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FAYETTEVILLE — Sam Pittman received interest from coaches in the NFL and other major conferences, but there was only one man he considered to hire as Arkansas’ next tight ends coach.
The only catch with his No. 1 target was that Cody Kennedy, who worked with him for a year as a graduate assistant at Georgia, was a former offensive lineman who had only ever coached that position.
That wasn’t much of an issue for the Razorbacks’ second-year coach, though, as he once stepped outside of his comfort zone during his lengthy career as an offensive line coach.
“I had coached tight ends in my career one time in 1996 at Cincinnati,” Pittman said. “I thought it was a great learning experience for me, to learn more about the game other than just the front and the box on defense. I talked Cody, basically, into coming here and doing that for us.”
He comes to Arkansas from Southern Miss. Making the jump from Conference USA to the SEC is a big step in the coaching ladder, but doing so meant he’d be leaving a job he had taken just a month and a half earlier.
Kennedy followed Will Hall - whom he had worked for at multiple Division II spots - from Tulane, where Hall was the offensive coordinator, when he took the head job in Hattiesburg. It was a tough call to leave his mentor so quickly, but he ultimately did because it was a good career move.
“You don’t get to choose the timing of your opportunity, but you do get to choose the outcome,” Kennedy said. “With the timing, would I have liked for it to be better and more clean? Yeah, I would. Do you always get that option in life? No, you don’t.”
Despite never coaching tight ends, Kennedy sounded well-versed in the position when he met the local media for the first time via a Zoom videoconference last week.
He described tight ends as a “Swiss Army knife” position because they can impact the game in a lot of ways. Plus, the more they can do, the better the offense can be.
“If you have tight ends that can stretch the field vertically and impact the passing game, that puts a lot of linebackers in conflict on coverage,” Kennedy said. “If they're able to come into the run game and into the box and create blocks off the backside or leading on blocks in the perimeter, that can obviously change the run game.”
Of course, the driving force behind all of the staff changes Pittman made following his first year at the helm for the Razorbacks was recruiting.
Arkansas’ 2021 signing class is No. 25 nationally, which is solid by its traditional standards, but it is 10th in the SEC and far from what Pittman was used to at Georgia.
As the Bulldogs’ offensive line coach, he routinely brought in more four-star offensive linemen than the two total four-star recruits in the Razorbacks’ latest class. In 2018, Kennedy was a graduate assistant at Georgia and helped Pittman reel in one five-star, one 5.9 four-star and one 5.7 three-star offensive lineman in the 2019 class.
“When I was at Georgia, I got a lot of credit for recruiting some of the offensive linemen that he recruited,” Pittman said. “I knew what type of person he was and what type of recruiter he is and what type of coach he was, so that was the easiest one of all of them, to be honest with you.”
Asked for details about which players he played a key role in recruiting, Kennedy said they were all tag-team efforts and he didn’t want to take any of the credit.
Pittman is one of three coaches - with the others being Hall and current Liberty offensive line coach Sam Gregg, who he also worked with in the DII ranks - he considers instrumental in his coaching career.
Kennedy said Pittman taught him how to treat people the right way, which sometimes gets lost in this business, and that’s been evident even in their relationship.
“He gave me that first opportunity and I'm forever grateful for it,” Kennedy said. “We maintained that relationship throughout that time, bounced ideas off each other, kind of weekly updates. … It’s been an even closer relationship than your general relationship with Coach Pittman. He's truly vested in me as an individual, and obviously my career, as well."
Now at Arkansas, Kennedy will be recruiting to a position with a lot of history. The Razorbacks are one of three teams, along with Iowa and Florida, who have produced multiple John Mackey Award winners since the award was created in 2000 - D.J. Williams in 2010 and Hunter Henry in 2015.
In addition to Williams and Henry, who were fifth- and second-round picks, respectively, the Razorbacks have also had two other tight ends taken in the NFL Draft in recent memory: A.J. Derby (sixth round, 2015) and Jeremy Sprinkle (fifth round, 2017).
That doesn’t even include Cheyenne O’Grady, the school’s all-time leader for touchdown receptions by a tight end, who likely would have been drafted had it not been for off-the-field issues.
“It’s a heck of a lot easier when you have recruits in here and you got (pictures of) guys hanging up on the walls who have played on Sundays,” Kennedy said. “I tell you what, it helps you work the phones when you have guys that have done and achieved those dreams that some of these young guys look up to.”
None of those players are still in Fayetteville, but the Razorbacks are returning their entire room from 2020 and Kennedy, who has met with all of the tight ends, said he believes it’s a “blue collar group.”
Former walk-on Blake Kern is taking advantage of the NCAA’s eligibility relief and coming back for a sixth season. He caught 20 passes for 201 yards and two touchdowns in his first season as a contributor and Kennedy said he’s still extremely motivated because he hasn’t been in the spotlight very long.
The player most fans are likely hoping will take the next step under Kennedy’s leadership is Hudson Henry, who caught 16 passes for 92 yards and one touchdown as a redshirt freshman. The former four-star recruit and younger brother of Hunter Henry has dealt with various injuries throughout his two years at Arkansas and is still trying to get comfortable in his role on the team.
That is also the case for the other young guys in the group, which includes Collin Sutherland (freshman in 2020), walk-on Nathan Bax (redshirt freshman in 2020) and incoming freshman Erin Outley.
“That’s the biggest thing we’ve got to build at that position, is the confidence that when we get out on the field, we can impact the game every snap,” Kennedy said. “Whether that’s a blocking assignment on the perimeter or a route assignment in the passing game, just being able to be a reliable aspect of this offense and being able to take it to the next level and building that confidence.”
