Key players stand out during summer workouts

FAYETTEVILLE – It didn’t take long for Chad Morris to realize he needed to transform Arkansas’ roster – through both recruiting and the weight room – to play his style of football.

While he and the assistant coaches have been blazing the recruiting trail, the man tasked with the other part of that transformation has been strength and conditioning coach Trumain Carroll.

Meeting with the media before Morris’ inaugural media golf tournament at Paradise Valley Athletic Club on Monday, Carroll said he is pleased with the progress they’ve made in the last seven months.

Although they still have a ways to go before being in game shape, he added they are ready for fall camp, which begins Friday.

“As strength and conditioning coaches, our job first and foremost is to prepare these guys to practice at the level at which Coach Morris practices at,” Carroll said. “That practice in turn, with additional conditioning here and there, will get them ready for the games.”

When asked if any players stood out during the summer, he was quick to mention offensive lineman Dalton Wagner.

After signing with Arkansas as a three-star recruit, Wagner was listed at 311 pounds during his redshirt year last season. However, by the time January weigh-ins rolled around, he had dropped all the way down to 275.

The goal with him was to bulk up so he’d look like an SEC offensive lineman and he did just that, as he now weighs 302 pounds. Wagner’s offseason performance is even more important with the loss of Colton Jackson to injury because he is the likely first replacement.

“He’s feeling good and looking good and he’s got more confidence that anybody in this room,” Carroll said.

Both of the other players Carroll singled out for putting weight on were at skill positions. Wide receiver Jonathan Nance and safety Kamren Curl are each up 14 pounds to 190 and 201, respectively.

Skill players gaining that much weigh may seem concerning, but Carroll said Nance is “faster than ever” and Curl is “moving around a lot better” than he was in January.

“We never want to put weight on a player if it’s going to make him lost a step,” Carroll said. “The weight that they gain is going to be more force that they apply to the ground that’s going to make them a lot faster, a lot more explosive and able to make big plays come Saturday this fall.”

Not surprisingly, Carroll praised a pair of offensive linemen in the weight loss department.

After playing at 357 pounds last season, fifth-year senior Johnny Gibson Jr. dropped to 345 by January and is now all the way down to 319.

“He’s looking lean and mean and he’s able to move a lot better, able to bend,” Carroll said. “His conditioning level has been raised tremendously from when we saw him in January.”

That 38-pound drop pales in comparison to what Jalen Merrick has done.

The redshirt junior was listed at 368 pounds last season. Like Gibson, he weighed in at 345 before spring practice and down to 316 pounds – a total loss of 52 pounds.

“He’s moving a lot better and feeling a lot better,” Carroll said. “Those guys are able to sustain adequate conditioning to run Coach Morris’ style of offense, which is my job.”

Another offensive lineman topped the charts in terms of body fat loss.

Brian Wallace is down 13 pounds to 320. That includes a drop from 25.5 percent body fat to 20.3. That means, Carroll said, that he lost 16 pounds of fat and replaced it with 14 pounds of muscle.

Wide receiver LaMichael Pettway and running back Devwah Whaley each dropped their body fat by about 4 percentage points.

Pettway, a rising redshirt junior, lost only five pounds since January, but he now has only 7 percent body fat.

“(He was) already a good-looking guy to start off with,” Carroll said. “For him to transform within a seven-month period and drop 4 percent body fat and keep his weight (about) the same is really a credit to his work ethic and what he invested over the offseason.”

Going into his third season with the Razorbacks, Whaley is at 209 pounds – down six from January – with 11 percent body fat.

“He’s a guy that stepped up and became more of a leader by example throughout this process,” Carroll said. “He’s an ‘extra’ guy, staying after to do extra core work, extra footwork drills, extra whatever it is to be able to, when he takes the field this fall, you’re going to see the best version of Devwah Whaley.”

Carroll said he met with Morris and the coordinators – Joe Craddock and John Chavis – to determine a plan for each individual player over the summer. Some of them, like those discussed above, were tasked with losing or gaining weight or toning their bodies, while others had more specific goals.

For example, quarterback Cole Kelley focused on his core. He’s down to about 258 pounds, which is only 10 pounds less than what he was listed at last season, but he’s gained strength in that area. By doing that, Carroll said his weight would take care of itself.

“Being such a tall, long guy, we really wanted to emphasize his core strength because anything you try to build on top of anything that doesn’t have a strong core, it won’t sustain,” Carroll said. “I gave the analogy of a strong upper body with a strong lower body with a weak core is like having two pieces of stainless steel connected with aluminum foil.”