Practice plan in place for Razorbacks
FAYETTEVILLE — If you've got a bead on Sam Pittman, you know he doesn't get ruffled easily and he's tough to fluster.
The COVID-19 pandemic sure hasn't thrown him for a loop.
The first-year head coach at the University of Arkansas said on a Zoom conference on Thursday the Razorbacks have put together a plan for the newly shuffled preseason practice schedule and the team will make the proper adjustments.
“On paper we like it,” Pittman said of the new plan.
The SEC announced on Tuesday it was moving the start of preseason practice from today until Aug. 17. When practices start, they will be capped at 20 hours per week and teams will be required to have two off days per week, per guidelines suggested by the league's medical task force.
Preseason “camps” in 2020 will have little resemblance to the hardcore camps of yore.
“Looking forward on this, you basically have 40 days to get 25 practices in,” Pittman said. “You're not going to have near the time, obviously, for the walk(through)s, for the off-day meetings. We're going to two days off instead of one now. On one of the off days we can still have a two-hour meeting with them.”
Pittman said the staff has created a practice plan for the six-week lead-up to the season that would feature three weeks with five practices, two weeks with three practices and one week with four practices to hit the maximum of 25 allowed.
He said Sundays would be the constant day off of the required two and Saturdays early in camp would be for the two-hour meetings on non-practice days. Once scrimmaging rolls around, he said Thursdays would turn into the second off day and Saturdays would feature the longer live-tackling periods afforded by scrimmages. Arkansas Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek praised Pittman last week for not being distracted or thrown off balance by the day-to-day changes wrought by the crisis that has been rocking college athletics since midMarch.
“I appreciate Coach Pittman's patience throughout this process,” Yurachek said. “I know he more than anybody has been itching to get out and on that field as a first-year head coach and the opportunity to work with these young men and compete on that field.”
The Razorbacks and other schools have been
allowed to conduct 20 hours per week of walk-throughs, conditioning, weight work and film study since July 24. That will be trimmed back to 14 hours between today and Aug. 17.
“Instead of just looking forward only, you have to look back,” Pittman said. “What the SEC has allowed us to do here recently is gain hours, times, walk-throughs, that we basically are going to lose in the future.
“So I’ll guess whenever it all evens out that the time will be approximately the same. It’s just going to be spread over a larger number of days. I mean, it is what it is. They give us all the same rules. We do have a schedule ready. I think we found out maybe yesterday, the day before, what the SEC decided to do, and we’re ready to go on our schedule.”
The SEC has not released the two additional games for each school that will comprise 10-game, league-only schedules, but Pittman and the Razorbacks are just happy a potential season is on the docket.
“We’ll go out there and play and we’re looking forward to it actually,” Pittman said.
“I’ll be honest with you, I think the kids, they just want to play, you know? And we just want to coach, and obviously we want to do it in the safest environment we possibly can. They want to play, and when we told them that as of this point there’s going to be a season, they were ecstatic.”
Pittman said the players wanted to know the work they’ve been putting in will get to be displayed this fall.
“If you work towards something, you want to reap the benefits of 10 Saturdays or 12 or 13, or depending on how far you go, 15, 16 games, or whatever it is,” Pittman said. “You want to be able to go play.”
Pittman said the walkthroughs have been invaluable for taking the tape study led by defensive coordinator Barry Odom and offensive coordinator Kendal Briles to the field for the first time after the Razorbacks lost their spring drills in March and April.
“These things have been outstanding,” he said. “The coaching going on, the kids are learning. The ability to have 20 hours a week, obviously until tomorrow. Twenty hours a week of teaching, it’s been awesome.
“It hasn’t been spring ball because obviously you can’t hit and things of that nature, but the mental part of it has been probably better than even what spring ball would have been about learning the offense for Kendal. I’m having to learn it too, so I’m pretty much caught up to speed, so I imagine the players will be, too.”
Pittman talked about a couple of roster adjustments that have taken place in recent weeks, including the move of freshman signee Blayne Toll back to defensive end from tight end.
Toll had gone through summer passing drills as a tight end, but another roster change necessitated the Hazen High School product’s move back to defense.
Pittman said defensive end signee Jaqualin McGhee of Fort Valley, Ga., is not with the team and is not expected to join the program, sparking the Toll move.
“One hundred percent,” he said. “When Jaqualin decided that he didn’t want to play football anymore, then we moved Blayne Toll that day.”
Pittman said he encouraged Toll to wear No. 96, which Pittman wore at Pittsburg State in Kansas.
“I told him he had big shoes to fill if he wore 96 and he took it,” Pittman said, grinning. “To be honest with you, that’s where he wanted to be, but he was so unselfish he went to tight end. We put 96 on him and moved him back over to defense and he’s fine. He’s doing really good.”