FAYETTEVILLE — There is no other way to put it: Arkansas’ special teams were a disaster early in the 2018 season.

After North Texas pulled off a fake fair catch, an all-around poor performance against Auburn and an opening kickoff return for a touchdown against Texas A&M, first-year head coach Chad Morris took some heat for not hiring a special teams coordinator in the NCAA's recently added 10th assistant coach position.

The Razorbacks were one of only three teams in the SEC without a coach who had that title, instead choosing to stick with analyst Tanner Burns and divide the duties amongst the 10 assistants.

With the departure of Burns this offseason, Morris has not only replaced him with a new analyst - Daniel Da Prato from Colorado - but also promoted tight ends coach Barry Lunney Jr. to special teams coordinator.

“In our conversations about how we were going to proceed moving forward, he mentioned this is something he might want to do,” Lunney said. “Each time we were recruiting and on a plane, we just kind of kept massaging it a little bit and then obviously it was announced (Wednesday). I’m very excited about the opportunity.”

It is a logical choice because Lunney has already been sort of a “point man” on special teams since Morris’ arrival following the 2017 season.

The lone remaining member of former head coach Bret Bielema’s staff thanks to John Scott Jr. taking a job at South Carolina, Lunney said his new duties will include helping create practice schedules, coordinating which units to work on each day, figuring out what personnel to use on particular units and making game day decisions and judgments.

However, the Razorbacks will still have a similar approach in that all 10 assistants are going to have a role on special teams.

“Joe Craddock doesn’t do everything in our offense, John Chavis doesn’t do everything in our defense,” Lunney said. “It takes a group of coaches to coach the scheme and responsibilities, so really that’s kind of how I see this and Coach Morris sees it the same way.”

Lunney has primarily been in charge of the punt team during his tenure at Arkansas and added the kickoff return unit last season. Now he’ll have a small hand on the entire special teams in a behind-the-scenes role, with other coaches still serving as the main voice for each unit.

“It’s important for us to convey how important special teams is across our organization by having a lot of coaches involved,” Lunney said. “If you have the same coach that’s the voice of all those units over and over again, at some point that gets repetitive for them and for the coach, so we try to keep that broken up.”

Logistically, not much changes for Lunney at practice. He said they will continue doing three periods of special teams in every practice, so it won’t take away from the other part of his job title.

That is good news for the Razorbacks because tight end has arguably been their most consistent position over the last six seasons, with Hunter Henry winning the Mackey Award and two other players - A.J. Derby and Jeremy Sprinkle - getting drafted.

Already a dangerous group with veteran Cheyenne O’Grady, the tight ends add blue-chip signee Hudson Henry to the mix this season.

“It will not effect my responsibilities with tight ends at all,” Lunney said. “It does add somewhat of more workload as far as just time spent to prep practice, but those are things I’m very confident in being able to manage and still do my job.”

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