FAYETTEVILLE -- Arkansas special teams coordinator Chad Lunsford likes where his group is at as spring ball nears an end on Saturday, April 25, with the Red-White game.

Lunsford came to Arkansas from Auburn when Ryan Silverfield was hired to coach the Razorbacks. For Lunsford it wasn't the first time Silverfield had offered him a job. The second time proved to be a charm for the pair.

"So, early on, I really got to know coach Silverfield, while I was at FAU," Lunsford said. "My first year at FAU, was with coach (Willie) Taggart, and then, coach Taggart left and coach (Tom) Herman got the job. And so it was kind of a transition piece for me, and coach Silverfield had called me and asked to interview me for a special teams job at Memphis. And we kinda started talking and all that type of stuff. And, at the time, I didn't take the job and luckily, he didn't hold it against me."

Lunsford explained on Wednesday what went into him opting to turn down joining Silverfield at that time.

"Probably should have as far as career goes, it would have been a great move to go with him to Memphis," Silverfield said. "It would have been a no brainer. At the time, I had just moved my family down to FAU. We had gotten our kids in good schools, and I just didn't wanna move them again because we'd only been there a year. So I kinda made a family decision there, but I stayed in touch with him and constantly bugged him, shot him text, the whole thing, and just tried to build a relationship even though we were not working together."

As Lunsford noted though, Silverfield didn't hold it against him turning down the first offer. When Silverfield took the Arkansas job he made that call again.

"So when he got the Arkansas job, I texted him to congratulate him and say, you know, hey, coach, man, love this for you," Lunsford said. "I think that's a big time opportunity. This is great. And he shot me back and said, he, you want to talk about special teams? And, so we got on the phone and Zoom and did a little interview and talked and all that and then ended up working out. So, again, not taking the job the first time, he didn't hold it against me, and I'm super excited he didn't. And, I'm glad that now I have the opportunity to work with him. He's the real deal.

"He's done an awesome job with our team. He's doing an awesome job with our culture, doing an awesome job with our staff, and I'm learning a lot. All I wanna do is I wanna continue to grow, and I wanna help the head coach. So, super excited about this opportunity."

LSU transfer wide receiver Jelani Watkins is still with the track team setting some records in the sprints. Lunsford did say he wants to see Watkins as a return man on special teams when he gets with the football program.

"Yeah absolutely," Lunsford said. "I mean, anytime you’ve got that type of speed, you want to see if he can be that dynamic returner for you. I think when you go into the philosophy of kickoff return and punt return, first and foremost that our team should be able to tell you, and hopefully by training camp, they will know how to tell you that the whole goal on both teams is to possess the ball, period. Give the ball to the offense. That's what we're doing. But anytime that you get a dynamic guy, you want to take advantage of that. So I think Jelani, he's definitely a guy that we want to take a look at just because of his speed. If he catches the ball really well as a returner, that would be something that we would want to look at."

Arkansas will hold its spring game on Saturday, April 25, at 2 p.m.