Recruits stay with Haynes after bowl

FAYETTEVILLE — Nowadays, coordinators nearly rival head coaches and quarterbacks for getting too much credit for victories, and too much blame for defeats.

Gauging by Arkansas not losing a defensive recruiting commitment and gaining some on last Wednesday’s national signing day after his December arrival, new Razorbacks defensive coordinator Paul Haynes is getting much-deserved credit.

Coach Bobby Petrino hired Haynes from Ohio State while the Hogs prepped in December for their Jan. 6 Cotton Bowl victory over Kansas State.

Haynes stepped in to coordinate a defense that limited Kansas State to 87 yards rushing and sacked quarterback Collin Klein six times. Haynes didn’t ruffle feathers with the inherited players when he arrived, and he apparently didn’t do so with recruits who had already given Arkansas a verbal commitment.

Now as mentioned, coordinators tend to get both over-credited and over-blamed and that certainly goes in recruiting.

Some defensive coordinators under former coaches Houston Nutt and Lou Holtz didn’t hit the recruiting road at all.

Haynes didn’t put in the road time of veteran defensive assistants Bobby Allen and Steve Caldwell, who recruit both sides of the ball as do all Arkansas’ position coaches, including Kevin Peoples, promoted from administration to defensive tackles coach in December, and Taver Johnson, hired as linebackers coach in January.

But in recruiting, everything on defense is somewhat influenced by the defensive coordinator.

“I think it was a huge advantage because they can see,” said Haynes, of arriving in time to coach in the Cotton Bowl. “Because a lot of this recruiting is sometimes car salesman a little bit. So they actually saw what type of defense we are running and what I was telling them was the truth. So to get around here and get my feet on the ground and get on the phone with them, and talk with them and be on the recruiting process with them, I think was huge.”

Haynes said he treated recruits verbally committed to play for former defensive coordinator Willy Robinson’s defense like he treated the players he inherited in December.

“The biggest thing to me was [to] introduce myself just like it was with the team,” Haynes said. “Introduce myself to the committed guys and tell them what we were going to be doing. Because a lot of times when you change coordinators they get afraid. ‘Are you changing the scheme and what else are you doing?’ So that’s what I really wanted to get on the phone and talk to them about on what we were going to be doing and the fronts and the all the things they have been doing here. So what they liked about Arkansas before they are going to like about with me.”

So far, going off the Cotton Bowl and recruiting, what’s not to like?