Tim Cramsey inherited an Arkansas offense that could move the ball in 2025, but still find ways to hand it back to their opponents.
The Razorbacks finished the 2025 season with a minus-11 turnover margin, tied for 125th out of 136 FBS teams, and lost nine of their 14 fumbles.
Arkansas' new offensive coordinator and veteran play caller immediately went to work on solving that issue, and he's employed a rather interesting approach.
Cramsey came to Fayetteville with Ryan Silverfield, who left Memphis to take over the Arkansas program. The two spent the last four seasons together with the Tigers, where Cramsey's offenses ranked in the top 25 nationally in scoring every year and averaged 36.3 points per game across 51 games. In 2024, Memphis finished second in the country in fewest turnovers. Protecting the football is not something he picked up on the flight to Arkansas.
When he was asked about his thoughts on the team's ball security recently, Cramsey said the question was like a punch to his gut, and to fix the ball security issues, Cramsey and the offensive staff built a chant, and everyone in the football program is in on it...and he does mean everyone.
"That's all we talk about. That's all we talk about in the meetings, it's how we start practice, that's how we yell. That's what we yell in practice, we got the kids yelling, we got the trainers yelling. We got the student training girls that walk around with the water bottles, they yell OTB," Cramsey told On3.
"OTB" stands for On The Ball, a running reminder to the players to keep control of the football.
The attention to detail is not new, and it has become a clear focus program-wide by incorporating literally everyone involved in practices into the efforts.
"Every single drill we do is a ball-security circuit," Cramsey goes on to share. "Every single thing we talk about to the quarterbacks is protecting the football. We don't turn the ball over. Captain Obvious statement: If we can own the ball, if we can throw and catch, if we can block, if we can execute, everything else going to take care of itself."
Before Memphis, Cramsey ran offenses at Marshall from 2018 to 2021, and made coordinator stops at Sam Houston State and Nevada as well and has a total of 18 years of coordinator experience under his belt.
He shared after Day 2 of fall camp there are only five stats that matter to him - how many points they score relative to the opponent's final score, turnover margin, "cash down" efficiency percentage, red zone touchdown percentage, and explosive plays. In his experience, those are the only five stats that truly matter when it comes to winning and losing football games.
The mess he is tasked with cleaning up showed up in the biggest moments last fall. Arkansas lost late fumbles in back-to-back games at Ole Miss and Memphis, and spotted Tennessee a 3-0 edge in giveaways during that loss. The turnovers helped push Sam Pittman onto the hot seat before the season was over.
Now the fix comes with a soundtrack. If Cramsey has his way, OTB will be the loudest letters on the Arkansas practice field.
Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.