Sam Pittman 1-on-1: Razorbacks avoided making the same mistake twice this spring, look for rebound season in 2023
Coming off a 9-4 season and a Top 10 finish in 2021, few programs in the country entered last fall with more burgeoning optimism than Sam Pittman’s Arkansas Razorbacks.
Two years removed from snapping a 20-game losing streak in SEC play, the Hogs were a veteran team led by quarterback KJ Jefferson. They were stacked at tailback and returned both coordinators for the third straight season. They had a daunting schedule — an opener against Cincinnati, a midseason trip to BYU and their regular SEC West slate — but there was belief around the program that Razorbacks would continue to elbow their way back up the SEC standings.
Instead, Sam Pittman and the Hogs got a bit too fat and happy, ultimately banking on their priors and biting off a bit more than they could chew.
Really, anything that could go wrong mostly did for Arkansas in 2022. The Razorbacks battled constant injuries to their secondary and defensive line. Staff chemistry soured. The team’s culture, a bedrock in the first two years of Pittman’s program, wasn’t the same. They narrowly missed a field to beat Texas A&M, and scored all of 10 points in a three-point loss to LSU.
The Hogs had some talent, but they were bad in close games — a result of playing poor situational football, per Pittman — finishing the season 7-6, with four losses by a combined nine points.
In reflecting on last season’s setback, Sam Pittman rattled off a litany of mistakes he and his former staff made, but he circled on one particular error in judgement — it’s hard to be a nasty, blue-collar football team if you don’t prepare like one.
“I got too conservative with physical football, and it’s hard to play with a chip on your shoulder if you’re not practicing with the ‘chip,” Pittman told On3.
The Hogs got a bit soft last season, and the results proved disastrous. They got cooked defensively, ranking 13th in the SEC in yards per play allowed (6.46) and scoring (30.6). Their once-punishing OL was bad in short-yardage situations and they allowed far too many sacks (31, third-most in the league) for a unit that didn’t throw the ball all that often.
Sam Pittman enjoys the simple pleasure in life: A cold beer by the lake. And football, at its core, is a simple sport. It’s about blocking and tackling.
“It’s hard to get a great evaluation on your team, your newcomers, your portal guys, all those things, if you don’t let them play the game at full speed,” Pittman told On3.
“I’m the one who decided not to (tackle), and it was (the wrong) decision. It was the first spring, first fall that we didn’t. Obviously, we had a veteran team and we were concerned that we didn’t have quite the depth yet that we wanted. We were concerned about injuries like everybody is. The year before when we’d won nine games, we ran our spring like like what we wanted to do. … So I just went back to what got us from 4-20 to 9-4.”
“Anytime there’s change, it can be good for your program or it can be negative.”
Sam Pittman
Why Sam Pittman is confident in Arkansas’ new-look staff
In an offseason chalked with change, Sam Pittman went back to what jumpstarted the program’s turnaround in the first place: Relationships, resolve and recruiting.
Pittman fired his strength and conditioning coordinator, and while close to 30 players entered the transfer portal, some bad apples were weeded off the roster.
The Razorbacks spent the spring breaking in five new on-field assistant coaches, including two new coordinators in OC Dan Enos and DC Travis Williams. Nine transfers participated in spring practice, with another five transfer newcomers slated to join the program at the end of the month, headlined by top transfer tight end Var’Keyes Gumms and Cincy linebacker Jaheim Thomas.
Arkansas held a spring game with no scoreboard, just putting the football down and banging bodies. For some teams, that would’ve been a waste of practice No. 15, but for Pittman & Co., it was a culmination of a spring spent on getting back to what worked previously: Practicing with a purpose. Establishing those calluses of toughness and physicality.
“I’ve been happy with the development of the team (this spring),” Pittman said.
Although staff continuity had been a hallmark of Pittman’s first three seasons, the infusion of some fresh faces breathed life back into the program this spring. Pittman believes that “to a man, we’ve gotten better.”
“First of all, Coach (Offensive coordinator Kendal) Briles and (defensive coordinator) Coach (Barry) Odom were both very loyal to me and did an outstanding job. They worked extremely hard, and certainly has nothing negative to do with them, but you can be happy with your new guys,” he said.
“And that’s where we are.”
“The new staff has really done a good job. The kid’s are buying into what they’re doing. So see the program from the end of our last regular season game to now where it is, I’m really really happy with everything in the building.”
Pittman brought in Williams, a former SEC player and coach at Auburn, over from UCF, and the 40-year-old assistant has quickly delivered on his reputation as an outstanding recruiter and people person. With boundless energy and an engaging personality, Williams has quickly connected with a defense Pittman is hopeful will be much-improved in 2023.
“Anytime there’s change, it can be good for your program or it can be negative. Travis has brought in a new energy and different energy and certainly does a great job on the recruiting trail with relationships and things of that nature,” Pittman said.
Arkansas’ head coach named the defensive line and secondary — two units that really struggled in 2022 — as the groups that have made the biggest improvement this offseason.
“Part of it is our players that we had are getting stronger and bigger and better. And part of that is we’ve gone in the portal and hit on some guys as well.”
The Hogs brought in a couple of notable DL transfers in Pitt’s John Morgan and Missouri’s Trajan Jeffcoat, and with as many as 10 upperclassmen set to be in the rotation, the group finally has the horsepower to run a true four-down line look after playing a 3-2-6 defense that last three seasons.
“Most of the time you play defense or offense on your personnel. And I didn’t believe that we had personnel to necessarily be consistent in a four-down line last year. That’s changed because I feel like we’ve got the people to run the defense I wanted to,” he said.
Arkansas actually led the SEC in sacks in 2022, but the Hogs were forced to be overly aggressive because they struggled to get stops on a consistent basis — mainly due to a lack of depth up front and a porous secondary.
They had the worst pass defense in the conference, allowed a league-high 90 plays over 20 yards (18 more than Vanderbilt, which ranked 13th) and were second-to-last in 3rd down defense.
In addition the DL transfers, Arkansas added All-AAC linebacker Antonio Grier from USF, as well as multiple likely starters at DB in former 5-star corner Jaheim Singletary from Georgia, a pair of transfers from Baylor and Western Kentucky safety Arthur Brathwaite.
“We had a lot of sacks, but we (allowed) a lot of big plays, you know, so we’ve got to correct that. I think we’re headed in that direction,” Pittman said.
“We have to have an outstanding summer. The NCAA has passed rules now where, I think, you can get a young man that gets here in late May ready to play in the fall of that same season. So it’s going to be big for us to find out exactly in the secondary where our best players go. And I think we can do that.”
How QB KJ Jefferson and new OC Dan Enos connected well this spring
Offensively, the Hogs return one of the nation’s most experienced QBs in KJ Jefferson, as well as one of the country’s top tailbacks in Raheim Rocket Sanders (1,443 yards and 10 touchdowns in 2022). Before Briles had even been announced as TCU’s new OC, Pittman had already tabbed former Arkansas play-caller Dan Enos to return to Fayetteville to lead the Hogs’ offense. The two had previously worked together at Arkansas in 2015.
“I was ahead of the game a little bit just because we thought we were gonna lose Kendall earlier,” Pittman said, chucking.
“I thought Dan was one of the best play-callers in football when I worked with him. I knew how meticulous he was and how organized. We needed situational football to get better, and I knew that he would have a wonderful plan with that.”
Enos is responsible for helping develop Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa as the QBs coach at Alabama, and he set records with Maryland’s offense in 2022. Like Williams, Enos has brought a nice sea-change to a unit that had grown a bit too predictable. The Hogs were a fantastic rushing team, but they weren’t great in obvious passing situations or converting touchdowns in the red zone. They’re transitioning to a more pro-style scheme this fall, which should lessen the running burden on Jefferson’s shoulders as the plan is to open up the offense a bit more from a passing perspective.
“I can say this because I’ve spoken with KJ during (spring) exit interviews, those two have a really good relationship. I think KJ believes Dan can make him continue to improve, which he has every year. He believes that going into a pro-style type offense will help him at the next level,” Pittman said.
“It’s proven in his past, Dan can help wonderful players, wonderful athletes become better and help them get ready for the NFL and win games in college.”
With some portal additions coupled with natural development with a few younger players, Pittman thinks the wide receiver room is better than a year ago. Arkansas’s offensive line is in decent shape from a depth standpoint, too. Add it all up, and the fourth-year head coach is confident his Hogs will look a lot more like the team that had the SEC buzzing just two years ago.
“Overall, I’m happy,” Sam Pittman said.
“Obviously, you worry about punter, kicker, snapper if you don’t have them. Well, we do. We’re good at those positions as well, so we’re optimistic about what the season could bring. … The culture in the building is really, really good right now. We just need to continue to grow that as a team. We’ve got really good strength coaches that are all about that as well. So we’ll roll the ball out there (this fall) and see what happens.”