Homegrown receivers supplying size and speed in Razorbacks receiving corps

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is Part 3 of a series featuring home grown Arkansans competing for playing time during the 2025 Arkansas Razorbacks fall camp. This installment focuses on the wide receiver competition:

With the recent down tick in the Arkansas Razorback football program's ability to maximize keeping highly regarded in-state prospects in the fold, pressure grows on those that stay home to represent. Arkansas' smaller population, investments in high school development and decline in regional media outlets relative to surrounding Southeastern Conference (SEC) rivals increase the challenges to follow the Lou Holtz formula of "putting a fence around Arkansas" with each passing season.

The home grown talents who choose to accept the invitation to join Razorback Nation always find no shortage of stiff competition to showcase themselves on the national stage. The SEC provides the grandest stage of them all so the best Arkansas has to offer often find themselves in heated competition each spring, summer and fall. That competition is not only with four and five stars from surrounding states but also those over looked and under recruited elsewhere.

So for Arkansas' born and bred studs like Benton's Braylen Russell, Little Rock's Quincy Rhodes, E'Marion Harris and Charlie Collins, Pine Bluff's Courtney Crutchfield, Warren's Antonio Jordan, Fort Smith's Kobe Branham and Bentonville's C.J. Brown here's looking at you kids. Good fortune in the wars to come.

Arkansas Receiver Field Wide Open

With Bentonville’s CJ Brown's five receptions for 62 yards constituting a significant majority of the returning production from last season's receiving corps, the opportunities to fill the vacuum left by the departures of Andrew Armstrong, Isaac Te'Slaa, Tyrone Broden, Isaiah Setegna, Jordan Anthony and company couldn't be more open. New comers like O'Mega Blake, Raylen Sharpe, Kam Shanks, Ismael Cisse, Jalen Brown and Andy Jean all arrived out of the transfer portal with their sights on prominent roles in a second year run with offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino and quarterback Taylen Green. 

If Brown’s status as a returnee wasn’t enough, his speed seems to be giving him a decided advantage over the competition so far in fall camp. Whether playing in the slot position or outside the numbers, Brown has been capitalizing on his pole position in the race to collect passes from Green. That combination of experience and speed gave Brown a leg up so far. 

“At the Z spot, CJ Brown has been doing a really good job,” Petrino said. “He’s playing both outside and inside and that helps us a lot because of his experience. He understands the offense better than anybody out there.”

That’s saying a lot considering that Sharpe, who took an early lead in the running for the starting slot receiver position, played for Petrino previously at Missouri State. In recent weeks however, Petrino noted the speed that made him recruit Sharpe out of high school wasn’t translating to the practice field at Arkansas. Meanwhile, Brown’s ability to come up to speed has the former Bentonville Tiger very much back in the running. 

“When you run the GPS and everyone sprints as hard as they can, CJ is faster than any of them,” Petrino said. “He had a really nice post route yesterday for a touchdown which was great to see. He also has such great feet that he’s good inside. And like I said, he knows the offense better.”

Brown’s current place near the front of the pack didn’t come easy. He was only a three star recruit coming out of high school. Vanderbilt was the only other SEC school to extend a scholarship offer to the No. 87th ranked receiver in his class. Now as a sophomore at Arkansas, he seems poised to test himself against the best competition college football has to offer. 

“CJ, last year, he did a great job as a freshman,” Razorback receivers coach Ronnie Fouch said. “He was that rotation guy. If I needed a guy to go in the game, I trusted him because he came in early, learned the offense, and now I'm challenging him to take that next step. Be a starter in the SEC. Be a guy that can be reliable on third down and then be tough and go to compete.

“And as a freshman, he got that experience on the field, and I think that's helped him this whole offseason. He's acting like a pro. He's working every day harder and harder, and just challenging him in the run game. Every play, as a starter, you’ve got to be out there every play, playing to the whistle. It's him being a full-time player now instead of just a role substitution type player.”

Pro-sized expectations

Also contending for playing time is Monte Harrison's veteran presence. Harrison’s pair of receptions for 29 yards rounds out Arkansas’ other meager returning production, but his 10-year sojourn in Major League Baseball and 6-3 height is hard to overlook. 

Petrino noted Harrison led all receivers in catches and yards in the most recent scrimmage. Not to be outdone, true freshman Antonio Jordan brings to the fray his 6-6 frame and pedigree from Arkansas’ wide-receiver-high school in Warren, which has a track record of producing professional athletes second to none. 

Jordan earned raved reviews from coaches and media observers alike after arriving on campus for the first time this summer. However in recent weeks, calls were made to lower expectations as Jordan inevitably showed signs of running into the proverbial freshman wall. 

“Like anybody at that age, sometimes you hit a little bit of a wall,” head coach Sam Pittman said. “Either it will be learning the playbook or just the rigors of every day 14 hours a day or whatever it is. It’s a lot according to whatever the rules say. 

“Saying that, I still think he is as elite as what we thought he was before. Once you start making these great catches, you want him to keep making them every single time. So, he is human, but he’s very, very good and I think he’s going to be an elite player — not only for our team but for our league.”

Petrino, who has coached in the NFL, the SEC and oversaw the rise of Lamar Jackson to a Heisman winner at Louisville, has seen his share of singular talents over the years. A trio of them — Jarius Wright, Chris Gragg and Chris Childs — starred for Petrino’s first tenure at Arkansas as head coach from 2008-2011 before going on to the NFL. Petrino believes maturity will be the key to Jordan’s ability to follow in their footsteps in the SEC or beyond.

“Our big freshman has got unbelievable talent,” Petrino said. “He’s got to learn the style of the SEC and know how to go full speed every play. But that will come with maturity. He’s a competitive guy and he’s shown the talent to make a lot of plays for us. He just hasn’t quite learned that I have to go full speed every single play.”

For now, Fouch says he’s working with Jordan daily on his player development plan while tempering expectations and excitement. At some point however, he expects everyone to see what Razorback insiders got a glimpse of early on this summer.

“Everyday me and him (are) just having a plan — what are we going to accomplish today? Hey, we're going to learn this. Not throwing the whole playbook and overwhelming him, that's the main thing. I don't want to overwhelm him. 

“I don't want to put too much pressure on him, because he's got the talent and he cares so much and he wants to do the right thing on every play. So just controlling his reps, putting him in the right situation to build confidence. As a young guy, you always want every day — especially a freshman — their confidence to go up. They have a bad rep, and one on ones, as a young guy, they may get down on themselves. So just building his confidence every day, because, like I said, he's going to be special. And every day he's making that "Wow" play. And now, we want every play to be a wow play.”

Getting off the Crutches

The field of wideout competition at Arkansas was wide open enough to entice the prodigal son, Crutchfield, back home after a year of committing the sin of being seduced across the northern wall by another infamous defector to Missouri in Tigers’ coach Eli Drinkwitz.  Unlike Brown and Jordan, Crutchfield’s expectations were high coming out of high school. As the No. 1 player out of Arkansas and top 50 nationally, Crutchfield was sought after by several SEC schools. 

Ultimately he did as many top instate recruits have done lately and chose to cross over the border and begin his college journey in Columbia. He apparently spent his freshman year getting plump on the sidelines and decided some down-home Arkansas cooking in Petrino’s kitchen was what he needed after all. 

“When he first got here, he was so out of shape,” Petrino said. “It was like, ‘Man. Is this guy ever going to be able to play for us? And then he lost 15 pounds, I think it was, in between spring ball and now, and he's faster and he's competitive. 

“He needs to get in the playbook. Make sure he doesn't make any mental errors, but the last three days, you know, it was great to see him make plays. He had a great play in the scrimmage. Caught a ball, broke a tackle, ran it in for a 30-something yard touchdown, so it was really nice to see that.”

Fouch agrees but like his fellow Southeast Arkansas neighbor, Jordan, the redshirt freshman still has a lot of work ahead of him — if he wants to take the field in the fall.

“He's got great talent, man. Like I said, Every guy in the room just has to keep learning the offense,” Fouch said. “[Crutchfield] has made a lot of plays these first four practices and it's just being more consistent every day. Keep learning the playbook. Be great in the run game, pass game and just be a full-time player, but he's very talented, man.

“He's strong, he's got great hands. He's made some 50/50 catches. And that's what we wanted to see this fall camp too: Who's going to step up and make those 50/50 catches? And he stood out with that. Obviously Omega Blake, Antonio Jordan — I don't know if you can call it 50/50 when the ball is in the air with (Jordan), but he's going to go up and get it”

The More Competition The Better

The combination of transfers, returners and home grown options may turn out to be an embarrassment of riches for the Razorback offense in 2025. Getting on the field early and often will be no easy task, but from his perspective, Petrino says it’s all good.

“It’s a good problem. There’s great competition,” Petrino said. “They are there competing to get reps with the ones and reps with the twos. They are competing to get out there so I think it’s a good problem. 

“As we work through here the next two and a half weeks, we need to find out who wants to be the go-to-guy and who we can count on. It’s really been good competition. We do have a lot of guys there and a lot of competition, but it'll play itself out. We’ve just got to keep working them, and they’ve got to keep getting better.”