With spring practices now underway as of Thursday for the Arkansas football team, the buzz surrounding the Razorbacks is tamer than most years.
Part of the reason is because Arkansas is coming off its worst season since the Chad Morris era. Part of it is because Arkansas has had only one high-quality season in the last decade-ish. And part of it is that it’s just early March and sports fans are prone to taking off this time of year if their basketball team isn’t NCAA Tournament bound.
The reality is Arkansas is loaded with questions, not answers, heading into Sam Pittman’s fifth year at the helm. From our perspective, though, that’s a good thing. Any team that went four games below .500 the previous year and feels like they have things figured out in March is probably going to go four games under .500 again in the fall.
Only a handful of the questions will be answered in the spring, too. Coach Sam Pittman said he wants to know his starting quarterback before summer break. Taylen Green, a transfer from Boise State, is the leading candidate, but Natural State natives wouldn’t mind seeing Jacolby Criswell in the role, either. Redshirt freshman Malachi Singleton ran the second-team offense in the team’s first practice Thursday, though.
Running back has issues, too. Rashod Dubinion is back, though, his freshman season two years ago showed more potential than the struggle last year. How much of that struggle was because of the offensive line, a line, by the way, injecting three new starters? R-Dub, as Pittman calls him, will have to hold off four-star freshman Braylen Russell and Utah transfer Ja’Quinden Jackson, whose numbers with the Utes last year were superior. After going without a true No. 1 back last year because of Rocket Sanders’ injuries and ineffectiveness, Pittman said he would prefer a primary ball-carrier in 2024.
None of this is counting a linebacker corps that is completely rebuilt after losing the top four players from last year or that offensive line that struggled so mightly in 2023.
But the fact that so many questions abound is probably a good things for a team had the season it did last year. Whether things change this year is a matter of whether those questions get answered.
Such answers started Thursday.