Missouri came to town and delivered one final dose of misery to the Razorback faithful. Arkansas led 17-14 at halftime but failed to score in the second half of a 31-17 loss to complete a 2-10 season.
Yep, that’s another 2-10 season. The door finally closes on the Sam Pittman era, and despite a temporary elevation, he’s leaving this football program the same way he found it. The Bobby Petrino 2.0 era also ends without any of the high points of the first one. Arkansas, who had never gone winless in the SEC since joining the league in 1992, has now gone winless in conference play four times since Petrino’s motorcycle crash in April 2012. In Hunter Yurachek’s nine years as athletic director, Arkansas’ SEC record has been 1-7, 0-8, 0-8, 3-7, 4-4, 3-5, 1-7, 3-5, and 0-8. That’s a 15-59 record, or .202 win percentage.
This game featured all the stuff we’re used to. For the second straight year, bad weather drove Missouri to go with a hideous, conservative offensive gameplan that left them throwing for just 25 yards. Horrible tackling and run fits meant that the Hogs got shredded for several huge runs. Special teams struck again, as the Razorbacks missed a field goal trailing by three in the third quarter. Penalties mounted, and the officials tossed in a few horrifying calls, probably due to a personal dislike for Arkansas’ interim head coach. To be clear, that’s absolutely unacceptable from the SEC. The late hit called on Julian Neal was pretty ridiculous, and an uncalled targeting against Taylen Green in the fourth quarter basically ended the game: Arkansas had to punt two plays later, and the punt was returned for a touchdown to provide the final score. Petrino was bizarrely conservative, choosing field goal tries on a fourth-and-1 and a fourth-and-2 when his team was seemingly able to generate some space for the run game. And the quarterback shuffle made no sense, as Petrino pulled KJ Jackson when he was playing well and then stayed with Green even though it’s clear he hasn’t got it.
Yurachek will now go in front of the nation in a few days and defend the Playoff Committee’s rankings, getting tons of people mad at him while he’s still trying to find a football coach. Fans are just ready for all this embarrassment to end.
Arkansas’ coaching search may be in trouble
Trey Schaap reported that the Razorbacks had offered the job to Alex Golesh, and Golesh had accepted. That was on Wednesday. As of Saturday night, no other media, local or national, had been able to confirm this report.
It sounds like Golesh is the top target, and Arkansas was deep in negotiations with him. Golesh may have even signaled that he was prepared to accept a job offer, driving the Hogs to prepare an actual offer sheet.
Some reports now claim that Golesh’s camp was enraged by the leak to Schaap, as he didn’t want to commit before South Florida’s season ended. Either way, all sources say the deal is not done and Golesh is engaged with Florida and Auburn, with Ole Miss preparing to jump in should Lane Kiffin leave. Florida seems likely to land Tulane’s Jon Sumrall, so that leaves Auburn and probably Ole Miss ready to drive up the price for Golesh. If Arkansas truly wants Golesh, then they want Kiffin to stay in Oxford and Auburn to look into promoting DJ Durkin.
However, I don’t have a good feeling pitting Yurachek against Ole Miss AD Keith Carter in a negotiation. Yurachek is oh-for-two against Carter, backing down in a bidding war for Kiffin in December 2019 and then failing to lure Chris Beard in March 2024. The second search ended up with a better hire, but the first one was a major whiff as Kiffin was worth whatever the Hogs could have afforded.
Fear of backing down like in 2019 is driving a lot of Arkansas fans, including those who are lukewarm on Golesh, to insist that Yurachek and the Hogs battle with whoever else is targeting him. That might end up being the same error in the other direction. Golesh may be a good coach, but he’s not nearly as hot a candidate as Kiffin was back then, and if Arkansas has to overpay for his services, then they might not have enough money left over to surround him with quality assistant coaches. That might set him up for an expensive failure.
The case for Kane Wommack
I’ll start by saying that I do like Golesh and I think he would be a better coach than Pittman, Chad Morris, and Bret Bielema were. He has been near the top of my list from the very beginning, and I think he’d have a good chance of ending this 14-year era of misery. If he’s truly Yurachek’s top target and he’s prepared to accept the job on Sunday morning, then I’ll have no issue if that’s the direction the Razorbacks go.
That said, all other things being equal, I’m ready to say that I prefer Kane Wommack. And if all other things aren’t equal – that is, if Golesh’s price tag gets driven to $8 million or more because of Ole Miss or Auburn – then I really think the Hogs should pivot to Wommack rather than engage in a bidding war for the services of a good-but-probably-not-elite coach. Wommack is known to want the job and won’t be a serious candidate at Ole Miss or Auburn, so the Hogs can probably hire him for less money.
Here are four general reasons and two personal reasons why I think Wommack is the better option.
Reason #1 – Defense wins championships
That’s the old mantra, but it’s taken on a new truth in the last couple years, where the model of “defensive head coach plus big-name offensive coordinator” has shown repeated success. Texas A&M, Oregon, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, and even lowly Vanderbilt all hired defensive-minded head coaches and then paid big money to give them excellent offensive coordinators. Four of those head coaches – Oregon’s Dan Lanning, Oklahoma’s Brent Venables, Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman, and Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea – were hired straight from a power conference defensive coordinator role and had no prior head coaching experience. Texas A&M’s Mike Elko spent a couple years at Duke and that was it.
Wommack has produced elite defenses at every stop: even his three-year head coaching stint at South Alabama produced three defenses ranked at or near the top of the Sun Belt.
For the offense, Wommack has spent three years coaching with Kalen DeBoer at two different stops (two seasons at Alabama, plus 2019 at Indiana), so hiring a brilliant young playcaller out of his coaching tree seems like an obvious home run. More on that in a second.
Reason #2 – Golesh isn’t necessarily more proven as a head coach
Alex Golesh is 23-15 as a head coach across three seasons at South Florida. Kane Wommack was 22-16 as a head coach across three seasons at South Alabama. The records are almost identical, but it’s worth noting that South Florida has one of the strongest football investments in the American Conference, while South Alabama is extremely poor, even for the Sun Belt. The NIL era, which really started right around the time Golesh arrived in Tampa, is likely to be very good to the Bulls. Don’t be surprised if Golesh’s replacement keeps the program near the top of the American. But 10 wins at South Alabama, like Wommack accomplished in 2022? The Jaguars probably won’t be repeating that anytime soon. That was really impressive.
Reason #3 – Offense is easier to fix than defense
As we saw in the six-year Sam Pittman era (and the five-year Bret Bielema era), the right coordinator is really all you need to fix a bad offense. But fixing a bad defense is harder and takes more commitment.
So yes, Golesh has produced top-flight offenses at both Tennessee and South Florida. But Dan Enos produced an elite offense at Arkansas in 2015, then Kendal Briles replicated the feat in 2021 and 2022, and then Bobby Petrino pulled it off in 2024 and 2025. Arkansas ranked among the nation’s elite offenses in all five of those seasons. All of those were offensive coordinators working under a head coach who didn’t interfere with their offensive design or playcalling. You don’t have to hire an offensive coordinator as head coach in order to build a great offense. That’s why the defensive HC plus OC model I mentioned in Reason #1 works so well.
On the flip side, Robb Smith produced a good defense in 2014, but it didn’t last, as the 2015 and 2016 defenses were terrible and he was fired. Barry Odom’s 2021 defense was pretty decent, but the 2022 defense took a big step back (injuries didn’t help). And that’s not including all the defensive coordinators who never did produce a good defense in Fayetteville: Chris Ash (2013), Paul Rhoades (2017), John Chavis (2018-2019), and Travis Williams (2023-2025). Simply making a solid defensive coordinator hire is no guarantee of success, especially at Arkansas.
Reason #4 – Non-playcallers seem to have an advantage
Offensive-minded head coaches can build elite defenses, but it’s rarer. Notably, head coaches like Ryan Day and Lane Kiffin built more well-rounded programs after they gave up playcalling. They took on a more professional, CEO-type role like defensive-minded head coaches typically do. Both Ohio State and Ole Miss paid big money for their current defensive coordinators and have offensive coordinators to handle playcalling.
That’s a possible concern with Golesh. He calls plays in Tampa and playcalling is part of what makes him good at his job. Other guys whose big advantage was playcalling – think Petrino or Gus Malzahn – have voluntarily walked away from head coaching in recent years and gone back to coordinator roles. The theme here is obvious: elite playcallers and offensive designers are often valuable as offensive coordinators, but there’s not necessarily a big advantage to hiring them as head coaches.
Personal reason: I’m tired of watching bad defense
Being honest, as much as I like Golesh’s offense, I don’t have a ton of confidence that he can build a good defense. His three South Florida defenses haven’t been great, and he hired Power Four retread Todd Orlando to coordinate for him. Without a good defense, he’ll have a pretty hard ceiling in Fayetteville.
Bad defense forces the offense to play with desperation, as we’ve seen all year. Arkansas drove Taylen Green into the ground by forcing him to be a Heisman candidate just to keep games close.
I tend to think that while there’s plenty of risk, Wommack has a better chance to build a well-rounded program. He can design and develop a good defense, and the right offensive coordinator could build an elite offense.
Another personal reason: I prefer a pro-style offense
Between Briles and Petrino, Arkansas has pivoted to a focus on dual-threat quarterbacks in recent years. Athleticism has been the focus over the ability to read a defense, dissect coverages, and move through progressions. It has produced some fun offenses but not a lot of big wins. Golesh would represent a continuation of that trend, with his offense being schematically very similar to what Briles ran at Arkansas. Most throws are single-read, and the quarterback’s ability to present a run threat is more valuable than his ability to check down, audible, or attack the soft spot in the zone. That’s a very college-style scheme and it’s easy to plug-and-play quarterbacks and rebuild quickly, which is nice, but elite defenses can generally stop it.
Wommack’s ties to DeBoer suggest he might prefer that style of offense. DeBoer runs a very modern, college-adapted, pro-style offense that pulls from West Coast and Air Raid influences. It develops NFL quarterbacks and is very difficult to stop if it has the right personnel and the right playcaller. Missouri, who just beat the Hogs, runs a dumbed-down version of the same scheme (their offensive coordinator, Kirby Moore, is a former DeBoer assistant). Kentucky ran the more professional, Shanahan-influenced version of the offense, and it worked when they had Will Levis at quarterback, but a failure to develop their own quarterback (or hold onto offensive coordinator Liam Coen, who now coaches the Jaguars) kept it from working for long.
To be fair, the ceiling is high but the floor is very low on a true pro-style offense, as Kentucky’s offensive woes over the past couple of seasons make clear. Wommack played for Gus Malzahn and there are still plenty of disciples of that style of offense available to hire (including Gus himself). That would be a little bit easier to run but could still have more pro-style elements than the Baylor Veer-and-Shoot that Golesh runs.
Ultimately, as much fun as KJ Jefferson and Taylen Green were to watch, the pair combined for basically no big wins. The best opponent Arkansas beat in their five years was Tennessee, and that was a win because the defense held the Vols to 14 points (and Green missed the game-winning drive with an injury anyway). Big wins in 2021 included Texas A&M (defense allowed 10 points), LSU (13 points), and Penn State (10 points). Are you catching my drift? Golesh has already shown similar tendencies: he’s 0-3 against Memphis, the only team in the American consistently equipped to defend well. South Florida’s signature win this year was Florida, and the final score was 18-16.
That’s how college-y schemes like Golesh’s work. They put up huge numbers against bad teams and will lose some shootouts to good teams, but most of the big wins will be low-scoring.
Just not Silverfield
According to Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger, Memphis’s Ryan Silverfield could still be in play if Arkansas needs other options. I do not like that hire at all for reasons I’ve previously written about. But Wommack is the other Plan B option. I would be happy with either Golesh or Wommack. I am happily surprised that despite all the schools jumping into the coaching carousel this year, the Hogs are going to end up with two solid options.