FAYETTEVILLE — When Sam Pittman took over the Arkansas job on Dec. 8, he inherited a 2020 class ranked 109th nationally by ESPN and 247.
By the time Pittman introduced his national signing day haul on Wednesday, that class had jumped to 29th in both rankings.
The signing-day additions of four-star Missouri (Texas) Fort Bend Marshall quarterback Malik Hornsby (6-2, 175) and four-star offensive lineman Marcus Henderson (6-5, 300) of Memphis (Tenn.) University and three-star offensive lineman Jalen St. John (6-5, 310) of St. Louis (Mo.) Trinity Catholic completed the meteoric ascent up the rankings.
Pittman knew ahead of time that he was landing the trio, but enjoyed the process nonetheless with Hornsby announcing on ESPNU.
“It wasn’t an and/or if they were going to sign with us or not, but it was still fun watching them with their commitment stuff, even though we had the paper in hand,” Pittman said.
The haul leaves Pittman with two scholarships left to give in this class, one of which could go to Clemson grad transfer defensive tackle Xavier Kelly (6-4, 305).
Hornsby, who played in the U.S. Army All-American and Polynesian Bowl all-star games, signed with Arkansas over Baylor, Texas A&M, Purdue, North Carolina and others.
Pittman believes Arkansas offensive coordinator Kendal Briles will mesh well with Hornsby, who ESPN rates as the nation’s ninth-best dual-threat quarterback.
Hornsby had 2,320 yards passing, 29 touchdowns and only two interceptions while also rushing 131 times for 1,582 yards and 17 more touchdowns as a senior.
“He was the guy that we wanted, you know,” Pittman said. “He’s the guy we went after. He had a great relationship with Coach Briles, and Kendal did a great job of recruiting him, and has for a long time. But there’s a guy who can throw it and run it and certainly would be ideal for the type of offense that Kendal is planning on running.”
Hornsby will join a quarterback room that includes Florida starter and grad transfer Feleipe Franks (6-6, 238) and returnees KJ Jefferson (6-3, 228), Jack Lindsey (6-2, 204) and John Stephen Jones (5-11, 199).
Both Franks (dislocated ankle) and Jefferson (shoulder) are coming off injuries that ended their 2019 seasons early.
“KJ will be fine for spring ball, and Feleipe’s done really well,” Pittman said. "He’s moving well. I think he’s on progress. He might be a little bit ahead of progress, but we don’t feel there’ll be a problem with him playing this spring.”
Franks has the edge with his SEC experience and could be at the top of the quarterback depth chart when spring practice opens March 16.
“Feleipe Franks has proven he can do it in this league and do it at a high level,” Pittman said. “It’s a huge deal for us. I’m not saying he’s going to win the starting spot, but it’s a big deal to get him.
“It will allow some of these young guys - all of them - to compete and get a little bit more time to get game ready.”
Henderson and St. John joined Arkansas offensive line early signee Ray Curry, Jr. of Memphis Central to give Pittman what he was looking for up front.
“Obviously, offensive line is a big deal for us here, and big offensive linemen is what we’re looking for, guys with good feet,” Pittman said. “They are all three big guys, so that was, you know ... defenses in our league, they have big people over there, so we wanted to go size to begin with.
“And of course we got Ray Curry Jr. in the early signing period. A guy that is a very good athlete that we think we can develop. He’s probably a little more physically stronger than your typical average high school lineman. We’ll work with his technique and those things. I know he’ll work hard and we’re happy to have him.”
Henderson got his choice down to Arkansas and Ole Miss before choosing the Razorbacks.
“Marcus Henderson, very talented guy,” Pittman said. “He took his body from, I don’t know, the first time I saw him he might have been 335-340 and now he’s down around 290. He needed to do that. He played a lot better this year, his senior year, doing that. We’re awful glad we ended up getting him.”
St. John was once committed to Missouri head coach Barry Odom and Tigers offensive line Brad Davis, who are now at Arkansas.
“Jalen St. John is probably the biggest of that group,” Pittman said. “He’s just got a mature way about him. He’ll come in here and work and I think he’ll be a really good player for us. I don’t know how fast they’ll play or anything of that nature. We need to learn more about our own team first on that. But we’re really excited we have those three guys because they fit all the criteria that we’re looking for.”
Pittman expects those three to join an offensive line group that he is excited about for next season.
“I know this right now,” Pittman said. “They’re as hard working a group as we have in the weight room and we’re very proud of the way they’re handling their business right now. But they haven’t hit anybody and haven’t had to strike moving targets yet and all that kind of stuff. We’ll figure it out. But I couldn’t be more pleased with the O-line that we have because of the work ethic.”
Arkansas’ class includes 19 high school players, one junior college prospect and a trio of graduate transfers in former Oklahoma linebacker Levi Draper (6-3, 230), Franks and former Arkansas State cornerback Jerry Jacobs (5-11, 204), the latter two who enrolled in classes at Arkansas early.
Pittman is happy with the class, but not satisfied by any means.
“Well, we’re the University of Arkansas, and we’d like to do better than what we did,” Pittman said. “We expected to do every bit of what we did, and we expected to do better, to be honest with you. There’s 11 guys in that room going out and recruiting that believe everything that I believe about Arkansas.
“So I don’t know about the statement, but we’ve said it ever since we got the job here that this is the greatest university, and we believe that. It’s more important for them to believe it, but we’re going to do better. This one we just didn’t quite have as much time as we wanted, but we’ll do better.”
The class has players from 10 different states.
“The bottom line is we have a lot of coaches from different areas,” Pittman said. “They know a lot of people and we found out who we liked and tried to get a relationship with them.
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t know we had 10 different states and all that kind of stuff. We were going so fast, we were just trying to get people that we liked that liked us.”
Pittman signed seven players in the early signing period on Dec. 18-20 and added the two early enrollee grad transfers.
“The early signing date, I’ve said before, I think if you're a new coach it’s tough on you,” Pittman said. “You have four days, five days, to sign a class. It all depends a little bit on what happened to the coach before you. But the early signing period is hard on a new coach, and I think here was three or four of us in the SEC that were in that same boat.”