The 2025 Arkansas football season ended in disaster. The Razorbacks had talent on offense, but they were shredded on defense all year, and the result was Sam Pittman getting fired. Bobby Petrino was named the interim head coach, but nothing came from that. After the season, Arkansas hired Memphis head coach Ryan Silverfield, and he is tasked with rebuilding the Razorbacks.

According to CBS Sports college football insider Matt Zenitz, Silverfield is bringing over a lot of his staff from Memphis. Silverfield is bringing over Memphis offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey and Memphis wide receivers coach Larry Smith. he is also bringing in former Florida defensive coordinator Ron Roberts after Billy Napier was fired in Gainesville.

The offenses at Memphis under Silverfield have been some of the best in the country. Over the four seasons that Cramsey has coached under Silverfield, Memphis ranked in the top 25 nationally in scoring each of the last four years. 

Larry Smith was the quarterback at Vanderbilt from 2007 to 2011 and started 27 games in his career. He began his career as a graduate assistant at Jacksonville State, was promoted to quarterbacks coach, and then served as wide receivers coach at Alabama-Birmingham from 2016 to 2022. He joined Silverfield's staff at Memphis in 2023 and has produced first-team all-conference receivers each of the last three years at Memphis.

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Ron Roberts has three seasons of SEC experience, two at Florida and one at Auburn under Hugh Freeze in 2023. In each of the past two seasons, his Gators' defenses finished 12th in the SEC in scoring, 14th in rushing defense, and 10th and 11th, respectively, in passing defense. This year, Florida allowed 24 points per game and 276.8 yards per game.

Roberts spent three seasons as defensive coordinator at Baylor from 2020 to 2022 before he was dismissed by coach Dave Aranda and quickly hired by Freeze at Auburn.

It is worth noting that Silverfield is still seeking to fill the rest of his staff fully. Senior offensive analyst Nick Mathews will also join the staff, and they are looking to add Florida State's David Johnson to be its next running backs coach.

Silverfield has proven to be a program builder after what we saw during his time at Memphis, and this could be a home run hire for Arkansas if everything works out, even with the drama that surrounded the hire after rumors that Alex Golesh would be hired.