FAYETTEVILLE — After holding 14 spring practices, the Arkansas Razorbacks are set to wrap up their spring football schedule Saturday with the annual Red-White Spring Game at noon CT inside Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium.
Head coach Sam Pittman will be able to showcase his new-look team and staff publicly for the first time after seeing plenty of changes since the conclusion of the 4-8 (1-7 SEC) 2023 season, which ended in a 48-14 defeat to No. 10 Missouri.
Since then, Pittman has hired four new on-field assistants — offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino, wide receivers coach Ronnie Fouch, running backs coach Kolby Smith and offensive line coach Eric Mateos.
The Head Hog told reporters on Tuesday that he thinks the team is playing with a tougher edge than it has in previous years, which should be music to Razorback fans' ears after losing so many close games a year ago.
"We are a physical team and we’re practicing physical, I think next Saturday will be the fifth time we’ve tackled to the ground this spring, which is by far more than we’ve done in the past," Pittman said. "We’ll find out a little bit more because of it, about our team."
Arkansas lost 23 players to the transfer portal from the start of the 2023 season to the end of the transfer cycle, and it brought in 16 transfers. The team also added 15 scholarship freshmen, 14 of which have been able to participate in the spring practices.
"There’s a lot of (freshmen) that I like that are going to be good players for us," Pittman said. "Jaden (Allen) is such a quick-twitch guy, very, very smart that is a cover corner. That’s what he is. Body positioning is extremely accurate. He understands what’s going on for a young guy, that’s hard. I think if you look at freshmen who have really elevated, Braylen Russell would be one of those guys. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll help us this fall.
"CJ Brown is another guy that I believe will help us this fall and then after that I’m probably missing a guy or two, but Selman Bridges is another guy possibly doing that, Tevis Metcalf has done a good job. But those guys are the ones that stand out in my mind, our two young defensive ends are going to be good players. We have good depth where they’re at, but I think they’re going to be good players eventually."
As far as what the Razorbacks are preparing to do Saturday, Pittman said that the team will treat the first half like a regular football game before subbing the starters out at half time.
"We’ll have the ones with the red team, white team will be the twos," Pittman said. "Then at half, what we’ll do is take the ones and they’ll be done and then it’ll be the twos against the rest of them. They’ll become the red team.
"We’ll score the game and all that and we’ll have a nice big breakfast for the winners, cereal for the losers and that stuff, but the bottom line is it’ll give — if it goes right the red team will be up at half and the white team should be the better of the two teams. We’ll see what happens, but it’ll give the white team a chance to catch up. So, that’s what we’re going to do. It’ll just be a game."
Below are details on how to watch/listen to the Razorbacks' Red-White game, storylines to look for, a roster with numbers and more:
How to Watch/Listen
Where: Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium - Fayetteville, Arkansas
Kickoff: 12 p.m. CT - Saturday, April 13
TV/Stream: Streaming live on the SEC Network+ and ESPN+
Radio: Learfield IMG College Razorbacks Sports Network (Chuck Barrett and Quinn Grovey)
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