Northwestern Wildcats, 2025 Recap: A Final Year in the Wilderness (and at the Bunny Hutch Stadium)
Return to form or dead wildcat bounce?
AlmaOtter: It's hard to fully wrap one's head around the depths that Illinois football had plumbed prior to Bielema arriving in 2021. That miraculous 10-3 2024 season was a tough act to follow, but Bret and Co went 9-4, even with dicktrips over Home Washington and Bizarro Wisconsin.
Bielema has, over 5 season in Champaign, accumulated 23 conference wins. Lovie had 10 wins in 5 seasons. Zook had 18 victories in 7 seasons. To find anything approximating what Bielema has put together in-conference, you'd have to go back to the late 1980s and John Mackovic. I was born in the summer prior to Mackovic's final season. It's been a bit.
Let's dive into the 2025 season's expectations, results, highs, lows, and that fucking bizarre snow game for the HAT.
What were the expectations?
Transient Buckeye: On paper, this looked like it should've been Illinois' best team in a long time. The Illini went 10-3 in 2024, and brought back most of the roster for 2025. This was a highly-experienced squad that was expected to compete for an upper-level finish within the Big Ten. I don't remember anyone floating Illinois as a potential national championship team, but they were at least considered a dark horse to get an at-large playoff berth.
Thumpasaurus: Well, we certainly expected to make a bowl game, though the phantom of getting just 5 wins after every winning season in the last 30+ years still lurked. The only reason expectations weren't sky high is because of the name on the helmet. They were ranked inside the top 15 to start the season and that felt perfectly fair. Personally I was hoping for 8 wins but recognizing that the playoff was not out of reach.
Kind of...: Definitely dark horse playoff expectations. I mean, if you're #12 preseason, and it's a 12 team playoff, you have to be thinking the playoff is a viable option.
AlmaOtter: We had a lot of pre-season buzz and it wasn't impossible to see a CFP berth. I was skeptical because I'm an Illini fan and that's what we do, but anywhere between 7-5/10-2 felt plausible.
So, how'd it go?
Transient Buckeye: It's a compliment to Bret Bielema that he's managed to elevate the Illinois program to a level where it's even possible for their fans to be disappointed. But it definitely felt like the Illini underachieved in 2025. Illinois wasn't bad last season, not at all. They went 8-4 in the regular season, and added a bowl win over Tennessee in what was functionally a road game (the Music City Bowl in Nashville) to cap off the year. This means Illinois has 19 wins over the past two seasons, easily the best two-year run in recent history. At the same time, they were mostly uncompetitive in their losses, didn't rack up a lot of quality wins, and committed an extremely egregious dick-trip in November when they went into Madison and were thoroughly dominated by a terrible Wisconsin team. Although that Illini loss may have saved Luke Fickell's job, so it's possible that Illinois will get the last laugh in the long run.
Thumpasaurus: I spent parts of the season being checked out because Illinois took the worst loss I've ever seen early to Indiana. After that game, I declared that one of two things was true: either Indiana is an unstoppable juggernaut that will melt everyone's faces off en route to a perfect season, or Illinois is terrible. One of those things seemed much more likely than the other to me.
Imagine my surprise when the "Unstoppable Juggernaut Indiana" claim was true!
It's hard to put into words how bad the Indiana loss was, but I was among Indiana's earliest champions as evidence emerged that Illinois did not in fact actually suck very much. This was of course before the Wisconsin loss.
Kind of...: I've argued with Thumpasaurus about this before, so we'll just agree to disagree, but unstoppable juggernauts don't play as many one-score games, or have as many tied/trailing in 4th quarter games, as Indiana did. They were the best team last year, and definitely good enough to win the title many years. But we're not talking 1995 Nebraska, or even 2019 LSU, here. Based on the Illinois game, though, yep. They sure seemed untouchable that night.
Of course, Illinois did lose to Wisconsin. And, before that, with a playoff spot still potentially there for taking, they no-showed in the second half against Washington. Who also lost to Wisconsin. The win over USC looks good. And, sure, Duke somehow won the ACC. But, as it turned out, had they gone 10-2, they probably would have been left out of the playoff. And deservingly so based on the overall profile. 8-4 seems appropriate.
What were the highlights?
Transient Buckeye: Illinois went on the road in Week 2, and came away with a resounding victory over (checks notes) ACC Champion Duke. [Wait. Duke? Duke? DUKE? In football!? Oh, ACC. Never change.]. The USC game also needs to be noted. Southern Cal vomited all over itself for about three quarters, and Illinois looked to be firmly in control. Then the Illini decided to be gracious hosts and return the favor, forgetting how to play football for most of the fourth quarter and letting USC surge back to take the lead. But the Trojans scored too soon, and Illinois picked themselves up off the mat, drove down the field, and won on a field goal at the final gun. It wasn't one of the biggest games of last year's Big Ten, but it was certainly one of the most entertaining.
Thumpasaurus: The Duke game was a bit better in hindsight than at the time because that win felt like it turned on a bunch of key plays that might not be replicable in other games. The USC win was yet another one in a series of games where Illinois won by not having the coach do the stupid thing. Down 6 at the Two Minute Not Warning But Timeout, USC had first and goal and Illinois had all three timeouts. The Trojans immediately took a shot at the end zone that scored the go-ahead touchdown, leaving Luke Altmyer with a full complement of timeouts to slash Lincoln Riley's Charmin soft USC defense.
Beating Purdue was cathartic after the Ryan Walters era, and it's always nice to beat Northwestern so you know this Illini team is officially Good (as I've said many times, no Good Illinois Team has ever lost to Nern). The bowl game against Tennessee turned out to be much lower scoring than anyone anticipated, but it was just as dramatic as hoped. For the second year in a row Illinois mounted a fourth quarter comeback in enemy territory against a heavily favored SEC squad whose fans were totally dismissive of the Berting Illini.
(record scratch)
The Northwestern game.
I had actually planned to go to that one as I was actually in Illinois for Thanksgiving, but a very serious blizzard (8 inches of snow during the day) and a very pregnant and cautious wife ultimately prevented me from doing it.
The game nevertheless went on in front of a minimal crowd as they were unable to clear the bleachers of snow. Early in the game, Robby Preckel was making some headway in running the ball for Northwestern and he has an obnoxious enough name that I was really worried this was gonna be one of Those Games. However, Illinois got the lead at halftime and never relinquished it. Preston Stone threw three picks, which isn't too surprising considering he (a) threw 36 times in a blizzard (b) is Preston Stone.
The bowl victory brought the win total for these two seasons to 19, which is the most wins Illinois has ever had across a two-year span. Their national titles came so long ago that they didn't play enough games to get to 19 wins in 2 seasons.
Kind of...: Thump thoroughly covered it. I for one am grateful Illinois defended B1G honor, and a superior shade of orange, in the bowl game win.
And the lowlights?
Transient Buckeye: On September 20th, the undefeated Illini took the short road trip to Bloomington to face the undefeated Indiana Hoosiers (how often have we been able to say that in recent years?). This was a highly-anticipated contest between two ranked Big Ten teams, and was supposed to be the first of several contests that helped to sort out the pecking order at the top of the conference. So how'd it go? Well.....
There was also the aforementioned dick-trip against Wisconsin. Now, the Badgers were playing their best football of 2025 in November. But they were still pretty bad, and Illinois allowed them to put up half as many points (27) as the Badgers scored in their other eight Big Ten games combined (54). Kind Of... pointed out last week that, had it not been for that one game, Wisconsin would've easily fielded the worst offense of any Big Ten team in most of our lifetimes. And the Badgers still managed to punk their former coach.
Thumpasaurus: Being knocked out of the playoff race by Ryan Walters hurt. Illinois had some key turnovers to piss away a rare chance to beat Home Washington in the rain. The Wisconsin game pissed me off tremendously.
Kind of...: The Wisconsin game should've pissed Thump off tremendously. Wisconsin threw for fewer than 100 yards and won by 17 because Illinois's OL got dominated. That was the only B1G game last year where Wisconsin scored multiple TDs.
One more time: Wisconsin only scored multiple TDs in one conference game last year. Thanks, Bert.
Any memorable and or absurd moments?
Transient Buckeye: I didn't watch a ton of Illinois games in 2025. But I do remember the USC-Illinois game featuring several moments of wonderful absurdity, with both teams at times exhibiting a strong determination to find a way to lose.
Thumpasaurus: We did make SportsCenter Not Top 10 when poor punter Keelan Crimmins went low to retrieve an errant snap and hit his knee on the ground when he recovered the ball. That was one of the three first-half turnovers that doomed our effort against Ohio State, who we were otherwise playing pretty well. I was part of the sold out crowd for that game and it was incredible to see the stadium alive in pretty much all orange despite the foe. When you sell out one game in a 13 year span, you learn to appreciate what it's like to get to see your stadium full of your own fans to cheer your team regardless of the result.
Kind of...: Losing by 53 when you're ranked in the top 10 is pretty absurd.
There's an article to be written about Illinois getting completely obliterated every time they climb the rankings. I think more than most B1G schools, you can count on Illinois to treat success with complete disdain.
