The Arkansas Razorbacks are short of their 29-signee cap for the 2019 class after National Signing Day and while there were a few top priority targets that they missed, the bright side of that is the staff can now explore the vast transfer portal, roll some scholarships over to the 2020 class, or award walk-ons with scholarships.
Exploring the second option first, the reason Arkansas can roll over scholarships to the 2020 class is because they had eight early 2019 enrollees, four of which were able to be counted back to the 2018 class that was also short of the typical 25.
There will be 16 seniors departing after the 2019 season, there will undoubtedly be some transfers and maybe a couple players leaving early so the 2020 class will need some help to be able to sign a full class of 25, that's where the extra 2019 scholarships would come in handy.
However, moving onto the first option, Arkansas still has needs in this class, most notably at linebacker and quarterback, so it is highly unlikely that they save those scholarships for 2020 when they have options to add more talent for 2019.
"Well, we’re always in the quarterback market," Chad Morris said on National Signing Day in reference to his three remaining spots for the class. "I’ve said that. I’ll continue to say that. You can never have enough of those guys. Got to have competition there. We’ll see as the spring unfolds, how things go. We’re looking, whether it be linebacker, corner, you’re always trying to improve in an area you can. But we do have some spots. That’s a good thing."
At quarterback, the leading candidate to join the Razorbacks this summer would be A&M transfer Nick Starkel. He named Arkansas as an option on a podcast two days ago, as well as SMU, Arizona and Ohio State. SMU looks like they're on the verge of landing Texas transfer Shane Buechele, Ohio State just got Justin Fields from Georgia and Arizona still has a veteran on the roster in Khalil Tate, so Arkansas does make the most sense, despite having just added grad transfer quarterback Ben Hicks. Starkel has two years to play and is immediately eligible.
As for linebackers, there are several immediately eligible linebackers in the transfer portal right now including inside linebackers, Iowa's Aaron Mends and Nevada's Gabriel Sewell, and outside linebackers, Tennessee's Austin Smith and USC's Oluwole Betiku.
There's also two immediately eligible cornerbacks in the portal from the Power-5 ranks, Arizona's Sammy Morrison and South Carolina's Nick Harvey.
Chad Morris also loves to reward walk-ons with scholarships if they've proven to be worthy contributors so the Hogs already have at least one scholarship they can use for that purpose with the departure of Blake Johnson, and if they chose to, they could use some of the other three scholarships for that as well, though they won't if there are still needs they can fill first.
"We're not gonna get in a hurry just to fill spots," Morris said. "That's the one thing I've found in this business you can get yourself in trouble in. If we find the right fit for us we will fill it, but if we don't then that's OK."
Any way you slice it, having options is good thing and it looks like we'll be keeping our eyes and ears open for more additions this spring and summer.
Check out the Razorbacks current projected scholarship distribution for next season.
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