FAYETTEVILLE -- Sam Pittman met with the media on Tuesday prior to Wednesday's first practice of the preseason.
Pittman is confident and likes the team he has to put on the field this fall. Pittman and the Hogs are coming off a 4-8 season in 2023 and despite being picked 14th in the SEC at Media Days he is expecting a good season in 2024.
"I think all the culture, we start that," Pittman said. "But it really happens by the kids. I mean it really does because if you look at it, we might be with them two and a half hours out of the day and there’s 24 in a day. Whether they hang out with each other, how they are in the locker room, how they are in their lounge. Do they hang out together. I think that happens with people. I can say a whole bunch of them. Cam Ball is one of them. Landon Jackson is one of them. Taylen Green came in and took the team. Once he earned the starting spot he took the team. It wasn’t anything about me, me, me. It was about us, us, us.
"(Fernando) Carmona, (Keyshawn) Blackstock, (Addison) Nichols, those guys are team oriented. And if you look at our O-line and our D-line’s camaraderie, a lot of times you know you’re battling and you get tired of each other. They’re close. They hang out together. So I think it has to do with who we get on the team, possibly who’s not on the team. A lot of things go in with culture. You guys are in the workforce and you’re with people and I guarantee your mind can think of ‘that guy’ or ‘that lady’ and you’re thinking, ‘If he wasn’t here, how much, or if she wasn’t here, how much different would it be.’
"This ain’t a ‘Hey, I want to tell you who that person is right now.’ I’m not calling anybody out. But sometimes you get that and your culture becomes very powerful. It can become powerful either way and right now it is very, very strong in a positive way."
Pittman feels that with all the work in the summer the team will hit the ground running on Wednesday.
"You guys are on it, man," Pittman said. "Really good question. We’re going to two-spot a bunch of drills. A bunch. We’ve got 120 kids coming into camp. We’ve got to find out about these guys. There such a thing as having a good mental rep and all that, but a mental rep, we don’t know what rep they got. When it’s a physical rep, we can see it.
"So we’re going to have to do a lot of two-spotting early. We want to. I don’t think it’s going to put any more burden on the kids, simply because their reps are not going to change. But we’re going to get a lot of looks at these guys. That’s probably the biggest concern about coming out at 105 in the future, is that’s going to eliminate some of that two-spotting and it’s going to eliminate of some that development of the younger guys, the development of the guys that you don’t know quite as much about. That’s probably the biggest concern about going to 105, that and injuries as the season goes. But right now we’re at 120 and we’re going to two-spot a lot so we can find out who we have. We’re also going to tackle a lot this fall so we can give kids opportunity to show us what they are and so we can give them an opportunity to beat somebody out."
The Hogs will practice at 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday before returning to mornings beginning Monday.
"I’ll be honest with you, we have acclimatization," Pittman said. "We have plenty of time in our acclimatization period to get used to the heat, whether… So, I really did not want to go in the afternoon this week. However, because school is still in session we would lose too many guys if we went in the morning. So, I would rather go in the morning the whole time, obviously. Moving the game up and getting into camp two days earlier cost us a few more days of school. So, we’re going to go the first four. We’re going to try to keep those first four before the break exactly the same. And we went to the afternoon. Now, we’re going to go outside/inside. We’ll start outside and come inside after our second special team period. But I’m trying to have good practices.
"I know it’s going to be really hot, so I am concerned about that. I have the right to change that and bring some of that inside, as well. I don’t think we have to worry about this 25 practice period of going, ‘Well, we’ve got to get acclimated to the heat. We’re still going to have plenty of time once school starts to do that. The only reason we did it is because school is still in session. We’d have too many guys who would miss practice if we went in the morning."
Arkansas added three linebackers from the transfer portal and got two more from high school when the summer arrived. Among the high school linebackers former Harding Academy standout Wyatt Simmons is in the mix for playing time.
"Yeah, great question. I think you got two," Pittman said. "You’ve got Stephen Dix and Larry Worth who obviously did not go through spring ball. Both very physical specimens. I mean, their numbers, I think that would be a good question for Ben (Sowders), their numbers coming out of the summer program. I also really like the addition of Wyatt Simmons and Brad Shaw, two freshmen. Now I don’t talk about freshmen a lot. So I think our depth at linebacker and who starts and all is still obviously up for grabs.
"We don’t know anything about Worth and Dix on the field, other than what we saw from where they came from. But I do think that was something we had to address. Not that we don’t have good players. They’re just young. So we’ll figure out how that goes. We have a lot of linebackers in that room. Therefore we’re going to do a lot of two-spotting here early because we obviously we’ve got to find out who’s 2 and 3 at quarterback. We’ve got to find out who can play at linebacker. Again, like I said, I think we had 10 guys who came in in the April portal and those guys we have to get on the field to figure out if they can help us, whether that be as depth or whether that be as starters."
A trio of Razorbacks have suffered serious injuries.
"There’s three guys here," Pittman said. "(Linebacker) Justin Logan has the shoulder. (Cornerback) Jaden Allen’s got a knee — cartilage repair. (Offensive lineman) Zuri Madison had his ACL. So those guys probably will not play this year.
"Other than that, (linebacker) JuJu Pope got a hamstring that’ll probably limit him for the first week, week and a half. I think that’s about it."
Arkansas will open the 2024 season on Thursday, Aug. 29, in Little Rock's War Memorial Stadium against UAPB at 6:30 p.m. on ESPNU.