HARBINGER HOGS? Pittman’s crew poised to take next step with expectations low

By Mark Carter

That Arkansas was picked to finish fifth in the SEC West this season by media members who cover the conference should be viewed more as portent of good than as sign of disrespect.

Because as every dutiful Arkansas fan knows, the Hogs historically prefer defying expectations to meeting them. But while everyone from Coral Gables to Pullman acknowledges that Sam Pittman succeeded in pulling the Razorback program out of the ditch from whence he found it in December 2019, most outside The Natural State expect the Hogs to remain mired in the SEC middle again in 2023. Despite the return of the SEC’s top QBrunning back duo.

Granted, the SEC middle would equate to conference titles elsewhere. But we cash the rather large check from Birmingham each year, so griping about the murderer’s row of the SEC West is futile.

And the fact remains — Arkansas would be picked to finish higher than fifth in any other division in college football. Athlon has the Hogs at preseason No. 29, after all. The offense is poised to continue its juggernaut run, and if the defense can show any signs of improvement, the Hogs should be positioned to win the close games that haunted them in 2022, and dare I say it, flirt again with nine, maybe even 10 wins…

Though Pittman has led the Hogs to consecutive bowl wins for the first time since Bobby Petrino did so in 2011 and 2012 — three if you count what should be a forfeit win over TCU in the 2020 Texas Bowl, and I do — the Hogs limped to a 3-5 SEC finish in 2022 with four losses by a total of nine points and star QB K.J. Jefferson less than 100 percent or out for more than a third of the season.

This season, Pittman’s fourth on The Hill, will determine whether the program remains mired in the middle or if it’s ready to take the next step.

The wild three-overtime win over Kansas in the Liberty Bowl book-ended a roller coaster season that began with a top 20 win in the season opener over Cincinnati, it of the 2021-22 college football playoff and now of the Power 5. The Hogs reached No. 8 in the September polls for the second straight season only to succumb to injuries, the annual schedule grind and several rounds of just plain hard luck. (I mean, who could’ve forecasted the craziness that turned a blooming rout into an off-thetop-of-the-upright loss in Arlington?)

Still, Pittman makes no excuses and admits the team didn’t meet expectations. And at SEC Media Days this summer, he promised 2022 would be the last time one of his Arkansas teams failed to do so. Typical coachspeak perhaps, but Pittman is one of the few in college ball not versed in it. More likely, his insistence is the result of learning on the job. Outside of high school or juco ball, Arkansas represents his first head coaching gig, after all, and Pittman wants it to be his first and only. And though the “col’ beer,” country boy persona is genuine, it takes the spotlight off the shrewd, career tactician, a role Pittman has needed to play to last as long as he has in the business. And once the regular season ended with another head-scratching, heartbreaking loss, the tactician emerged. In 2023, the staff will look a lot different than it did last year. ***

Considering the Hogs’ remarkable 2022 run of bad luck, the fact that Pittman’s 48 managed a win with backs against the wall in the bowl game could be telling for expectations in �23. Forty-eight, of course, is the number of scholarship players that dressed for the bowl game after portal transfers and opt-outs last December. Indeed, the would-be Arkansas rout of Kansas turned into a nail-biter at the Liberty Bowl, thanks to a Pac 12 crew that apparently was watching another game. Its performance even drew sarcasm at SEC Media Days from Commissioner Greg Sankey, he of the “at Alabama/Georgia/Florida/Chiefs/�85 Bears/Lombardy Packers” scheduling philosophy where Arkansas is concerned.

Head Hog Sam Pittman admitted to SEC media members that the 2022 season didn’t live up to his expectations.

Sanders was named to the Maxwell Award watch list; last year, he ran for more than 1,400 yards and 10 scores.

Many teams would’ve folded given the circumstances of that nightmare fourth quarter in Memphis. That this bunch didn’t is encouraging. It feels like Pittman has adjusted. (I won’t say players were culled, although that certainly could apply to a few prima donna players and coaches who left or were asked to do so, even some fan favorites, and is simply part of the game.) Pittman knows much is riding on this season. For Arkansas, and for him. Hog fans were more than willing to give him time, but they need to see progress.

Pittman successfully pulled Arkansas out of the ditch, but will it be stuck in the slow lane, where national perception says it belongs? The man who prefers big O-linemen and jukeboxes loud believes Arkansas can compete at the highest level in football, just as it does in every other sport. Football, of course, is a different animal. But Pittman has played the portal game seem- ingly as well as anyone, and depending on your source, the Arkansas NIL game is good or at least adequate. And if TCU can do it… Of course, TCU doesn’t have to navigate anything close to resembling the SEC mine field.

(Raise your hands, Hog fans, if you’ve ever been frustrated to the point of frothing at the mouth by the relative ease with which teams like Cincinnati and TCU can make the college football playoffs. I’m sure fans of teams like Mississippi State, South Carolina and Kentucky feel the same way. Well, the ones in the Bluegrass State for whom football matters. But again, we get back to that big SEC check with all the zeros…)

The chaos theory itself would seem to suggest that the Hogs won’t get hit by the injury bug as hard this year. But if any hard- luck program can defy science, it’s ours. And the internal drama that quietly seethed beneath the surface of last year’s squad won’t make a repeat appearance this fall. Pittman made sure of that.

But from a national perspective, the casual college football followers (fans AND writers) see that Arkansas lost both its coordinators, a higher-than-average number of players to the portal and continue to focus on KJ’s bad moments when he was playing hurt over his literal college-Cam Newton impersonations.

The staff indeed has a new look. Pittman has never been shy about asking good position coaches to look for another opportunity of they weren’t pulling their weight, and his new additions have nothing but at their previous stops. The Hogs’ 2024 class was on pace to be among the highest ever at Arkansas.

Let’s start on defense. Barry Odom, the former Missouri head coach and Pittman confidante, was masterful for most of three years on The Hill. He took a bare cupboard and turned it into enough of a functioning component to help the Hogs earn three straight bowl invites.

Odom’s cover-8, bend-but-don’t-break system, employed out of necessity, worked to perfection early in 2020 when the Hogs beat Mike Leach’s Bulldogs in Starkville to end an SEC losing streak. That year, against one of the toughest college schedules ever conceived, Odom was a miracle worker. Think Hudson Clark against Ole Miss. Out-talented, but not out-fought. But the question became, can the depth-challenged D hold up late? Too often, it couldn’t, and the record book reveals a historically bad pass defense in 2022.

You have to think Odom and Pittman agreed that the next offer needed to be the one, and UNLV obliged. Under new DC Travis Williams, the former Auburn linebacker who most recently led the UCF defense, the Hogs will play fast and aggressive in a new-look 4-2-5 scheme. Rush three and drop eight? Not anymore. And if Arkansas continues to give up big plays, well, it did that last year anyway dropping everyone. At least in �23, expect the D to be disruptive. And that’s just what Pittman was looking for.

Plus, the portal delivered some defensive prizes — DBs Alfahiym Walcott from Baylor and Jaheim Singletary from Georgia, Pitt DE John Morgan III, Missouri DL Trajan Jeffcoat, South Florida LB Antonio Grier among them — that gives Williams a fighting chance to field a defense that can contribute.

Of course, looking good on paper is one thing. But the Hogs have some experienced talent coming back. Will it be enough in �23? Veterans like CB Dwight McGlothern, DL Cam Ball and Taurean Carter, LB Chris Paul and DE Landon Jackson, all standouts last year, think it will be.

On the other side, much has been made of the losses of OC Kendal Briles to TCU and Dowell Loggains, the former Hog player and NFL coordinator who many had as the OC-in-waiting once Briles left, to South Carolina.

Briles genuinely did like it here, and genuinely did turn down Miami, but he also liked the attention. And Pittman tired of the job flirting. Loggains wanted to be OC in Fayetteville (and ultimately head coach, I think) and waited out Briles as long as he could. Once it became apparent Briles would be around for at least another year, or so it appeared, Loggains took the first Power 5 coordinator offer. He wants to be a college head coach, and Pittman’s path notwithstanding, that’s how you do it.

Hog fans can debate Loggains’ credentials, but they can’t deny his love of the Hogs. When college assistants leave for a new job, they leave their old school gear behind, unless maybe they want to save a hat or shirt from each of their previous stops.

I can easily see Barry Odom’s sweat-stained, red Arkansas script Nike hat sitting in his closet at home in Vegas. When Pittman took the OL coach job at Georgia after he and Bielema could no longer work together, he gave most of his UA coaching swag to Goodwill. Loggains, on the other hand, took his entire UAissued Razorback wardrobe with him to Columbia, S.C.

Either he’s a warrior on eBay or he’s a Hog fan.

I liked the Briles offense. When it’s humming, it’s a thing of beauty. But the propensity to get cute at the wrong time and the red zone inefficiency cost us games.

Enter Dan Enos, who returns to Fayetteville from Maryland, where he coordinated the offense and coached Taulia Tagovailoa.

Pittman told SEC media members that Enos is the best offensive coach he ever worked with, and he did so during the program’s mid-2010s relevancy tease under Bret Bielema. Pittman coached the OL and Enos the QBs as OC. Remember all those yards and records accumulated under the Allen brothers at quarterback? Enos.

The 2015 and 2016 Razorback offenses each rank among the top 10 in school history for total yards and yards per game. The 2015 offense (with Pittman coaching the OL) averaged 36 points a game and set the school record for touchdowns with 62.

The offense will look a bit more traditional under Enos — Hello, Mr. Tight End — but it shouldn’t lack for explosiveness. Jefferson is a clear all-star candidate behind center, the best returning QB in the SEC, and Rocket Sanders leads one of the better RB rooms in the SEC, if not the country. Both were named to the preseason Maxwell Award watch lists as well as various all-SEC and even All-America lists. Jefferson should flirt with the record book this season following an injury-plagued �22 campaign in which he threw for more than 2,600 yards and 24 touchdowns, with just five picks (most of which weren’t his fault), while completing 68 percent of his passes. (For those not familiar, that’s very good.) He also ran for 640 yards and 10 TDs.

A perhaps-underutilized Sanders led the SEC in rushing for most of the year, averaged more than 100 rushing yards per game and finished with more than 1,400 yards and 10 rushing scores.

Arkansas beat a cast of bluebloods for the signatures of highly coveted transfer receivers Tyrone Broden (all 6’7” of him), Andrew Armstrong and Isaac TeSlaa (emphasis on second syllable) as well as North Texas TE Var’keyes Gumms, a second-team freshman All-American in �22. The Hogs needed the portal here, losing 67 percent of its receiver production from �22.

And the Hogs seem to have a clear heir apparent behind KJ in promising Morrilton native and North Carolina transfer Jacolby Criswell.

Up front, the Hogs replace three starters, but Pittman thinks he has quality depth here. He’ll still tell anyone that he’s just an ol’ line coach at heart. Veteran Beaux Limmer moves over to center from right guard and Brady Latham is back at left guard in his fourth year in the program. And in a template for how the big boys do it, the Hogs have multi-year players in the wings waiting their turns to step in and contribute — Ty’Kieast Crawford, E’Marion Harris, Patrick Kutas … come on down. A portal prize doesn’t hurt, of course, and the Hogs appear to have gotten one in Florida transfer guard Joshua Braun, the likely starter at right guard.

Assuming the O-line holds up — and folks in and around the program rave about new strength and conditioning coach Ben Sowders and his staff — the Hogs should score points.

The reliable Cam Little (50-for-50 PATS, 13-for-16 FGs) is back, as is Aussie punter Max Fletcher, who started part-time last year and averaged just 38 yards a kick but reportedly booms ‘em in practice. We’ll see if he can consistently do so on Saturdays now with a year of — say it with me, real — football under his belt.

The Hogs open at home for the season’s first three weeks. I say, “at home.” Western Carolina in Little Rock is the opener on Labor Day weekend. (And why the program still plays games at War Memorial is a soapbox for another corner.)

Kent State and BYU then await before a brutal, only-the-SECcould-dream-this-up-for-us stretch of: at LSU, A&M in Dallas, at Ole Miss and at �Bama. Come out of that gauntlet 2-2, and who knows. Then again, the Hogs have a history of losing the return game in Fayetteville in past non-conference home-and-homes. Under Beliema, the Hogs beat TCU and Texas Tech on the road only to lose both return games in Razorback Stadium. And BYU has been a Power 5 school in everything but name for decades. And this little tidbit from a Deseret News game-by-game analysis of the Cougars’ �23 schedule:

“If there is hope for the Cougars, it is that history suggests they tend to play better in return games against Power Five schools. They bounced back after routs against Wisconsin, Baylor and Utah after drubbings in the previous years.”

Don’t count BYU as an automatic. Then again, no one is counting Arkansas as one, either.

The offense shouldn’t skip a beat and almost assuredly will improve on its short-yardage and red-zone efficiency. Because it has to. The OL will be fine, because it’s Pittman. But can a newlook defense make the difference in three, four, five close games? One thing’s for sure — as much as I appreciated Barry Odom’s ability to make lemonade, it’ll be nice seeing a defense play a little offense. And KJ etch his name in the record books. (He lifts weights, I’ve heard.)

Grab the jug of Kool-Aid, cause Sept. 2 awaits just around the corner and the Hogs have some expectations to exceed.