Often times in the Southeastern Conference, the difference between a really good and historically great football team comes down to the interior trenches.
Think back to Nick Saban’s first Alabama national championship winning team. In 2009, Terrence Cody, affectionately nicknamed ‘Mount Cody’, blocked what would have been a game-winning field goal from a Tennessee kicker and kept an undefeated season alive for the Tide.
Without Cody blocking that kick and another one earlier in the game, Alabama may not even win the SEC West that season, much less the BCS national title.
Suffice it to say, it’s important to stockpile talent at that position. Arkansas is doing that in the 2025 signing class currently, and on Saturday added Mississippi defensive line product Reginald Vaughn to the commitment fold.
A 4-star on Rivals.com and most recruiting services, Vaughn decided on the Razorbacks over LSU, Ole Miss and Mississippi State, which is significant because they will play all three of those teams almost every season, especially the former two.
In fact, it’s the first time according to Rivals that Arkansas has landed a 4-star defensive tackle since Briston Guidry committed in 2015.
Before that, they’d had a consistent run of them including Bijhon Jackson of El Dorado and Denmark’s Hjalte Froholdt, who eventually transitioned to the offensive line.
Vaughn’s commitment is the latest in a string of successes for Sam Pittman, who also secured three other commitments this week and Vaughn’s was the third in two days.
Deke Adams, the defensive line coach for the Razorbacks, wants to beef up his line with as much talent as possible, especially after it will lose a lot in 2024.
Carius Curne’s flip hurt things back in June, but all Adams and the rest of his support staff did was go back to the drawing board and figure out who they were going to go after next.
What Arkansas is getting in Reginald Vaughn
As a junior at Hartsfield Academy in Flowood, Miss., the 6-foot-3, 268-pounder racked up 80 tackles, 20 tackles for loss and 10 sacks, primarily playing defensive end.
Adams will almost undoubtedly move him inside once he gets on campus, however.
Florida, Georgia and Tennessee also offered Vaughn, so he didn’t just get the in-state treatment from Lane Kiffin and Jeff Lebby. He was a highly sought after commodity, and joins two other players at his class of 2025 position group in Caleb Bell and JaQuentin Madison.
“I feel like Coach Pitt and Coach Adams coach with a purpose,” Vaughn said on an Instagram post from a Rivals report. “You just know it comes from the heart.”
A quick perusal of Vaughn’s tape shows that he has a nose for the football, and hunts the quarterback with a vengeance.
His commitment is the 19th of the 2025 class for Arkansas, and has lifted Arkansas to the cusp of the Top 25 in the 247Sports Composite.
T-Will is That Guy
It probably didn’t hurt matters for Vaughn’s recruitment and ultimate decision that his future defensive coordinator found himself going viral (for the right reasons) this week.
Travis Williams’ rapping skills were on full display for the assembled members of the team in the film room and the Internet was eventually treated to the freestyle later on.
It even registered a response from some of professional football’s celebrity heavy hitters in the broadcasting world:
Historically, northwest Arkansas has been tough to recruit to because it’s so far away from the Deep South areas that are the most important recruiting territories for SEC blue-blood programs. In this context, the importance of Arkansas having an all African-American coaching staff on that side of the football can’t be overstated.
There isn’t a single other team in the now 16-member SEC that can say that, and even though they probably won’t acknowledge it publicly, I feel like it plays into their favor on the recruiting trail.
Even though NIL and the transfer portal has totally transformed the way athletes are recruited and leveled the playing field throughout the sport, at the end of the day players want to go where they feel a brotherhood and a connection and feel like they are going to be loved and appreciated.
It goes without saying that it’s going to be a lot easier for guys who have played football at a high level and are from the same geographic areas and cultural backgrounds to connect with these highly recruited athletes. Especially when they let their guard down like Williams did and just rap without a beat. How many times does that happen in a locker room over the course of a season? Probably a lot.
The reasons that Arkansas can’t recruit at a high level and can’t win major recruiting battles, especially when it comes to the big boys on defense, have been repeated ad nauseum through the years.
To the credit of Williams, Adams and the rest of the staff, they don’t care what the excuses are. They are focusing on what they can control, and despite the rockiness around the Curne de-commitment, those efforts are now coming to roost.
That’s sweet music (or rapping, if you will) to the ears of Arkansas football fans.
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More Arkansas Football Recruiting
On the offensive side of the line, Hogs assistant Eric Mateos recently own a recruiting battle with his predecessor, Cody Kennedy, who now coaches the big boys in Starkville.
Mateos has joined a staff led by Pittman, who is on what is considered one of the hottest seats in college football. That’s a stark contrast to the situation around Kennedy, who is part of a first-year staff under Jeff Lebby.
Getting beat by LSU is understandable, but if the Razorbacks had also lost a recruit to a team in a similar standing, it would have been another tough PR blow. Landing Prudhomme is big for that reason, even though he isn’t quite a blue-chip recruit.
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