During his interview for the Illinois cornerbacks job a year and a half ago, Keynodo Hudson met with Illinois safeties coach Gill Byrd, a former Pro Bowl cornerback who had been an NFL assistant for 12 years.
During his chat with Byrd — who was entering his second year as an Illini assistant under Lovie Smith — Hudson learned he might be pre-interviewing for a future job.
“(Byrd) wanted somebody that one day if he happened to not be here anymore or go somewhere else that that guy could take over the secondary,” Hudson told Illini Inquirer. “It ended up working like that.”
Just a year after Hudson arrived, Byrd resigned, citing an illness in his family. Rather than hire a replacement for Byrd, Smith gave Keynodo Hudson the keys to the entire secondary — and used the extra coaching vacancy to increase his number of defensive line assistants from one to two.
Hudson learned Smith’s defensive principles under Monte Kiffin — a legendary NFL defensive coordinator and Smith’s former boss with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — while serving on Lane Kiffin’s Florida Atlantic staff.
Smith’s move showed a high level of trust in Hudson. The longtime NFL head coach thinks Hudson will keep the back end of his defense revving.
“It means a lot to me, and I’m not going to let him down,” Hudson said. “It’s everything. That means I was able to earn some more trust, and also I learned a lot from Coach Byrd in general. It was a bad thing to see coach go, but it also was a blessing because I inherited the whole group.”
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Hudson isn’t new to his group. Even though he spent most of his time with the cornerbacks last season, the corners and safeties often had meetings together, and Hudson and Byrd collaborated often.
But during the last four months, Hudson has had to coach his players — double the amount he had last season — a bit differently.
The pandemic wiped out spring ball — potentially 15 practices of in-person, hands-on teaching — and Hudson hasn’t since met in-person with his players. For the loudest and most animated Illini coach on the practice field, that could feel like torture.
But Hudson (and all the other Illini assistants) have spent several hours each week on Zoom with their players, as allowed by the NCAA, to teach the game. While remote coaching has its obvious drawbacks, Hudson (who returned to his football facility office last week) said the extra teaching time has its benefits too.
“The challenge is just you’re not around the guys and you’re not physically able to interact with your staff,” Hudson said. “…But you get to do it so much, that the volume actually has gone up. To me, even though from a global perspective it hasn’t been a good thing, if you isolate it a little bit, mentally we’ve been able to grow and develop just because you’ve had a little bit more isolated work on developing the mental aspect of the game with the players. I think we have grown tremendously just by having this time off and being able to do that a lot more.”
This unprecedented offseason has been an emotional rollercoaster for the Illini coaches and players. The University of Illinois sent students home in mid-March, and classes have been taught remotely ever since. Some football players began returning in June and more arrived on campus last week, raising hope of a season starting on time. But the Big Ten’s move this week to cancel nonconference play was a blow to optimism for the fall.
But Hudson is a man focused on his job and controlling what he can control. Right now, that’s getting his position group — now both the cornerbacks and safeties — prepared for football … whenever football comes back.
“Mentally, the best way to prepare is just to study, just engulf yourself in studying the possible opponents,” Hudson said. “Nobody has a clue what the schedule possibly could be. So just lock in and focus right now on the Big Ten West and all about our Big Ten opponents. With that announcement coming out, that goes right into what I was already doing throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is just study and get to know these offensive coordinators and get a feel for the various personnel groupings and teams that we are going face throughout the course of the year. That’s usually what you do throughout the summer in general.
“Work has been awesome in general because we’ve never really stopped.”
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Hudson takes over potentially the most talented and deepest position group on the team. The group last season accounted for 12 of the Illini’s Big Ten-leading 28 takeaways (forced fumbles and interceptions) as well as three of the Illini’s FBS-leading six defensive touchdowns.
The secondary certainly is the most experienced on defense. Senior cornerback Nate Hobbs (30 career starts), an NFL prospect, and junior safety Sydney Brown (20 starts) each earned All-Big Ten honors last fall. Senior cornerback Tony Adams (19 career starts) has staring experience at both cornerback and safety and had two game-changing interceptions for the Illini last season in back-to-back wins over Wisconsin and Purdue.
Sophomore cornerback Devon Witherspoon, Hudson’s first recruiting win at Illinois, also was the surprise of last year’s freshman class, starting three games and finishing with 33 tackles and two pass breakups.
“Those four give us a great foundation to build off of and add other guys to be able to get a great unit, to be able to do a lot of various things,” Hudson said. “Because now we got some interesting parts that we can use to match up against people.”
He sure does. Illinois struggled during the first four or five weeks last season to find the right mix in the secondary due to injuries. But Hudson enters this season with an enviable depth chart to mix and match pieces — even more so thanks to three likely high-impact additions.
First, top-100 prospect Marquez Beason — the highest-rated Illini signee under Lovie Smith — returns after missing his freshman season recovering from a torn ACL suffered during the second week of training camp. But during the first week of training camp, Beason looked like the Illini’s best defensive back, intercepting almost a handful of passes.
“Physical specimen. He’s a dynamic athlete,” Hudsons said. “We’re not in a rush with him. We want him to be able to come back and be healthy. That’s why we have some depth with those other guys, but we highly anticipate that guy being able to come back and return to his form in which he was wowing everyone in camp. Because that guy can add a different dynamic to the secondary and as a return man. He’s a 10.3 100-meter man. He’s a world-class sprinter. That guy is different if we can get him to perform accordingly and get him back healthy.”
The Illini should have intense competition at safety. Hudson cannot yet discuss TreSean Smith — because he is not officially part of the roster yet — but the Louisville graduate transfer totaled 70 tackles and two interceptions during his first two seasons with the Cardinals. He seems a likely fit at free safety.
Junior Quan Martin has 13 career starts at cornerback but moved to safety midway through last season. He showed during his freshman season (three interceptions) that he has a nose for the ball. Meanwhile, Miami transfer Derrick Smith could provide a confident, experienced thumper in the secondary, which is needed following the graduation of Stanley Green who had 69 tackles and three forced fumbles last season.
Expect Hudson to mix and match those pieces based on his opponent.
“A lot of various guys will be battling for those jobs,” Hudson said. “We have Quan Martin, who’s played corner and started here for us and moved to safety for us midway through the course of the season. He adds a different element to the game. He’s got a dynamic skill set. He’s a ballhawk, and I can’t wait to work with him back there at that position. Also, we have Derrick Smith, the Miami transfer who’s a big specimen. He’s a monster. He’s an enforcer. He’s a guy who’s played college football. He’s got a lot of reps under his belt. He brings some experience at being able to play in multiple styles of defense. He should be able to give us a different element back there as far as an enforcer type.”
From Smith, Hudson was given the keys to the vehicle that helped Illinois last fall drive to a better destination. There could be pressure on Hudson not to crash the car, but he embraces that — because he’s always wanted to sit behind the wheel.
“It’s heavy,” Hudson said, "but I love it. I’ve been waiting my whole life for an opportunity like this and that’s just to get to coach the whole unit. Because those guys get to play together and be one. I think we got some great parts back there that can do something extremely special. Our book is just getting an opportunity to be written right now.”
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July 12, 2020 at 06:00PM
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Keynodo Hudson earns the keys to Lovie's secondary: 'It's heavy' - 247Sports
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