going to say the St. Louis flood victim is going crazy at Illinois. You know what I mean? You got anything else? I just want him to stop flexing at me, man.

I know you had an all-season workout, but you need you got your arms up. You got your arms up. You got the guns out, there. Ain't no son in Lucas Oil Stadium. Why are you flexing to me? Young man, Isaiah was. We appreciate you, brother. Do you think we're going to follow, we're going to support.

That'll do it for one-on-one. We'll hand it over to the captain, for Sean Jackson. He will bring you the next three hours. And again, it's been exceptional. It helps us understand what the Big Ten is, what the Lowe Illinois football is. We appreciate your time and your energy young man. Shout out to Grandma. Let's handle your visit. Rashad Jackson.

Come on, man. Appreciate it, brother. On 937 the ticket.