As happy as Arkansas fans are about getting the 2021 season underway, the Razorbacks themselves are thrilled to play before more fans than last year.
Arkansas linebacker Grant Morgan, safety and New Orleans native Joe Foucha and offensive lineman Myron Cunningham, three of Arkansas’ five captains announced this weekend by Sam Pittman, shared that sentiment Tuesday.
“It’s going to be great,” Cunningham said. “I personally think the fans bring another aspect to the game. They bring a little bit of juice to the players and sometimes that is what we need.”
Arkansas didn’t get the chance to play in front of a capacity crowd last season due to covid-19. This fall, its first three games are at home, and the opening two are against old Southwest Conference foes Rice and Texas, who is scheduled to join the Southeastern Conference with Oklahoma in 2025.
“All the Southwest Conference old heads, I guess you would say, are super excited with the schedule we have now,” Morgan said. “Rice, we are excited to be able to play them. They are an old rivalry from back in the day and the way they play is the old-school football, that smash-mouth (style), so we are excited.
“We are excited to bring back that so-called rivalry and make it how everyone wants to see a game. You play football to see big hits, play football to see big touchdowns, big runs, so we are excited to do that. We want to be able to make it a great game for all our fans and especially in year two under Coach Pittman.”
Morgan noted that unlike last season, when Arkansas did not get to have a spring practice under Pittman, the coaching staff and players are now more familiar with one another.
“We understand him way more than we did last year, he understands us more than he did last year, so we are excited to step up and be a more confident team in ourselves,” Morgan said.
Foucha concurred with Cunningham and Morgan, who join quarterback KJ Jefferson and safety Jalen Catalon as captains.
“I have been talking about this for the longest and I used to tell a lot of people we are happy with what we did last year, but we are not excited, because we want more,” Foucha said. “I feel like covid messed us up with the time we had with Coach Pittman.
"I feel like we have had more time to get to know him, get to learn our defense more and hang around Coach Pittman. We love him and we will run through a wall for him.”
Foucha, whose family battled through Hurricane Katrina, was asked about the safety of his family after Hurricane Ida made landfall recently.
“Everyone is OK,” Foucha said. “I made sure my family was OK this time, especially my mom. We did stay during Katrina. But I’m not there and most of my brothers don’t live in the house anymore, so that was one of my priorities, making sure she left the waters.
“Some of my friends have left, but it has been hard to keep in touch with them because of the phone signals and stuff like that. But I talked to one of them today and he is doing perfectly fine.”