Thirty-one new faces will join the NIU football come fall 2012.

Huskies coach Dave Doeren received 23 national letters of intent wednesday, along with eight walk-ons. Out of the 31 recruits, 16 of them will be from Illinois.

“I think that’s a drastic change from a year ago,” Doeren said about the 16 commits. “It’s something that we took a lot of pride in. We wanted to put a fence around as many players as we could and make this an Illinois-laden team.”

Along with the recruits from Illinois, NIU will bring in four recruits from Wisconsin, three from Florida, two from Michigan and one each from Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Minnesota, Alabama and North Dakota.

The Huskies also brought in a lot of help to go in the trenches on both sides of the ball. NIU brought in seven offensive linemen and six defensive linemen, the two leading position classes for 2012.

“When I first got here, we had a great senior class from an offensive line standpoint,” Doeren said. “There wasn’t a whole lot behind them. We like to have 16 offensive linemen with a scholarship. We play nine or ten defensive linemen per game within our defensive packages, so we wanted to have more depth, and we accomplished both of those things this year.”

This year’s recruiting class is headlined by Scott Taylor, an offensive lineman from Marian Central Catholic High School. With the Huskies looking to rebuild the offensive front, Taylor could be the perfect building block for the project.

“He has a really tough demeanor,” Doeren said. “Blue collar guy, good leader, loves football. Proud Huskie for sure.”

The Huskies are hoping to keep the tradition of great running backs in the program with the signing of Perez Ford.

Ford measures in at 6’2” and 225 pounds. He was ranked as the 18th-best recruit in the state of Illinois by ESPN.

“It’s nice to get another big back here,” Doeren said. “Looking forward to what he can do. I know he’s very excited to be coming here.”

Doeren also said that Ford has a great ability to catch the ball out of the backfield as well as picking up blocks. Doeren and the rest of the coaching staff feel comfortable with what they have heading into 2012.

“I can’t tell you how many conversations we have as a staff day in and day out about finding guys that fit NIU,” Doeren said. “Not just athletically, but socially and academically. Guys that fit my personality as a head coach, guys that are going to understand what it’s all about to do things the hard way and do things the right way, and that’s what this class was.”