CHAMPAIGN — Luke Altmyer knows the feeling of not knowing if you’re truly good enough to take that next step as a player. He experienced it after losing a quarterback competition to eventual first-round pick Jaxson Dart at Ole Miss in 2022. He felt it when he threw seven interceptions in his first season as a starter at Illinois and eventually didn’t start the final few games of the season as backup John Paddock went on an unprecedented heater.
“I lived it. That was my story for three or four years; being afraid to fail and not knowing if you belonged, especially playing behind so many greats and that’s who you compare yourself to,” Altmyer told Illini Inquirer last month at Big Ten Media Days. “It’s hard.”
So Altmyer is trying to do his part in lifting up an Illinois wide receiver group that has four huge shoes to fill with Pat Bryant and Zakhari Franklin — the Illini’s leading receivers in last season’s 10-win campaign — now earning NFL paychecks.
Altmyer got encouragement and confidence jolts from his experienced receivers during his first two years at Illinois, including Bryant, Franklin, Isaiah Williams and Casey Washington. Now, the established top-tier Big Ten quarterback is attempting to do the same for his less proven targets.
“A lot of encouragement. I’ll tell you that because as an early-on player, you’re fighting a lot of confidence issues, a lot of just football IQ hurdles and obstacles,” Altmyer told Illini Inquirer on Thursday. “Just encouraging them through the battles of stepping into a starting position like they want to have and learning to deal with the mindset of that, the pressures, the expectations, the weight that it can bear. But helping ’em them understanding that they belong. They wouldn’t be in that position if they didn’t belong, if they weren’t talented.”