Our season-long nightmare is almost over.
There’s the actual football season, of course, which was functionally over long ago but now has just one game left following Arkansas’ 52-37 loss to Texas.
But the bigger news today is the coaching search, which has lasted since September, but now appears to be heading towards a conclusion, with CBS reporter Brandon Marcello reporting that the Razorbacks about ready to name names.
It’s worth noting that there’s still a week left in the regular season, and many of the names connected with the job are still in line for conference titles and could even make the playoff. Does that mean it’s a coordinator, or someone who is not currently in line for a conference title or playoff berth? The following might not care about the end of the regular season because they aren’t coaching somewhere else:
- Bobby Petrino (though the “new sheriff” in Marcello’s post implies it’s not the old sheriff)
- Jimbo Fisher
- Jon Gruden
The latter two would likely be disastrous hires, so I’m hoping that’s not it.
These coaches might be willing to jump because they are coordinators or are not in the conference title or playoff race:
- Dabo Swinney
- PJ Fleck
- Matt Campbell
- Kenny Dillingham
- Gus Malzahn
- Will Stein
- Kane Wommack
That’s a pretty mixed list. Fleck and Campbell are very high-floor, low-ceiling options who would probably do better than Sam Pittman but would rarely top an 8-4 record. Swinney makes very little sense (he’d only be a good hire if he actually embraced the portal… and he could just do that Clemson now). It cannot be Malzahn for numerous on- and off-field reasons. Stein is probably a good offensive coach but he seems like an enormous risk due to a lack of SEC and regional experience. Wommack is pretty high on my list: played for the Hogs, actual SEC and regional experience, defensive-minded, did well as South Alabama’s head coach. And Dillingham… we’ll get to him.
Of course, it could be someone still in the hunt. It seems crazy that a coach would walk away from his program before the season is over, but in the modern world of college football, with the transfer portal window and signing deadlines coming up, that might in fact be what has to happen.
The following still have conference title or playoff dreams:
- Alex Golesh
- Ryan Silverfield
- Jon Sumrall
- Eric Morris
Sumrall is probably out, as he’s much more likely to take the Auburn job if offered. Golesh, Silverfield, and Morris have been connected to this job since the very beginning, so let’s focus on them for now.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel named those three plus Wommack as four names to watch near the end of the Arkansas-Texas game broadcast:
Credit to Hawg Beat’s Jackson Collier, who named those exact four as his “realistic finalists” before Thamel’s report.
We’ll think through reconciling Thamel’s Saturday report and Marcello’s Sunday report in a second. Assuming those four, let’s go worst to best, in my opinion.
Ryan Silverfield
I think this would be a suicidal hire. Silverfield is a fine coach, but he has zero intangibles that offer any kind of edge in the SEC. He’s not an elite recruiter, not an elite X’s and O’s guy, hasn’t made any notable assistant hires, and doesn’t seem to be an obvious culture-creator. He’s grinded out a good record at a school (Memphis) that has more resources than most of its American Conference competition. And he’s still yet to reach the peak: Memphis hasn’t finished better than third in the American in any season, and won’t again this year.
The last two Memphis coaches (Justin Fuente and Mike Norvell) won big at Memphis but have struggled after jumping to the ACC. Silverfield doesn’t even have a clear identity: he was hired under Fuente and simply maintained what Fuente and Norvell started. As I detailed in the Memphis preview back in September, they still run the base defense that Barry Odom installed for Fuente back in 2014. And after sticking to the Norvell vertical-passing offense for his first few seasons, Memphis transitioned away to a read-option based offense with a dual-threat quarterback this season, with very mixed results.
This hire would get a grade of F from me.
Eric Morris
On the one hand, Morris’s record with quarterbacks is impeccable. He coordinated Kliff Kingsbury’s offense with Patrick Mahomes at Texas Tech, recruited Cam Ward to Incarnate Word as a zero-star recruit (then developed him there and at Washington State), then recruited John Mateer (a one-time UCA commit) to Washington State, and now has zero-star Drew Mestemaker as one of the nation’s leading passers at North Texas. If you thought Arkansas should have hired Mike Leach to replace Chad Morris, here’s your chance to replace his last up-and-coming disciple, and boy, he’s a good one.
But this carries a major risk of promoting beyond competence. Morris is unquestioned as a quarterback developer, but there’s a lot more to being an SEC head coach than developing quarterbacks. Iffy defense has followed Morris at every stop (though it’s hard to blame him when he was a coordinator), and the Air Raid always gives away couple games a year against a opponents that can out-physical it.
I think Morris would produce good quarterbacks and fun offenses, but I’m not sure about the high-end potential.
Alex Golesh
I think Golesh is one of the most likely candidates. His offense is fun and has worked here before (Kendal Briles ran a version of it from 2020 to 2022). Just like his mentor Josh Heupel at Tennessee, I think Golesh would instantly upgrade the product in Fayetteville, though I have concerns that, like Heupel, breaking through the ceiling could be an issue. Arkansas might be willing to cross that bridge when they come to it if Golesh is able to start winning immediately.
Kane Wommack
I am higher on Wommack than many other Hog fans, probably because I’m sick and tired of watching horrific defense and ready for a major upgrade. Wommack has produced good defenses everywhere he’s been. He also played for the Hogs. He has connections to the entire Kalen DeBoer coaching tree, which includes a lot of up-and-coming offensive coaches and playcallers.
Pair him with a big-time offensive coordinator, and this could work. The “defensive head coach plus big-time OC” model has worked plenty of other places: Oklahoma, Georgia, Oregon, and Texas A&M, just to name the big ones.
Overall, I think the ceiling here is the highest of any of the four named candidates. This is the only one that I think could actually lead to a significant upgrade of the program, not just a fix for the last nine or so years of bad football.
A wildcard candidate?
Thamel’s report was weird, especially when combined with Marcello’s report on Sunday. Thamel noted that we would likely learn more within a day – and Marcello’s report essentially confirmed that – and then he listed four possible candidates.
That doesn’t compute. If Arkansas’ search was far enough along that both Thamel and Marcello knew by Sunday that the Hogs had their guy, then the Hogs were much farther along than “four finalists” when Thamel said that. You get to the finish line with one candidate, not four. Thamel’s information was either outdated, made up, or a smokescreen.
Outdated. This assumes that the four candidates named by Thamel were the finalists maybe a few weeks ago, and Hunter Yurachek has since closed the deal with one of them in a no-leaks environment. Thamel named the last four names he knew, but Arkansas was much further along with one of them by the time Thamel actually made his report. It is also possible that a wildcard candidate entered the mix since Thamel heard of those four.
To that end, give credit to Yurachek. A leaky basketball search made him look bad (whiffing on Chris Beard and Jerome Tang, and then targeting Chris Jans and mentioning Darrell Walker), when the final result (hiring John Calipari) would have made him look amazing if there had been no leaks. It appears that he got things cleaned up in terms of secrecy, because we have heard very little about this search since it started.
Made up. This assumes that Thamel’s report consisted of two unrelated pieces: that the Hogs were closing in on a finalist, and then there were four names that ESPN had heard of. Those weren’t part of the same stream of information. The four names Thamel gave are the four most common names we’ve heard for the last couple weeks, and he was just throwing that in to keep it interesting, because the newsy report he actually had did not hint at who the Hogs were about to hire.
Smokescreen. The last possibility is a combination of the two: four commonly-cited names were fed by Arkansas sources to reporters like Thamel while the Hogs quietly closed the deal with a wildcard candidate. Some of Thamel’s report may have included non-Arkansas sources: there are claims, for example, that Wommack has been lobbying for the job through his agent. Agents might have been fed names to Thamel even if Yurachek is focused elsewhere.
Lots of credible reports have claimed that Arkansas has at least attempted to hire someone other than those four. Curry Hicks Sage, an anonymous X account known for breaking coaching search news, said Arkansas may be targeting two of the four names Thamel mentioned, but there’s also an unmentioned name, the wildcard:
If I had to guess, I’d say Wommack (pushed by his agent) and Silverfield (talked early, but three Memphis losses knocked him out) are the two that are not really finalists.
Bobby Bones, who is familiar with many of the big Arkansas donors are who are in on this thing, also has repeatedly claimed that the Hogs are focused on an unmentioned name:
So who is this wildcard? Back in early October, rumors swirled around Swinney. Later that month, Fleck’s name came up, as his quarterback is Drake Lindsey, a Fayetteville native and member of the Lindsey family. The more recent name has been Campbell, who has done more with less at Iowa State and might be looking for an upgrade.
But the latest name to pop up is Kenny Dillingham. A member of the Gus Malzahn coaching tree, Dillingham coached under Norvell at Memphis, Gus at Auburn, then Norvell at Florida State, and then did well as Oregon’s offensive coordinator. He developed Bo Nix as a freshman at Auburn and then as a senior at Oregon. Brady White (Memphis), Jordan Travis (Florida State), and Sam Leavitt (Arizona State) are all quarterbacks who thrived under his coaching. He got the Sun Devils to the playoff last year after they were picked last in the Big XII in the preseason. With Big XII schools like Texas Tech and BYU making monstrous NIL commitments that the Sun Devils will struggle to match, he might want out of that conference. On3 already reported this week that Leavitt will likely transfer for his final season of college, citing Arizona State’s inability to pay him what he’s probably worth as a star college passer.
On the flip side, he’s an Arizona State alum, and other schools like Auburn (where he’s already worked) would almost certainly be targeting him if he wanted to move. So it seems unlikely, but you never know.
Wess Moore, who broke the John Calipari news a year and a half ago, responded to Thamel’s report with a cryptic suggestion about Dillingham:
That’s a “smoke” emoji at the end of his post, suggesting that Thamel’s four names are a smokescreen, and either he doesn’t know that or is willing to go along with it for a scoop. Moore obviously has connections among Arkansas donors, hence the Calipari scoop, but is this the name, or just a last-ditch effort by the Hogs to hit a home run before settling for one of the other names?
You don’t need me to tell you this, but Dillingham would be a grand slam hire. He offers SEC and regional experience, a strong record of developing quarterbacks, a magnetic personality that sets the program culture.
That said, I would probably expect one of the four names Thamel provided and hope to be pleasantly surprised when we find out. And the finding out should be very soon.