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With the selection of defensive tackle McTelvin Agim and safety Kamren Curl in last week’s NFL Draft, Arkansas has has 60 players drafted over the last two decades.
To get an idea of where the Razorbacks’ best players come from, HawgBeat analyzed where those 60 players played their high school football. The result is the map shown above.
As you can see, they have the most success with regional recruits. Here are some other specific takeaways of interest from our study…
— Almost exactly half of the 60 draftees are from the Natural State, with 29 of them playing at Arkansas high schools. Nearly another quarter (13) of the players are from Texas, which has proven to be a fertile recruiting ground for the Razorbacks in the past.
— Slightly more than half of Arkansas' first-round picks over that span - 4 of 7 - were in-state products: Shawn Andrews (Camden Fairview), Matt Jones (Fort Smith Northside), Jamaal Anderson (Little Rock Parkview) and Darren McFadden (North Little Rock Oak Grove). None of them were from Texas.
— Arkansas and Texas leading the way in total picks isn’t particularly surprising. The state with the third most draftees may catch you off guard: Alabama. A trio of defensive players come from the state - linebacker Quinton Caver, defensive end Trey Flowers and defensive tackle Darius Philon.
— The only other states that produced multiple Arkansas draftees are Florida (Alex Collins, Hjalte Froholdt), Georgia (Ahmad Carroll, Jeremiah Ledbetter) and Oklahoma (Felix Jones, Kamren Curl). It’s worth noting, though, that Froholdt is originally from Denmark and attended the IMG Academy and Ledbetter went to a junior college in Kansas before joining the Razorbacks.
— All but six of the players came from a bordering state or a state inside of the SEC footprint. Of those six, only two joined the Razorbacks right out of high school and one of them was from North Carolina (Chris Smith), which is just outside of the footprint. The odd ball of the group is Frank Ragnow, who grew up in Minnesota and became a first-round pick at Arkansas.
— Of the other four players in that group, three - AJ Derby (Iowa), Kiero Small (Maryland) and Sebastian Tretola (California) - had a JUCO stop between high school and Arkansas. The other was Pennsylvania native David Williams, who began his career at South Carolina before transferring.
— Taking a closer look at the 29 players from Arkansas, a good chunk of them - 12, to be exact - came from high schools in the Little Rock-North Little Rock area. If you expand that to include all of Central Arkansas, that number grows to 16.
— Among individual high schools, though, a program in South Arkansas - Warren - leads the way with three. Making it even more impressive is they were all part of the 2008 class - wide receivers Jarius Wright and Greg Childs and tight end Chris Gragg.
— Three other Arkansas schools have produced multiple draft picks for the Razorbacks: Central Arkansas Christian in North Little Rock (Joe Adams, D.J. Williams), Pulaski Academy in Little Rock (Hunter Henry, Jonathan Luigs) and Fayetteville (Brandon Allen, Dre Greenlaw).
— The only out-of-state high school to produce multiple draft picks for the Razorbacks the last 20 years is actually just over the border: Texas High in Texarkana (Cobi Hamilton, Ryan Mallett).
