What Arkansas’ Ryan Silverfield Said About Jared Curtis and the Rest of Vanderbilt Football – Sports Illustrated

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After viewing film of just a few starts from Vanderbilt five-star freshman quarterback Jared Curtis, Arkansas football head coach Ryan Silverfield already feels like he has seen Curtis showcase it all.
“There’s nothing that he cannot do,” Silverfield said plainly when beginning his thoughts on a question regarding Curtis.
Curtis has played in five games for Vanderbilt thus far and has made starts in three of them. Though Curtis is coming off a knee bruise injury, he was not the problem in Vanderbilt’s loss to Ole Miss over the weekend. Cutis finished the game 19-for-32 passing for 22 yards and a touchdown. His two interceptions were arguably the fault of his receivers for letting passes bounce off their hands.
Regardless, Curtis has shown plenty of the film through his first few games in college football. And because of that, Silverfield seems to have a tremendous amount of respect for the impact Curtis can have on a game. He knows why Curtis was rated as high as he was coming out of high school.
Showing a consistent trend with what every Vanderbilt opponent has said about Curtis this season, Silverfield also sees the tangibles and intangibles that Curtis has. Between strength, size, throwing ability and more, Arkansas knows it will have its hands full defensively this weekend.
“He’s big, he’s strong, he can make every throw. There’s times where he gets pressured and you see him rolling out and throwing back across the body and making these elite passes. Tremendous arm strength, so he can do it all,” Silverfield said.
Curtis has thrown for 968 yards this season and has five passing touchdowns and five interceptions to go with that. Vanderbilt has seen the full Jared Curtis experience in games this season and the Commodores are hoping they will get the talented version of Curtis that can leave people speechless.
Curtis was not the only Vanderbilt-related topic Silverfield talked about in his press conference, though. Silverfield also talked about the challenges that Vanderbilt’s defense poses to opponents, especially in terms of bringing pressure.
Even though the Vanderbilt defense has had their struggles this season, the Commodores have been able to apply pressure on opposing quarterbacks. Vanderbilt has 15 sacks as a team this season, which is 2.5 sacks per game. That is good for tied-31st in college football. It has done its job of at least the ability to generate some sort of discomfort against opponents. The issue defensively has been allowing explosive plays and not finishing on plays where defenders apply pressure.
Arkansas is going to expect Vanderbilt to bring pressure and is expecting Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea and defensive coordinator Steve Gregory to trick the Razorbacks at various times. The Commodores are going to look for success in those areas, especially as a way to bounce back from last week.
“They’re bringing a variety of pressures, I guess what you’d call from the third level. They bring some corner cats, but quite a bit of safety pressure. They got a great feel for that,” Silverfield said. “Then there’s times you look and if I pause it, you’d say it’s got to be cover zero. They’re all walked up, they got linebackers up in there and then all of a sudden on the snap they’re dropping out of there and it’s maybe a drop eight.”
Both teams are looking for their first SEC win of the season. For Vanderbilt this is more than just a game where the Commodores are looking to get back over .500. This is the most important game of Vanderbilt’s season from the standpoint of getting its confidence back and a return to the standard the program has set.
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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