Head coach Sam Pittman and the Arkansas Razorbacks formally crammed their last assistant coach opening Thursday with Florida cornerbacks analyst Deron Wilson, who will coach the secondary in Fayetteville.
Wilson spent the 2022 season within the “high quality management — cornerbacks” function with the Gators, who had the nation’s No. 84 cross protection, permitting 235.8 passing yards per recreation.
Prior to Wilson’s time at Florida, he spent the 2020-21 seasons because the defensive coordinator at McNeese State, who led the Southland Conference in complete protection, scoring protection, dashing protection, sacks and fourth-down protection, whereas rating second in third-down protection in the course of the 2021 season.
Before McNeese State, Wilson was a graduate assistant at UTSA from 2016-18, earlier than he was promoted to cornerbacks coach for the 2019-20 seasons. His group ranked No. 74 nationally in passing protection for the 2019 season and No. 49 in 2020.
Wilson, a local of New Orleans, performed defensive again at Southern Miss from 2009-12. He began 39 straight video games and was chosen to the 2010 Freshman All-American Second Team, Conference USA All-Freshman group, and Second Team All-C-USA honors from Phil Steele. He was a part of secondary that broke the NCAA document for interceptions returned for touchdowns with eight and received the C-USA Championship in the course of the 2011 season, based on his bio on the Florida Athletics web site.
Arkansas now has its on-field assistant workers totally crammed out after loads of turnover for the reason that finish of the season.
Going out on the defensive aspect of the ball was defensive coordinator Barry Odom, linebackers coach Michael Scherer and cornerbacks coach Dominique Bowman. The new faces embody defensive coordinator Travis Williams, Marcus Woodson as co-defensive coordinator and Wilson as a secondary coach.
On offense, the Hogs noticed the departures of tight ends coach Dowell Loggains and offensive coordinator Kendal Briles. Pittman introduced in Morgan Turner to exchange Loggains and Dan Enos to exchange Briles.
Pittman additionally changed former energy and conditioning coach Jamil Walker with Ben Sowders in December.
According to HawgBeat’s rely, the on-field assistant wage pool sits at $5.54 million, not together with what Wilson’s wage will probably be. That quantity is $600,000 lower than the program-record wage pool for final yr’s 10 on-field assistants. It is unclear how a lot Wilson was making at Florida, however it appears probably that Arkansas’ complete wage pool will come out under final yr’s variety of $6.14 million.
