Pittman: Slow start for workouts

Arkansas football coach Sam Pittman speaks to the crowd during a basketball game between Arkansas and Tulsa on Saturday, Dec. 14, 2019, at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville.

FAYETTEVILLE -- University of Arkansas football Coach Sam Pittman, speaking Wednesday on a Zoom teleconference with reporters for the first time in a couple of weeks, addressed what upcoming team activities will look like starting Monday and talked about his motivations for attending a protest in Fayetteville on Tuesday night.

"The protest was powerful," Pittman said. "I was very honored to be a part of it and was glad I was able to go down there along with others on our coaching staff and our football team."

Pittman, photographed wearing a mask, and numerous others from UA athletics went to the protest, held peacefully on the downtown square, to support equality and justice in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis.

He was asked why he chose to attend the protest.

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"I felt in my heart I needed to go," Pittman said. "You can tweet about stuff. You can do a lot of things. You can take a picture for somebody to show.

"But actions are strong. And I felt like, for me, the best way for me to address the situation was to go be a part of what could be a solution. I didn't go down there for someone to take my picture. I went down there because I wanted to support the players on our football team and their families."

Pittman said he has been addressing the team since Floyd's death but would keep those comments between himself and the team.

Beginning Monday, the Arkansas weight rooms and training rooms will open for fall semester athletes, and the Razorbacks will be allowed to lift in the Walker Pavilion in small groups of about 20, which includes members of the strength and conditioning staff in masks.

These will be the first team activities allowed on SEC campuses since the mandated close March 13 to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.

"It's incredible," Pittman said of the team returning. "I mean, that's my whole life. That's who I am. I'm a coach. It's hard to coach when there is nobody to coach. So we're all excited about them."

The football coaching staff will not be allowed to have contact in the weight room, though strength and conditioning coaches will. Since finals ended the spring semester, the coaching staff has had eight hours of access per week with players in virtual meetings, and those can continue.

"We're going to have to have a lot of feedback from our strength coaches and all that, but the greatest thing is to know exactly where they are, that they're here and that they're able to get in conditioning," Pittman said. "Obviously, we'll continue our Zoom meetings with them, but it's sure going to feel more like a football team and things of that nature and getting them back here on campus."

Pittman said the weight work would begin slowly to minimize the risk of injury and to establish a baseline on where the players stand from a conditioning standpoint.

"We're going five days a week in the weight room," he said. "There is unlimited hours involved there ... simply because it's voluntary.

"I don't have a whole lot of our guys in summer school at this point. I think we're at 22 right now. They have a lot of time on their hands, so we're trying to take up some of that void here."

Pittman said he thinks virtually the entire roster, with the exception of seven or eight players, will be available when the weight work starts.

The Razorbacks' New Orleans-area players -- defenders Joe Foucha, Devin Bush, Andrew Parker and early enrollee freshman Kelin Burrle -- have gone through or are going through the mandatory quarantine period because New Orleans has been designated a hot spot. They should be available Monday.

Pittman said the workouts next week will begin slowly.

"The biggest thing you don't want to do is get them in here and go so rapid that you're injury prone," he said. "We're going to find a base. We're going to find where they're at. Obviously we can't test them. I wanted to, but the NCAA said we can't test our kids when they get back in here to see where they're at.

"But we'll find out. We're going to start slow with them. We have plenty of time to get them in shape, and we're going to use an extra day than we normally would."

Pittman said he supports the idea of having organized team activities like NFL teams typically do, possibly starting in mid-July, to allow the Razorbacks to make up for their 15 lost practices of spring.

"I did reach out to several NFL teams and expressed that to the SEC office, what my feelings were," Pittman said. "As I understood, there were some other coaches who felt the same way.

"We're prepared for it. We're also prepared if we don't get it, but I think it would really help us. It would be a non-physical type of situation and all of those things, but we need terminology on the field, we need technique on the field, we need all of those things that we didn't have the opportunity to get in spring ball.

"We need to be able to do it, and it doesn't have to be a tackle situation or anything like that. We're just trying to learn. So, yeah, we've talked about it and we're prepared for it. It just depends on what the hours situation is, to be honest with you, how much they're going to give us, 8 or 10 hours, if they go to 12, if they go to 20, whatever the hours are. But we need on-the-field movement. We need walk-throughs, things of that nature that we didn't get a chance to get to do."

Pittman added that senior running back T.J. Hammonds, who had been off scholarship due to academic reasons last year, was re-added to the scholarship roster Tuesday.

"He signed it [Tuesday]," Pittman said. "We were happy to be able to do that.

"He's fast. He's got a lot of speed. You can beat teams two ways ... physically. You can beat them with speed or you can beat them with bigness. You can beat them with large humans. Right now it's a little faster for us to get fast guys than it is get a whole team of big guys.

"But the bottom line is he did what we asked him to do in school, and he did what we asked him to do in the offseason in the eight-week program when we were here."

Sports on 06/04/2020