Bret Bielema 'As Spirited As I've Ever Been' at Halftime of Illinois' Win vs. WMU

The wheels again took some time to creak into motion, but No. 9 Illinois was rolling along by the end of its 38-0 win over Western Michigan at Champaign's Memorial Stadium on Saturday. Quarterback Luke Altmyer, after again facing early pressure, yet again landed on his feet (196 passing yards, three total touchdowns and no interceptions). Running back Kaden Feagin, in the absence of injured Aidan Laughery, was the engine that drove the offense. Are the Illini ready for Indiana? It's pretty much now or never.

In the meantime, we've gathered head coach Bret Bielema's thoughts from his postgame press conference (full video just below) and shared the best of them with you here:

On Western Michigan and another slow start

"Excited to get out of there with the 'W.' Obviously didn't go according to plan the first half. I give a lot of credit to Western Michigan. ... A really good football team that did a lot of good things. At halftime, we came in and kind of had some conversations about where we needed to go. And I thought our guys responded very, very well defensively at the end of the half there – to make that stop was huge.

"And then offensively, I think we scored the next three times we had the ball. So what we've got to do is find out how to get them into rhythm in that first half. I grabbed Luke at the end of the game there and just said, 'Hey, whatever we got to do, however we need to do it – not just the players, but the coaches – let's figure out what we need to do to be better in the first half.

"I think we've gotta learn from our opportunities. I'm gonna take a glass-half-full rather than a glass-half-empty [approach]. The good news was we played really well in the second half. What was the stat? We're [outscoring opponents] 80-9 in the second half? Obviously, we've got to improve in the first half, but really excited about our growth at the halftime, and ... that moment and how we responded to it."

On Luke Altmyer getting comfortable

"It's a little bit of 'take what the defense gives you,' but on the same account, Luke's a really intelligent player. He's an accurate ball placer. I think he can do some things at the line of scrimmage once he's in a rhythm. Luke is a rhythm guy, though, so I think that the key is to find that rhythm and stay with it. That could be just as important as the play call itself, in my opinion.

Another stat: Luke Altmyer is completing 71.8% of his passes 🎯 pic.twitter.com/yyHpdwdLpD
— Big Ten Football (@B1Gfootball) September 14, 2025

On his choice words at halftime and Indiana looming

"Obviously I can't repeat what I said at halftime. That was probably as spirited as I've ever been as a head coach since I've been here at Illinois, just because I think I know what this team is potentially capable of doing. I slapped the board and my hand is still numb – I'm probably gonna have to get it checked out. It's just, just ... it's infuriating when we're not at the ability of putting ourselves in a position to win football games. And that's the part we can't have – this Indiana team is a really good football team, right? And we can't give away two quarters of football and expect to be in the contest at the end.

"There were a lot of frustrated guys at halftime that knew they could do better, and they obviously took ownership of that. I mean, I can't ask for a better response out of my coaches or players and our fans. I've been a lot of places where, you know, even the fans will begin to go sideways, right? And it was just a lot of lot of energy in that stadium in that second half when things began to flip the other way. And I think that's what propelled us to where we are."

On the source of the first-half mistakes

"We were self-destructive. I mean, I'm not taking anything away – Western Michigan's a really good football team. But we have a false start. We have a guy missing a corner brush pressure. We have a guy run up the middle. Like, there's a lot of things – there wasn't one thing, you know? Fundamentals win games, I get it. But it just seemed like we were one off on several different occasions, which kept putting us behind. We were playing in second-and-longs, third-and-longs, which is never good for us."

On Kaden Feagin's strong performance

"Once I knew Aidan wasn't going, we kind of knew, offensively, [Feagin] was going to carry the workload. And there's a little moment in pregame where we go to team, and I always, in my career, have always grabbed a running back when he runs that play. And I just grabbed him, I said, 'Today's your day. I think today will be a day we look back on, and you feel that you could put the team on your back.' And it's kind of ironic how it happened in that third and fourth quarter.

In my opinion, trying to tackle Kaden Feagin does not look like a fun responsibility.

It's a 100 yard rushing day for the Atwood native.@FeaginKaden @ALAHKnights @wardth09 pic.twitter.com/8twYjUj9vZ
— Glenn Kinley (@glenn_kinley) September 14, 2025

"Kaden, I thought, this week began to show some things that you'd seen him kind of get close to. There was a play last week where he could have just pulled his leg through, and then today, there are several of those. ... Listen, you've got a business decision when you want to make a tackle on him, right? Like, you don't know if you're gonna go high or low or jump on his back or fall down, but he's a really big, powerful back with a lot of great attitude and really good upside."