HawgBeat - Why Sam Pittman chose Kenny Guiton as interim OC
Sam Pittman talked Wednesday about why he decided to go with Kenny Guiton as interim offensive coordinator.
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Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman said Monday that he has never been part of a coaching staff that had a coordinator fired during the season prior to this year.
After making the decision to relieve offensive coordinator Dan Enos of his duties after eight games, Pittman was able to check that box off. The Head Hog elected to give receivers coach Kenny Guiton a chance to step up and call plays as interim offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
Just two of the offensive assistant coaches — offensive line coach Cody Kennedy and running backs coach Jimmy Smith — have been with Pittman since his arrival as head coach prior to the 2020 season. Guiton arrived in 2021 as part of the Kendal Briles offensive coaching tree.
When Briles left Arkansas for the TCU offensive coordinator job, Guiton stayed put and worked under Enos. A former Ohio State quarterback, Guiton has been around some other good programs as a coach, including Houston and Texas.
"Well, he’s been in the game for a while now," Pittman said on Wednesday's SEC Teleconference. "He’s young but he’s been at some good programs, been around a lot of different offenses, things of that nature. We weren’t going to try to change the offense. The reason I went with him is I thought he was the most knowledgable guy in both the run and the pass.
"I knew he was in the pass game. But like I say, I was surprised about answers for blitzing. Anybody can call a play but it’s the answer for what ifs that you need to have success. I was very pleased knowing that he had the answers to the test. The other thing is, I felt like they would, I didn’t know that the offense would rally around him. That surprised me a little bit."
Pittman added that he knew the players would be happy for Guiton, but the way they have welcomed the change with open arms has kind of caught him off guard.
"I knew that they would be happy for him and things of that nature," Pittman said. "But they’ve seemed to rally around him, want him to have success and things of that nature so that might have been somewhat a little surprising. But I knew they would, it’s just they’ve really got a passion for what we’re doing and for Coach Guiton."
Pittman said Monday that the team has cut out over 30% of the offensive playbook to allow for less volume and weight on the shoulders of quarterback KJ Jefferson. The hope is that a simpler offense will cut down on the mistakes that have been hurting them all year.
"What you might or might not look at is, how fast the quarterback gets rid of the football, and sacks can have a lot to do with protection, have a lot to do with running backs, can have a bunch to do with wide receivers, and a bunch to do with the quarterback," Pittman said Monday. "So, we’ve got to speed up all that process. We hope to protect better and things of that nature, but we also have to be able to move the pocket. Add different chips and do it in a game, so there’s a lot to be said about that kind of stuff."
Jefferson said that he's just really enjoyed the way that Guiton has coached the quarterbacks and the offense as a whole.
"From a standpoint of Coach Guiton coming in, he's more of a laid-back coach," Jefferson said Tuesday. "He corrects us when we make mistakes, but he's not really, really hard on us. He played the position, so he knows what to expect. He kind of just lays back and lets us do our own thing, but when he needs to coach us, we're very coachable."
Guiton has never called a play in a game before, but he will do it for the first time Saturday from the sky box after initially saying he wanted to do it from the sideline.
"Any coordinator to me that is especially young will be much better upstairs but I gave him that opportunity to decided what he wanted to do and he changed to wanted to be in the box," Pittman said.
Arkansas and Florida will kickoff at 11 a.m. CT at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, Florida. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2.
