Injuries lead to OL Noah Gatlin retiring
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FAYETTEVILLE — After dealing with multiple injuries during his career, Noah Gatlin has decided to hang up his cleats and retire from football, a UA spokesperson confirmed to HawgBeat.
The news, which was first reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, comes after he missed the second half of the 2020 season with a concussion.
A three-star recruit coming out of Jonesboro in the Class of 2018, Gatlin also missed most of this year's Auburn game because of a lower left leg injury suffered on the first play and the entire 2019 season because of a torn ACL suffered on the first day of fall camp.
When he was healthy, though, the 6-foot-7, 307-pound offensive tackle showed some promise.
As a true freshman in 2018, Gatlin started two games at left tackle and appeared in two others while maintaining his redshirt. He earned a 57.8 overall grade on 191 snaps, according to Pro Football Focus.
Last season, he posted a 71.7 and 79.0 grade against Georgia and Mississippi State, respectively, before getting hurt. Even though he returned to the starting lineup the week after getting hurt at Auburn, Gatlin wasn’t the same and earned a 57.7 and 55.4 grade against Ole Miss and Texas A&M, respectively.
That resulted in a 67.3 overall grade for the season, which was second only to Ty Clary’s 71.7 mark and better backup Dalton Wagner’s 62.7 grade.
Gatlin is the only offensive lineman in Arkansas’ two-deep depth chart during the 2020 season that will not return in 2021. In addition to Wagner at right tackle and Clary at right guard, the Razorbacks will also have left tackle Myron Cunningham, left guard Brady Latham, center Ricky Stromberg and all of their backups.
Including transfers, Arkansas is now sitting at 84 scholarship players for the 2021 season, which is one below the 85-man limit. Click here to see HawgBeat’s projected scholarship distribution.