Arkansas Won't Stop Until They Become WRU

One thing Chad Morris and his staff quickly realized once getting on the Hill was that they needed to immediately infuse the wide receiver room with more elite talent if the up-tempo spread was going to work at Arkansas like it did for them at SMU.

They had some very talented running backs, perhaps the most talented position group on the team in 2018, but without an effective passing game, the Hogs were one dimensional and easily stopped during SEC play. They couldn't do much about their quarterback situation until after the season ended but they could start recruiting wide receivers at a higher level than Brett Bielema had in the past.

Morris was only able to sign one high school receiver in the 2018 class, Mike Woods, a 3-star prospect who flipped from SMU after the coaching change, and he also added Kansas transfer Chase Harrell, who was a 2-star coming out of high school, albeit a very athletic 2-star.

They had 13 scholarship wide receivers for the 2018 season, after 4-star JUCO wide receiver Brandon Martin left the team, and not one of them was a 4-star receiver. With a semi-competent quarterback, that group brought in seven touchdowns on 104 catches with 1,261 total yards, that's less than 110 yards per game!

Arkansas wide receivers coach Justin Stepp had two 1,000-yard receivers and another go for 816 at SMU and the offense was top 10 in the nation. The only way to replicate that was to recruit, and recruit he did. The Hogs' 2019 class has four 4-star wide receivers and he landed them after going after some of the biggest and baddest in the country.

Stepp gave out 35 offers to 2019 wide receivers to fill roughly 3-4 spots and decided to take as much talent as he could and took all four commits. Of the 35 offers, 20 of them are ranked in the Rivals250 and only nine of them are lower than 4-stars.

The Razorbacks expect all four new additions to come in and contribute significant reps next season and they now have a quarterback who knows the system to help them do that. Ben Hicks and two of the true freshmen are already on campus getting to know each other before spring practices begin February 26th.

Four 4-stars isn't enough though, the Hogs will need these types of wide receiver classes every year to compete in the SEC. That's why Stepp has already offered 48 2020 wide receivers. Fifty percent of the 2020 wide receiver offers are already in the Rivals250 with plenty of time for the others to move up in the rankings as well.

Stepp is one of the best recruiters on the staff, if not the best, so he can manage creating relationships with that many prospects (with the help of his GA Kelvin Bolden) but he has offered more 2020 wide receivers than any other SEC program, which just goes to show how desperately the Hogs need to take the passing game up to the next level.

If Stepp sticks around, there's a very real possibility Arkansas has a room made up of entirely 4-stars (and walk-ons) two seasons from now, which is pretty exciting.

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