When Ryan Silverfield arrived in Fayetteville to take over the Arkansas Razorbacks, he didn’t inherit the typical new-coach situation. There was no slow transition period, no luxury of evaluating a stable roster before making calculated changes. Instead, Silverfield stepped into a program already stretched thin, and then watched it get thinner.
Arkansas entered the offseason with a roster that had holes even at full strength. Since then, departures through the transfer portal have only amplified the problem. Now, as the next portal window opens January 2, the Razorbacks face an urgent reality: the majority of their Year 1 rebuild will have to be done through the portal, and it will have to be done quickly.