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Arkansas is at a historic low point. Coming off back-to-back 2-10 seasons, the Razorbacks have a new head coach after firing Chad Morris just 22 games into his disastrous tenure in Fayetteville.
They replaced him with a familiar name, but one who hasn’t been a head coach since leading a junior college team in the early 1990s and hasn’t even been a coordinator at the FBS level. Sam Pittman does have a reputation as an excellent recruiter and developer of offensive linemen, giving the Arkansas fan base at least some hope that he’ll be able to stabilize the program.
As if that wasn’t already a big enough challenge, Pittman is dealing with unprecedented circumstances during his first offseason. Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, he and his almost entirely new staff lost all of spring practice, as well as a chunk of offseason conditioning.
The team reconvened in Fayetteville in June to begin working out and has recently started walk-through practices with the coaching staff on the field. Despite the season being pushed back three weeks to Sept. 26, Arkansas is still scheduled to begin fall camp Friday.
Between now and then, HawgBeat will preview each of the Razorbacks’ position groups, breaking down the returning players and additions, providing the top storylines, and projecting a depth chart ahead of this critical stretch.
Next up are the tight ends…
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The Roster
Returning players: Myron Cunningham (r-sr.), Chibueze Nwanna (r-sr.), Ty Clary (sr.), Shane Clenin (r-jr.), Dalton Wagner (r-jr.), Austin Nix (r-so. - walk-on), Ryan Winkel (r-so.), Ricky Stromberg (so.), Brady Latham (r-fr.), Beaux Limmer (r-fr.), Dylan Rathcke (r-fr.), Drew Vest (r-fr. - walk-on)
Additions: Noah Gatlin (r-so. - missed all of 2019 with injury), Luke Jones (r-so. - transfer who sat out 2019), Ray Curry Jr. (fr. - 2020 signee), Marcus Henderson (fr. - 2020 signee), Jalen St. John (fr. - 2020 signee), Payton Simpson (fr. - walk-on)
The Starters
We’ll touch on this more in the top storylines section of the preview, but we don’t know a ton about what the offensive line is going to look like in 2020.
The only two players HawgBeat feels comfortable considering definite starters are Myron Cunningham and Ricky Stromberg, and only one of them is locked into a particular position.
At 6-foot-7 and now up around 319 pounds, Cunningham looks the part of an SEC left tackle and could be poised for a Martrell Spaight-like jump that are relatively common for second-year JUCO transfers.
