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FAYETTEVILLE — Despite earning second-team All-SEC accolades from the coaches last season, the advanced analytics weren’t too kind to Bumper Pool in 2020.
The former four-star recruit averaged 11.2 tackles per game as a junior, which ranked second only to teammate Grant Morgan in the conference, but Pro Football Focus still graded him as one of the worst linebackers in the country.
A major factor in that was his SEC-high 24 missed tackles, according to PFF. However, that doesn’t take into account the fact that Pool played most of the season with broken ribs, which - as you might imagine - made it difficult to tackle.
“Every time you cough, you feel like somebody’s stabbing you in the back,” linebackers coach Michael Scherer said. “So imagine you hit somebody and you get that same feeling, like somebody’s stabbing you, and your body just about goes numb.”
The injury happened in Arkansas’ win over Mississippi State in the second game of the season, but Pool was on the field the following week. It was evident he was playing hurt, though.
Auburn running back Tank Bigsby is hard enough to bring down. Add broken ribs to the mix and there were several times Pool met him in the hole, a play Scherer said he always makes, and his body would go numb.
It got to the point where the Razorbacks had to hold him out the following week, when they beat Ole Miss. The open date followed that game, so he got two straight weeks off before returning to the field for the final six games.
“There were times last year when I kind of had to hold him back a little bit because…he had busted ribs,” Scherer said. “He's a kid who's willing to do anything he possibly can for this team.
“The last thing he's ever going to do is take himself out of something. He's one of those kids that, as long as he can walk, he's going to go out there and play.”
After playing nearly the entire season no where close to 100 percent health, Pool said he set out this offseason to do everything he could to ensure that won’t happen again in 2021.
That meant getting with strength coach Jamil Walker and designing a plan to build up even more strength during the offseason than the year prior.
“Last season I broke my ribs Week 2 and I felt like my strength never came back,” Pool said. “This next season, I’m not going to let that be an issue. I want to be able to have that size and strength, so Coach Walker and I kind of sat down and talked about that I want to work on that and that comes with working on speed and getting underneath that squat bar.”
Pool said he now weighs about 232 pounds and that he’d like to sustain that throughout the season.
If he can stay healthy and clean up the missed tackles that plagued him last year, there’s a strong likelihood that the Texas native will join the UA’s 300-tackle club, which currently includes just 17 players.
With 224 career tackles, Pool would need just 111 more - average of 9.3 in a 12-game regular season - to crack the top 10 list, but Morgan is right on his heels with 212.
Morgan, of course, is benefitting from the NCAA’s pandemic-related eligibility relief that allows him to play a second senior season. As a traditional senior, Pool could also take advantage of that rule and play in 2022, but he is treating this like his final year of college football.
“I kind of attacked this offseason like it was my last offseason,” Pool said. “With the game of football, your career can be over so quick, so you kind of have to have that mentality regardless because in one play you're done. So I'm going to attack this season like it's my last, but then again that's how you should attack every season."
