Sam Pittman knows firsthand the cost of locker room strife and conflict.
The Arkansas football coach has lived through issues among players and assistants throwing wrenches into the last two seasons to varying degrees. In 2022, Pittman suffered through at least one staff member who essentially helped fan the flames of discontent from some players fed up with a certain play call or the number of snaps they were getting.
In 2023, he had the headache needing to navigate the behavior of certain veteran star players who dropped the ball on showcasing real leadership. This summer, Pittman indicated that NIL disparities between the players led to some of the dysfunction of that 4-8 season.
This season, the Razorbacks have already racked up five wins through eight games and, so far, it appears the same kinds of issues afflicting the program’s culture in 2022 and 2023 have been resolved.
There’s no more quarterback who seems way more interested in his own apparel line than his team’s fortunes, or a strength coach sowing discord. Outside of a brief flare-up around offensive lineman Keyshawn Blackstock allegedly sitting out in fall camp because of an NIL payment, from the outside it’s seemed like mostly smooth sailing from a camaraderie standpoint.
That has likely been just as much of a relief to Pittman as the Arkansas football fans who have enjoyed watching the team play so hard this fall, even in losses.
Given the recent track record here, Pittman almost certainly doesn’t want to see anything flare up to potentially derail a third straight season. It’s easy to imagine that the last couple seasons would have taught him to come down harder on dissenters than he might have, say, at the start of his head coaching tenure.
Indeed, by the account of recently dismissed Razorback Ty Washington, it appears Pittman has very absorbed that lesson.
Ty Washington: New Arkansas Football Exile
Speculation has swirled around the exact reasons behind why Sam Pittman recently dismissed tight ends Var’Keyes Gumms and Ty Washington, but on Wednesday the latter gave his account of what happened on the “4th & 5” show.
The redshirt sophomore explained he refused to enter at the end of last Saturday’s blowout win over Mississippi State, mainly due to growing frustration with his diminished role on the team as well as personal anguish.
“Before the game started, my cousin told me basically about my grandma’s dying and she’s on hospice basically,” the 20-year-old said. “And that messed me up totally, completely. I already have things going on mentally and physically right now for the past two weeks they have not been playing me.”
He added: “I didn’t think that I needed to go in and just try to fight through something and look bad or mess up the team in general when I’m already going through something mentally.”
Arkansas didn’t need Ty Washington, who’d had a few good moments in 2023, to win. Tight ends Luke Hasz and Andreas Paaske were more than holding the fort down, and Washington knew it, giving them plenty of credit in the interview.
While Washington knew his refusal wouldn’t go down well, he didn’t expect what happened the next day when he got a text from his position coach, Morgan Turner, telling him to go meet Pittman just 37 minutes later. As he walked to Pittman’s office after a coaches meeting, “I knew something was off kind of just because the way the coaches was walking past me, they had to walk past me to get to their offices and some of them didn’t want to say anything to me. Some of them just had their head down walking and it was just weird, kind of weird feeling.”
Washington entered the room expecting to discuss the process of starting counseling. In the past, Pittman has expressed his support for players getting counseling and Washington had talked with an Arkansas football support staff member about starting it soon.
Pittman, however, was in no mood to listen. According to Washington, he’d already made up his mind about the next step. The chat was brief and Pittman got to the point quickly, basically saying, “You’re off the team.”
“I tried to explain it to him, ‘You’re kicking me off the team, but can you listen to me?'”
The response, according to Washington: “I don’t have to listen to you. You’re not on the team anymore.”
“And I was like, ‘Five minutes ago I was just on the team, so can you listen to me now and let me explain what’s going on?'” Pittman, as Washington saw it, “really didn’t want to hear it… He said for the past three years I’ve done nothing but complain, which is new to me to be honest.”
“It was more of a ‘I’m just done with you,’ and I didn’t expect that,” he said in another part.
Ty Washington added that he’s on track to graduate in spring of 2025 and isn’t a troublemaker. He hasn’t done anything illegal. This was simply a situation where he’d let frustrations get the best of him, ultimately leading to a refusal to enter the game that the coaches chose not to tolerate.
Washington said that if he could choose to do it over again, he would have entered the Mississippi State game. He holds no bitterness towards his former teammates, or the fans in general: “I’m sorry to Razorback Nation. I feel like I let ’em down just because I let my grief and frustration get the best of me.”
The last few days have been surreal for the Georgia native. His routine shattered, “I’m waking up not knowing what I really want to do with my day, but shocked that I’ve given so much to this program, given so much to this university and so much of my time, blood, sweat and tears – that I’m just let go.”
No Black-and-White Situation with Pittman, Washington
As 4th & 5’s host DJ Williams – a former star tight end for the Razorbacks in his own right – does a good job of pointing out, this is far from a simple cut-and-dry situation where one side is clearly in the right and the other in the wrong.
Sure, Washington could have controlled how he felt about getting fewer snaps than expected, but he couldn’t have controlled how life can steamroll you the sometimes. When you are told your beloved grandmother is in hospice, there is no “off” switch you can toggle to clear that out of your mind.
Obviously, the full story isn’t known given Pittman isn’t speaking for himself. But from what Washington said, it appears like Pittman felt that this wasn’t some one-off situation with him – that it had been brewing for the last couple seasons. The refusal on the sidelines was a final straw.
In the end, both sides can have valid perspectives, but only one side – Pittman’s – holds ultimate power.
This incident shows the head Hog, apparently, has taken lessons from the last two seasons to heart. His patience for putting up with something that could damage these Razorbacks’ revamped locker room culture is close to zero.
There’s a lesson somewhere in here for Tyrus Washington, too. Just as Pittman had to grow from the pain of the last two seasons, so may Washington learn from the shock of an unexpected, new life he’s just now learning to process.
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Ty Washington on Morgan Turner
As Washington sees it, Morgan Turner isn’t as buddy-buddy with his players as his predecessor at the tight ends coach position, Dowell Loggains.
“He always was more in our circle outside of football,” said Washington, who was coached by Loggains in his freshman year.
“It wasn’t really that with Turner, but he’s a great coach, don’t get me wrong. It’s just personality-wise and stuff. He didn’t really connect with me to be honest. It was always just ball with us and it wasn’t really nothing outside of that.”
Then, to make sure we don’t misunderstand, Washington repeated himself: “But he’s a great coach, don’t get me wrong.”
Watch the entire interview here:
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