Sam Pittman enjoying ability to shuffle offensive line

Before taking the head coach job at Arkansas, Sam Pittman was the offensive line and associate head coach for Georgia. He was such a good coach up front that the Razorbacks didn’t even mind he wasn’t a coordinator when they hired them as a head coach. A few years into his career and the Hogs have been a force on offense, all starting with those five fellas along the line of center.

Coming off another strong year as an offense and as an offensive line, Arkansas will have lofty expectations up front yet again. While there are some returners, Coach Pittman will also be tasked with tinkering guys around at different positions throughout the next several months to see who works best where. In fact, it was during this process back at Georgia where Pittman uncovered UGA’s best OL prospect in some time.

He revealed at a recent media session that former No. 4 pick Andrew Thomas was originally a backup left tackle, but was shuffled over to left guard and then right tackle, where he shined and eventually was drafted top-five. Here was that story as Pittman told it the other day:

“I am figuring out how things go, yes. And I’ll never forget, I was at Georgia and I had Andrew Thomas at left tackle and then I figured out, well, I think he’s one of our top five and he was behind Isaiah Wynn, who was a first rounder. And I go, well, I’m gonna move him in here at left guard. Well he started at left guard and this was all in preseason camp, and I go, you know what I need a right tackle more and I need a left guard right now. And then I moved him to right tackle two weeks before the first game.

“Kirby, I remember Kirby said it better work, man, and of course he went out there and we went to the national championship game and he was a, you know, fourth pick in the draft.”

Quite the story — and one Sam Pittman is hoping for a repeat of along his own line. There may even be one younger lineman who is catching the coach’s eye in that regard.

“Those things are fun to find out about your kids, and I really believe we’ll find out that (Patrick) Kutas can play tackle. I believe that we will. And right now we got to exposed a little bit on the edge during the scrimmage, and so we need a little help out there or we need to get better and things of that nature. So yes, I’m having a blast doing it and I have no reason to believe that we won’t have a really good offensive line again. And we just got to make sure we got the right five out there at the right positions. And I am having fun doing it, yes.”