Arkansas football coach Sam Pittman has the opportunity for some sweet, sweet revenge after news broke on Thursday that Missouri wide receiver Courtney Crutchfield was entering the transfer portal.
The Pine Bluff native was a consensus four-star prospect in the Class of 2024 ranked as high as No. 43 nationally by 247 Sports. Crutchfield was a longtime Arkansas commit, but backed off his pledge after the Hogs’ 4-8 campaign in 2023. Pittman and offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino tried their best to get the blue-chip wideout back on board, but he eventually signed with Mizzou.
That delighted Tiger head coach Eli Drinkwitz, who made sure to rub in the fact that he had poached one of the Natural State’s finest talents. But Drink didn’t make very good use of Crutchfield, as the freshman only appeared in two games and didn’t record any stats. Luther Burden III will be a first round NFL Draft pick come April, and fellow starting receivers Mookie Cooper and Theo Wease are both graduating.
That seemingly opened the door for the haunting prospect of Crutchfield leading Missouri’s wide receiving corps. Instead, the Arkansas product is taking his talents elsewhere – with many projecting a homecoming for the vaunted wideout. Shortly after his entrance into the portal, 247 Sports’ Trey Biddy placed a crystal ball prediction for Crutchfield to the Hogs. PowerMizzou, the Tigers’ 247 affiliate, also said Arkansas is the favorite.
The slim time window between Crutchfield’s announcement and Arkansas’ emergence as the frontrunner led some Razorback fans to suggest that Pittman had turned to the dark side of utilizing tampering to his benefit:
All jokes aside, the prospect of Crutchfield’s homecoming not only provides a jolt of delicious payback for Pittman – it also comes as welcome news for a wide receiver room desperate for talent.
Arkansas Football in Big Need of Wide Receiver Talent
Andrew Armstrong, Isaac TeSlaa, Tyrone Broden and Khafre Brown have all exhausted their eligibility, and former four-stars Isaiah Sategna and Davion Dozier have entered the transfer portal. All told, the Razorbacks return just 8.6% of their receiving production heading into next year.
Things are even more dire for next week’s Liberty Bowl. Broden is apparently not with the team right now, and Jordan Anthony is doubtful as he deals with a family matter. That means that alongside TeSlaa, the Hogs will start 29-year-old walk-on Monte Harrison and true freshman CJ Brown, who fumbled his only career catch against Texas.
Fortunately, some help is already on the way with a pair of transfer commitments from the Group of Five level. Fresno State’s Raylen Sharpe, who played for Petrino at Missouri State in 2022, will follow Bobby P to Fayetteville. He put up 523 yards and three touchdowns as a junior this season, and will have one year of eligibility left.
UAB’s Kam Shanks also pledged to the Hogs after catching 62 passes for 656 yards and six touchdowns as a redshirt freshman. He was also a threat in the return game, with 329 punt return yards and two house calls.
Both of these guys are solid depth pieces for the receiver room. But Sharpe is 5-foot-9 and Shanks is 5-foot-8, so expecting either of them to function as a WR1 is far-fetched. The Hogs still need plenty of talent and depth in the receiving room, including a bigger, prototypical wideout.
That’s where the 6-foot-2 Crutchfield comes in – and it so happens Arkansas has a big-time connection on its current roster that Pittman can leverage to win this round of his recruitment.
Arkansas’ “In” With Courtney Crutchfield
Biddy appeared on 103.7 The Buzz FM’s Drive Time Sports on Thursday to discuss the Hogs’ activity in the transfer portal so far. On the topic of Crutchfield, he said him transferring is something that’s been in the works for months.
“That’s something I had been hearing whispers of since around midseason, that he might opt to enter the transfer portal, coming more from Pine Bluff and that area,” Biddy said. “It’s kind of interesting how quiet that stayed.”
But the truth is out there now, and the Crutchfield homecoming rumors are quickly picking up steam. Indeed, separate sources to Best of Arkansas Sports have indicated an announcement of Crutchfield joining the Hogs is imminent.
Biddy pointed out that money was one of the reasons for Missouri winning the race a year ago – so perhaps Arkansas is anteing up its NIL package to swing Crutchfield back.
“Crutchfield was a guy that got offered a lot of money to go to Mizzou,” he said with a laugh. “More than Arkansas is used to paying high school recruits, so we’ll see how that works out.”
The Razorbacks’ x-factor in Crutchfield’s recruitment may already be in-house in the form of defensive end Charleston Collins, another Pine Bluff native who is actually Crutchfield’s cousin. Collins was another consensus four-star prospect in the 2024 class who was actually the top prospect in the state of Arkansas, ahead of Crutchfield.
When Crutchfield decided to decommit from the Razorbacks, Collins was of course at the front of the line trying to persuade his cousin to get back on the boat – but in the end, he respected his decision to go to Mizzou.
“I was actually proud of him,” Collins said. “Not everybody has what it takes to make that decision. You have to have a level of maturity and self-respect to make a decision like that, especially knowing all the backlash and things like that that’s going to come with it.”
A year later, those family ties might allow Pittman to steal Crutchfield back from Drinkwitz – especially with Biddy indicating that Collins is here to stay.
“My sources say there’s no real concern over Charlie Collins leaving,” he said. “I’ve got a crystal ball pick in for Crutchfield to end up at Arkansas. I think that’s what’s going to end up happening, so we’ll see.”
The freshman appeared in all 12 games this season, but most of his action was on special teams. He only registered one tackle and a QB hurry on the year as he was stuck behind senior stalwarts Landon Jackson and Anton Juncaj at defensive end. With both of those pass rushers graduating this year, the door is open for Collins to burst onto the scene with the starting job in 2025.
Perhaps that breakout will come in tandem with his cousin on the other side of the ball.
Arkansas Needs to Right its Pine Bluff Wrongs and Land Crutchfield
With Arkansas’ positional need for wide receivers and Crutchfield being an in-state kid, it’s extremely important for the Hogs to land him this time around. What I see as the Hogs’ recent misstep in Pine Bluff makes it even more of a priority.
UAPB wide receiver JaVonnie Gibson entered the transfer portal after a sophomore season that saw him put up an eye-catching 70 receptions for 1,215 yards and nine touchdowns. Standing at 6-foot-3, the Opelousas, La., native also possesses the size of a true No. 1 wideout. The Arkansas staff also got to see him firsthand in the season opener against the Golden Lions in Little Rock.
All of that seemed to indicate Gibson was a prime portal target for the Razorbacks. But, as Gibson told Best of Arkansas Sports’ Andrew Hutchinson, Arkansas didn’t reach out to him in the days after he entered transfer portal. Instead, the talented receiver is headed to Oklahoma.
If the Sooners were after him, then clearly Gibson has the chops to play at the SEC level. So it begs the question of why Arkansas ignored such a promising playmaker who was buttering his bread right down the road from Fayetteville.
Arkansas has already gone full-tilt after Crutchfield twice before – once in the lead-up to his commitment in the summer of 2023 and again the weeks before he signed with Missouri a year ago.
For the sake of getting some revenge on Drinkwitz and keeping a fence around the state of Arkansas, it’s good to see Pittman and the Razorbacks are apparently doing what they need in their third shot at Crutchfield.
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Get insight from Crutchfield’s agent in this BoAS feature:
More from Biddy starting at the 1 hour and 2 minute mark below:
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More coverage of Arkansas football and the transfer portal from BoAS:
