Skip to main content
Arkansas

Three looming questions about Arkansas football in 2025: Wide Receivers

by: Daniel Fair07/06/25hawgbeat
Kam Shanks
Credit: Arkansas Athletics

The offseason is in full swing, and there’s a little less than a month before the Arkansas Razorbacks will start fall camp ahead of the 2025 season opener against Alabama A&M on Aug. 30.

HawgBeat is continuing our series asking three looming questions about each position group ahead of next season. Up next in the series is the wide receiver room.

Click here if you want to see the three looming questions about Arkansas’ quarterback situation.

There are a ton of new faces in this year’s wide receiver room. The Hogs lost three pass-catchers to the NFL in Andrew Armstrong, Isaac TeSlaa and Tyrone Broden, and Isaiah Sategna and Dazmin James opted to enter the transfer portal after last season ended.

To add to that attrition, Jordan Anthony opted to move on from football to focus on track and field.

With all of the new faces, here are three looming questions about Arkansas’ wide receiver situation next season…

Who steps up on the outside?

Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman went heavy on wide receiver in the transfer portal to fill up the room and grabbed a total of seven guys after last season ended.

Five of those seven were on campus for spring practice, as Jean and Brown committed in the second transfer portal window. Sharpe, Blake and Shanks all showed flashes, but one issue the Hogs have is size.

Both Sharpe and Shanks have a lot of speed and are able to get open, but Sharpe is 5-foot-9, 165 pounds and Shanks is 5-foot-8, 170 pounds. Those two will work well in the slot, but who works the outside?

A pretty good educated guess would be Cisse (6-foot-0, 198 pounds) and Blake (6-foot-2, 182 pounds). They’re not the tallest guys on the team, but they showed good hands and were able to come down with balls during spring practice.

It’s also entirely possible one of Arkansas’ outside threats wasn’t even on campus in the spring. While it’s tough for true freshmen to see the field early, the Hogs have another Warren wide receiver in Antonio Jordan who got onto campus over the summer.

Jordan stands 6-foot-6 and weighs 230 pounds, and drew incredible amounts of praise from those who have seen him play. He’ll have ground to make up when fall camp starts, but we’ve seen plenty of legendary Razorbacks come out of Warren in the past.

Who will emerge as ‘The Guy’?

Last year, it was Andrew Armstrong. He was a First Team All-SEC Selection according to the AP and Phil Steele and was Second Team All-SEC by the league’s coaches.

But he’s gone now with the Miami Dolphins on an undrafted free agent deal. So who steps up?

There’s 17 options, but is it crazy to say Monte Harrison might be that guy? The former MLB outfielder played sparingly last season, but made some eyebrow-raising catches during spring ball and at 6-foot-3, 230 pounds has the size to compete.

“Made some plays, made some one-handed catches, made some one-on-one contested balls, 50/50, balls,” Pittman said on April 15. “Just his consistency, if he becomes more consistent with urgency and route running and all that, I think he could move up even higher than that, which I think he will.”

Pittman also said during spring practice on April 3 that Blake and Cisse had both performed well.

How will the new faces gel with Taylen Green?

We touched on this in our quarterback portion of this series, but with so many new guys, the chemistry between them and quarterback Taylen Green will be important.

On top of a new scheme to learn, they’ll need to adjust to a new quarterback as well. Most of them had the opportunity to do that over the spring and it’s likely they’re throwing and catching over the summer as well, but it’s a whole different game when the bullets are flying live.

You may also like