One simple and obvious detail attached to Ryan Silverfield's first full season at Memphis makes it impossible to predict how Year 1 at Arkansas will unfold.
It is natural for fans of a school to welcome a new head coach and size up that coach's first season at a previous school as a point of comparison. Arkansas fans have every right to be concerned about the fact that Ryan Silverfield took Mike Norvell's Cotton Bowl-level Memphis program (from 2019) and could not maintain that standard in his subsequent six seasons as the Tigers' head coach. It is a legitimate and logical point of skepticism facing Silverfield as he comes to Fayetteville. We have not denied or sidestepped that point, and we're not going to start now.
However, for all the entirely reasonable questions skeptics can throw at Silverfield as he settles in at Arkansas, there's one thing which can't be held against the new Boss Hog: Year 1 at Memphis offers no real basis for a comparison or projection connected to Year 1 at Arkansas.
Here's the thing: Ryan Silverfield's first full season at Memphis was 2020. Wait a minute, there's something really notable and important about that year, right? Yes, it was the COVID-19 season. That year was an outlier in college football on so many levels and for so many obvious reasons. There weren't true home games in front of normal crowds. Practice schedules and structures were thrown all out of whack. Players lacked the rhythm, normalcy, and the relaxed environment they need to be at their best.
Remember all the wild and crazy plot twists from the COVID year? Michigan was horrendous. Indiana (before Curt Cignetti came along) was actually good. So many weird and unusual things happened that were not sustained into the 2020s. Teams didn't play full 12-game seasons in many cases. The sport had to continue so that athletic departments and schools wouldn't face budgetary shortfalls any bigger than what already existed due to COVID limitations. Alabama won the national title and Ohio State and Clemson both made the College Football Playoff, but the sport was destabilized across the country in 2020.
Ryan Silverfield went 8-3 in the 2020 season at Memphis. His Tiger team was all over the map, winning one game 50-49 over UCF and another 10-7 over Navy. College football is normally volatile and weird, but 2020 took those characteristics to extreme levels. It's just not a season one should examine and then identify as a strong basis for comparison with what Silverfield is entering at Arkansas in 2026.
Looking at the back end of Silverfield's Memphis tenure, not the front, is much more instructive for Arkansas fans as they wonder what kind of coach they are truly getting.