Tye & Tommy on what Sam Pittman had to say, Chris Crutchfield joins the program, plus Trivia Thursday!
Crutchfield on taking job at East Central to spend more time coaching his kids
Former Arkansas assistant coach Chris Crutchfield didn’t plan on having opportunity to get head coaching job and had to clear it with his kids that are already there first.
He talked about it Thursday morning with Tye Richardson and Tommy Craft (The Morning Rush) on ESPN Arkansas.
Hammonds’ speed, doing ‘what he needed to’ gets him back on scholarship
When T.J. Hammonds re-joined Arkansas last year after sitting out a semester he did it without a scholarship but Sam Pittman announced Wednesday that changed Tuesday.
“He signed it yesterday,” Pittman said. “We’re happy to be able to do that. He earned the right to get his scholarship back.”
Hammonds does add some speed and Pittman may have given a little bit of a clue what’s he’s trying to address immediately in recruiting for the Razorbacks
“You can beat people two ways,” Pittman said. “You can beat them with speed or you can beat them bigness. You can beat them with large humans. Right now it’s a little faster for us to get fast guys than it is get a whole team of big guys.”
Hammonds delivers that. After a 64-yard scoring run against Colorado State in 2018, the rest of the way has been up and down and out. It appeared there was some sort of disconnect with the previous coaching staff, but that’s pure speculation.
Last season he rushed for 65 yards on eight carries and caught four passes for 10 yards after sitting out the first four games after re-joining the team. He redshirted in 2018 after playing the first four games.
“He’s fast,” Pittman said Wednesday. “He’s got a lot of speed.”
Which is something Pittman obviously wants more of and adding Hammonds back is a way to start on that immediately.
Razorbacks’ Pittman ‘excited’ to have players returning to campus for workouts
Players return officially to campus Monday for what Arkansas coach Sam Pittman repeated several times Wednesday afternoon were “voluntary” workouts but it’s a big step towards getting back to some real coaching.
After talking with Majors on Sunday night, his death shocked Sherrill
When the news broke Wednesday morning about the death of Hall of Fame coach Johnny Majors maybe no one was more surprised than one of his many protogés, Jackie Sherrill.
“I was kinda shocked,” Sherrill said from his home in central Texas on Wednesday afternoon. “I talked with him Sunday night and we had talked about how good he was feeling.”
Their relationship was a deep one that started in Fayetteville when Majors was an assistant for Frank Broyles from 1964-67, a four-year run were Arkansas was 34-8-1 with a national title in 1964 and a 30-3 stretch before that last season.
Sherrill had come in from Alabama as a graduate assistant after spending a year working for Paul “Bear” Bryant and playing for the Crimson Tide.
Both liked winning. That was a big part of a relationship that launched Sherrill’s career. When Majors departed for Iowa State after that 1967 season he took Sherrill along as a defensive assistant.
“My wife said to me after we got the phone call this morning that, ‘Coach Majors was probably the biggest father figure in your life,'” Sherrill said. “She’s probably right.”
It started when Sherrill was a star high school player in Biloxi, Mississippi, and Majors was an assistant coach at Mississippi State.
“Rabbit Brown was the main guy recruiting me,” Sherrill said (and you just don’t have enough good names like that in coaching anymore). “Coach Majors came down and watched me play a few times but I decided to go to Alabama.”
Majors specialized in turning teams around. He did it everywhere he went and was a key figure on the staff of turning things around with the Razorbacks from 1963 to winning it all the next season.
“He was able to make players do things they really didn’t want to do,” Sherrill said. “Everybody just liked him, he was a true role model and he got players to accomplish things they didn’t know they could do.”
Majors’ first head coaching job was at Iowa State in the old Big 8 and they were terrible. He didn’t do immediate improvements but he got the Hawkeyes to their first (ever) two bowl games in 1971 and 1972.
“The only games that 1971 Iowa State team lost were to Nebraska, Oklahoma and Colorado,” Sherrill said. “Those were the teams that finished 1-2-3 in the country.”
Then he went to Pittsburgh, taking Sherrill with him as defensive coordinator.
In four years they took the Panthers from 1-10 to an undefeated national championship season before Majors answered the call at his alma mater, Tennessee, and rebuilt a program that had dropped a little back to a national contender.
“That first year at Pitt we took five busloads of players to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, for preseason camp,” Sherrill said. “We came back in three buses.”
His best team with the Vols was 1989 … that he capped by hanging on in an epic Cotton Bowl win over Arkansas in a shootout.
For Sherrill, he sounded glad he had that phone conversation with Majors on Sunday night.
“We were laughing and talking about old times,” he said. “He lived in this house overlooking the Tennessee River, he fell asleep there last ight and didn’t wake up.
“He left his mark on a lot of people in a lot of places.”
Majors, 85, was in Fayetteville during spring practice in 2019 and spent most of his time visiting with people but when the coaches lined up the players for their version of the Oklahoma Drill, Majors quit visiting.
He got as close as he could and was watching closely.
Just like old coaches tend to do.
Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast — Lost respect in the SEC,Nick Kayal and more!
Tye & Tommy on the anonymous SEC coach on Arkansas, loads of sports coming, Nick Kayal, and more!
Is figuring out Razorbacks’ identity biggest challenge facing Pittman?
Right now there are more questions than answers surrounding Arkansas football with a first-year coach that’s never been a head coach or even a coordinator at the college football level.
“I’m not sure many people know a ton about the guy other than reading his Wikipedia page or looking at his resume,” Nick Kayal of Athlon Sports on Wednesday morning told Tye Richardson and Tommy Craft (The Morning Rush) on ESPN Arkansas about new Razorbacks coach Sam Pittman.
That’s not as negative as it sounds. It’s more of a reflection of the lack of a track record to go on combined with Pittman being an offensive line coach and those guys aren’t in the headlines a lot.
College football insiders have known how respected Pittman is developing NFL-ready linemen and being a relentless recruiter.
Nobody has a clue how he’ll do as a head coach at a place where the football program has dug deeper down the chaos hole for several years.
“What a lot of people do when they look at a coach at a program in the conference, they automatically look at the head coach and if the name doesn’t have any glitz or glamour to it or if it’s not a splashy hire or sexy move we automatically assume he’s not going to get that program back to where it needs to be,” Kayal said.
Ole Miss hired Lane Kiffin for that.
The same with Mississippi State and Mike Leach. When things went sideways in the Missouri coaching search they grabbed Eliah Drinkwitz, who at least had one year as a head coach at Appalachian State.
The Hogs have been going through an identity crisis for over a decade. They had some winning years in there but it was clear (even winning 11 games just a few seasons ago) that wasn’t going to continue.
Nobody has really understood the uniqueness of the Arkansas program for over a decade. They’ve tried to create success and programs from other places into the Razorback program and it has failed miserably.
“They are going through an identity crisis right now from where they were five years ago with a guy like Bret Bielema to Chad Morris,” Kayal said. “From a physical, up-front trench team to more of a spread team. We’ve seen the differences the last five years. The win total go from 8 to 7 to 4 to 2 and 2.”
He compared the Hogs to Vanderbilt, who have actually moved ahead of Arkansas in the league. It was Craft who pointed out Arkansas has to get back to competing with the M’s on their schedule … that’s Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Missouri.
Let all of that sink in for a minute. When Missouri came into the league in 2012 there were media people in this state that laughed at the Tigers and said it would be years before they could compete much less win anything.
All they did was win the SEC East two straight years in their second and third years in the league. None of us know if the Hogs will ever get back to that level. Most will continue to predict doom and gloom.
“Now it just seems they’re facing a major identity crisis,” Kayal said. “Before you can rebound and become relevant again you’ve got to decide what you want to be and what you are. That’s the issue they’re going to face this year.”
Pittman at least understands what Arkansas is. He’s shown that in the few months he’s had the job.
But there are more questions than answers and he would probably admit that. Shoot, Pittman hasn’t even had a chance to see his players on a practice field with a ball.
And it’s all speculation … even for folks like Kayal.
“I’d be lying if I said he was going to fail or he was going to get this team back to eight wins in two or three years simply because I don’t know enough about the guy,” he said.
At least we can start seeing SOMETHING on Monday. That’s when the players officially start working out again.
And even that won’t provide answers.
Lots of questions about Hogs, Pittman, for preseason magazines this year
Aside from players returning to campus, which seldom draws more than a line or two, you know it’s headed towards football season when the preseason magazines start showing up.
Whether they are right or wrong.
“We get a lot right and a lot wrong every year,” Braden Gall of Athlon Sports on Tuesday afternoon told Derek Ruscin and Zach Arns (Ruscin & Zach) on ESPN Arkansas.
That also holds true for everybody else. You can always count on somebody at the top falling dramatically and another team will come from nowhere and be pretty good.
Arkansas fans are hoping they end up in that second category in Sam Pittman’s first year and Gall was right when he speculated that wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
“I don’t think this is the way they planned on it going,” he said. “I don’t think Missouri had it go the way they thought, either. Ole Miss and Mississippi State did that.”
Hunter Yurachek basically has stomped all around the fact he got talked into hiring Pittman, mainly by Pittman himself. The Rebels had Lane Kiffin in their sights all along and it was likely the same with Mike Leach in Starkville.
“Two guys (Ole Miss and State) targeted a guy they went and got,” Gall said. “Sam Pittman may be the best offensive line coach in the country and a great recruiter but how will he do as the CEO? That was the same thing they said about Jeremy Pruitt at Tennessee. It looks like they are trending in the right direction but they still haven’t beaten anybody in the SEC with a winning record.”
He admitted it’s a wildcard type situation. Few head coaches are hired that have always been a position coach. Clemson’s Dabo Swinney may be the case that’s worked out best. Ed Orgeron’s first head coaching job at Ole Miss was about par for the course.
Remember, Orgeron was supposed to be the hottest move in the country when the Rebels hired him in December 2004 and he proceeded to go 3-21 in the SEC over the next three seasons and was sent packing.
A lot of folks in Baton Rouge expected Jimbo Fisher to be the Tigers’ next coach.
“That it didn’t go down the way it was planned doesn’t mean it won’t be successful,” Gall said. “If you’re hopeful about Sam Pittman that’s the model. Most LSU fans will tell you they didn’t like the move when it happened.”
There are similarities with Orgeron for Gall, too.
“(Pittman is) arguably the best offensive line coach in America and a great recruiter,” he said. “It’s almost the exact tag line I would have used for Coach O on the defensive side of the ball.”
The biggest difference, even Gall will admit, is the talent level between LSU and Arkansas is quite a bit different.
Pittman knows that. But nobody knows exactly what type offense Pittman will have developed with new offensive coordinator Kendal Briles, although a lot of folks find it hard he will not figure out a way to run the ball.
Mainly because Gall believes sooner or later in the SEC you have to be able to win down in the trenches. That’s why he wonders what’s going to happen at Mississippi State.
“I don’t know if Mike Leach’s system is going to work in the SEC,” Gall said. “Sooner or later you’ve got to realize it’s a line of scrimmage league.”
Which is why he has questions like a lot of us in the media in Arkansas. Not negative questions, but just wondering how things will work with Pittman on the offensive side that has undergone a complete change of pace every few years for the last dozen or so.
Bobby Petrino had his pro style offense (that did run the ball effectively at times), then Bret Bielema took it the other direction and, finally, whatever that was Chad Morris tried for a couple of years.
“What is the identity going to be like under an offensive line coach?” Gall said. “There’s not a lot of precedence for offensive line coach to be head coaches. If you’re looking at an offensive line coach going back to his roots you’re starting back at zero again and you’re not sure how that’s going to take place.”
Which is the same question a lot of the Hogs’ fan base has.
We may — or may not — start getting some answers Wednesday. We have a Zoom meeting with Pittman early in the afternoon.
You can bet the offense is going to be one of the subject of questions because that might be the biggest one on the table.
And nobody except Briles and Pittman probably know the answer.
But in six weeks we may start to get an idea.
Former Razorback Berry on virtual instruction in Burlsworth Camp this year
D’Andre Berry played with Brandon Burlsworth at Arkansas and is now one of the former players working with the camp that is using a virtual format that started Monday.
Berry talked about the new way of instruction with Phil Elson, Matt Jenkins and Matt Travis (Halftime) on ESPN Arkansas on Tuesday afternoon.
Registration is free and still open to all ages on the foundation’s website CLICK HERE. For more information and updates, follow the Brandon Burlsworth Foundation on Facebook.
