HawgBeat - Mateos, Razorbacks fending off poachers
Arkansas offensive line coach Eric Mateos details how the Razorbacks are fending off roster poachers.
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It comes as no surprise in the transfer portal and name, image and likeness (NIL) era that the Arkansas Razorbacks are actively fending off roster poachers.
During a recent appearance on the "Coaches & The Mouth" podcast, Arkansas offensive line coach Eric Mateos made it clear that the Hogs have players who are actively being pursued by other schools, including left tackle Fernando Carmona Jr., who transferred in from San Jose State prior to the spring.
"Our left tackle right now has already got guys trying to steal him from us already and he just got here in January," Mateos said. "You hear rumors and agents, now they've got agents. These agents don’t even need to be NFLPA certified like the thing with the NFL agents. These dudes just got an associates degree and lived down the street from Johnny and said, ‘Hey Johnny, I’ll be your agent.’ Some of them are doing it the right way."
Mateos was hired by Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman on Dec. 3 to replace former offensive line coach Cody Kennedy. A former graduate assistant under Pittman with the Razorbacks from 2013-15, Mateos is back in Fayetteville trying to improve a unit that was one of the worst in the nation last fall.
With transfer portal additions such as Carmona, Addison Nichols from Tennessee and Keyshawn Blackstock from Michigan State, the offensive line did seem to perform better during spring drills. Plenty of the players alluded to the group being closer and more connected, which is part of Mateos' strategy.
"That's the challenge with it, is how do you manage people trying to come get your guys?," Mateos said. "I guess my goal would be the players love playing here at Arkansas, they love playing for me and then they love playing with each other, that some of the cheating going on doesn't really faze them.
"With Fernando I called him and I was like, ‘Hey man, I know people are coming after you trying to get you to leave again.’ He’s like, ‘Coach, you ain’t gotta worry about nothing. I’m riding with you.’ I knew he would say that, but as a coach you just live in this constant state of paranoia now that you just can't help."
To add to the paranoia, Mateos spoke of a recent conversation he had regarding NIL collectives getting in on the roster poaching.
"I had somebody tell me two days ago that there was a collective from a university calling kids at another school who were not in the portal and offering them money to go into the portal," Mateos said. "The collective is recruiting. The collective is recruiting players. It's like, what is going on?
"I think of like, I was born in Florida. You see these palm trees that bend during a hurricane and they don't break, right? How do you withstand the hurricane of all this illegal recruiting and wild lies that go on? Well, you have a good foundation. You're not going to be able to keep everybody. And at some point, it's not going to go your way, but if you buy into the people and the product and you believe in it, then they believe in it and they don't want to leave."
After spending two seasons with BYU in 2019-20 and then coaching Baylor's offensive line for the past three seasons, Mateos is back in the SEC, which has proven to be beneficial for recruiting.
"The recruiting landscape in general in the SEC is much more rigorous than the Big 12," Mateos said. "When you're at a place like Baylor, you already know that there's a sliver of players at the top of the crop that you ain't got a chance at.
"And so you're not even really starting those relationships, because this guy is never going to come play in the Big 12 anyways, so why even bother? And then you get in the SEC and it's like the door is open to you. You're in the best conference in the country and guys want to play on that stage."
Mateos said his biggest initial challenge when he took the Arkansas job was catching up on recruiting transfers and class of 2025 high school recruits. Part of that process resulted in some interesting conversations.
"I had some unbelievable text messages from transfers in the first recruiting cycle," Mateos said. "You're just like, 'Hey, I'm Coach Mateos, would you like to get on a call sometime today?'"
Mateos said the player would respond with 'Coach, hey I'm looking for this.' By "this," he means a dollar amount.
"'This is the opening statement? No thanks," Mateos said. "I think it's my job to make sure that I'm bringing the right people in that deserve to profit off their name, image and likeness, but also guys that aren't consumed with it."
The hardest challenge for Mateos right now, he said, is to keep the unit together despite egos, comparison and pocket-watching.
"I took it really personal to try and earn everybody's trust on an individual level, because if you don't do that, then you're never going to get the group," Mateos said. "There's always going to be one or two or three guys in the room that are like 'Man, I don't buy into this guy. He doesn't care about me. He doesn't want to coach me.' That's been the biggest thing, is can you connect with everybody on and individual level? Once you can do that, then you can coach the group."
Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman will be on the road this month to help raise NIL funding for his team. Mateos said there is no bigger advocate for the players getting NIL money than Pittman, and the job of the assistant coaches is to make sure they're taking care of their room so Pittman can worry about things like raising funds.
"My job is to handle the offensive line," Mateos said. "I need to solve all the problems that I can possibly solve and handle it as much as I can before it ever gets to him. If I've got 10 guys going to him, then I'm not connected with my room.
"I need to be so connected to my room day-to-day that I know what's going on and I know if I've got a player that's disgruntled, or if I know I've got a player that misses home, or if I know I've got a player that had their uncle that's passed away. That's just being connected to your room, and that's our jobs as assistants."
