FAYETTEVILLE — Watching how he played against Texas, it’d be impossible to know that John Ridgeway was laying in a hospital bed just two weeks earlier.
After missing the season opener, the Illinois State transfer “pushed the pocket,” head coach Sam Pittman said, and finished with six tackles in his Arkansas debut, a 40-21 victory over the No. 15 Longhorns.
It would have been an impressive performance for any defensive tackle, a position that doesn’t typically compile a lot of traditional statistics, but it was even more so for Ridgeway because he was just two weeks removed from having an appendectomy and it was his first appearance since transferring up from the FCS level.
“I felt like I shed blocks pretty well,” Ridgeway said. “Hopefully I can get some more. I know I played pretty good for my first game back from having surgery a week and a half ago, but I think it was pretty fun for my first day in the SEC to lay it all on the table like that.”
Included among Ridgeway’s six tackles was a sack of Hudson Card on the first play of the second quarter. That play - coupled with a delay of game penalty and incomplete pass - forced Texas to attempt a 52-yard field goal, which it missed to preserve Arkansas’ first-half shutout.
“I kind of just pressed through the center, then I saw him step up, I shed the block then he was right in front of me,” Ridgeway said about his sack. “It was pretty cool.”
As big as that play was, it was another one of Ridgeway’s tackles that stood out to Pittman upon film review.
“I liked the sack and all those things, but he ran basically hash to hash one time and caught one of the Texas players,” Pittman said. “That’s what we saw on his tape from his other college.”
According to Pro Football Focus, Ridgeway’s six tackles came on just 24 total snaps. He was also credited with a couple of hurries by PFF that weren’t reflected in the official stats, helping him earn a solid 76.7 grade.
It may have been the kind of performance Arkansas expected out of the 6-foot-6, 320-pound senior after seeing him throughout camp, but a case of appendicitis nearly prevented it from happening.
Ridgeway felt sick and was throwing up the last Friday of camp and was still sick in meetings leading up to the Razorbacks’ mock game - essentially a dress-rehearsal a week before the Sept. 4 opener against Rice.
Eventually, Pittman was told he wouldn’t be participating that day and trainer Dave Polanski discovered that he needed the appendectomy.
“Dave did a great job of analyzing him and we got him in there real fast,” Pittman said. “I think it was a lot easier surgery because it was diagnosed so quickly."
When he woke up from the surgery, Ridgeway’s immediate reaction was that it wasn’t too bad. He was walking around the next day and even walked his dog around the block a couple of times that evening.
Two days post-surgery, he was asking to put on pads and return to practice, but doctors prescribed him to one week of bed rest. It wasn’t easy being sidelined for that stretch and he made it his goal to return quicker than expected.
“My parents, they raised me that if I’ve got a bump or a bruise or a scrape to walk it off, so that’s what I tried to do,” Ridgeway said. “The trainers had a different opinion on that, so I kind of just had to hold back and just relax and not do anything.
“I looked it up and it was like 2-3 weeks (recovery time), and I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m doing that.’ I had to make sure I came back for (Texas).”
Sure enough, despite the Razorbacks originally thinking he’d miss the first two games of the season, Ridgeway was back at practice - even without a green non-contact jersey - last Monday.
“We kind of gradually worked him through last week,” Pittman said. “By the time Wednesday, Thursday hit, he was full speed ready to go. He’s a tough kid.”
Other than normal postgame soreness, Ridgeway told reporters following the Texas win that he felt fine physically and that he should be good to go moving forward.
That is good news for Arkansas, which really benefited from his presence in the middle of its three-man front against Texas.
“He’s so tough and I was excited to see him finally get his paws on a quarterback,” linebacker Bumper Pool said. “Just because us playing against our quarterbacks and them not being live, he finally got to let loose. So getting to see that was awesome. We’re very excited to see what he can do for us the rest of the season.”
Whether the Razorbacks stay in that three-man front or shift back to the four-man front they used against Rice, Ridgeway will be a major factor on a defensive line that has already proven to be more capable of pressuring the quarterback than last year.
That opens things up for the back end of the defense, safety Joe Foucha said while also comparing Ridgeway to last season’s star defensive tackle, sixth-round pick Jonathan Marshall.
“He’s a very explosive player,” Foucha said. “He moves real fast and he has the size as well. It’s just like Jon Marshall being out there I feel like. He’s the same type of player.”
Pittman believes Saturday’s outing against Texas was just a preview of things to come for Ridgeway because he thinks he’ll just continue to get “better and better” as the season progresses.
“He’s one of those guys you can pat on the back and he’s going to player harder and better versus, ‘Man, I am pretty good,’” Pittman said. “I don’t think he really ever gets that feeling. I think he’s one of those guys, like a lot of kids on our team, that (thinks), ‘I can play better.’ And I think he will.”
He’ll make his second appearance in an Arkansas uniform Saturday afternoon, as Georgia Southern comes to Fayetteville for a 3 p.m. CT kickoff on the SEC Network.
