FAYETTEVILLE -- Arkansas' new defensive coordinator got kudos from his old boss addressing the Northwest Arkansas Touchdown Club Wednesday at Mermaid's Restaurant.
Before joining Arkansas coach Bret Bielema's Razorbacks staff last winter, Robb Smith served from 2009 through 2011 as special-teams coordinator while variously coaching linebackers and the secondary on the Rutgers staff of Greg Schiano. Smith served in 2013 as linebackers coach for Schiano with the NFL's Tampa Bay Bucs after being elevated to Rutgers defensive coordinator in 2012 with Schiano gone to Tampa Bay.
Now a NFL Network analyst with his two-year head-coaching run done at Tampa, Schiano visited Smith, Bielema and the UA staff for a couple of practices before his scheduled Northwest Arkansas Touchdown Club address.
"You have one of my all-time favorite coaches I've worked with," Schiano said. "I think you've got a great one here. I really do."
Smith, whose first contact with Bielema was as an Iowa 1999 graduate assistant while Bielema coached Iowa linebackers, coordinated Maine's defense when he first came to Schiano's attention.
"When we had an opening he came down (to New Brunswick, N.J.) to interview and got caught in a snowstorm," Schiano said. "He had one set of clothes and the flights were cancelled. He spent three days with us. Before he left we had him doing jobs."
Smith was Rutgers' defensive coordinator when the 2012 Scarlet Knights defeated the John L. Smith-coached Razorbacks, 35-26 in Fayetteville.
"Robb did a tremendous job," Schiano said of the 2012 season that Smith coordinated the Rutgers defense for coach Kyle Flood. "I think they were fourth in the country in defense. Everywhere he has been, he has been very productive."
Smith inherits an Arkansas defense that leaking from a 3-9 team that Bielema inherited last year.
"It's going to take a little time, I don't think it's going to be overnight," Schiano said of Smith getting Arkansas' defense to the style he's accustomed. "But I think what you will see is relentless effort to swarm to the football. That doesn't happen by accident."
Smith's swarm will elicit increasingly improved results as the defense learns to execute it, Schiano said.
"I am really a big believer in defensive football that you make your own luck," Schiano said. "Luck is proportionate to how hard you go to that ball."
Inheriting an Arkansas program fallen on hard times, Bielema rebuilds the Razorbacks "the right way," Schiano said, with the same formula taking Bielema to a 68-24 2006 to 2012 head coaching Wisconsin.
"He has a plan, a vision," Schiano said. "He has done it so he knows it works. Sticking to a plan and being persistent, that's what is going to make it."
Schiano said it takes a vision and plan in that order. Ironically for "vision," Schiano chose the late blind singer Ray Charles' revered rendition of "America the Beautiful."
"Ray Charles never could see America," Schiano said. "But he had a vision."
How difficult, it must be, Schiano was asked, off 3-9 for Bielema for Bielema not to compromise at the whim of the "noise" critical of his first-year Arkansas coaching to stick to the plan propelling Wisconsin to 68-24 from 2006-2012.
"You can't hear the noise," Schiano said. "At the end of the day they can't eat you. So do the very best you can. What is the best you can? The best you can is doing it the way you know what's right."
Kowtowing to outside influences and quick fixes won't sustain success, Schiano said.
"Your team will recognize it first," Schiano said. "If this is the answer this week, then this (something else) is the answer next week, your team picks up on it pretty darned quick. If your team has a system and they know you are committed to the formula of the stem, they'll stick with it. College football is recruit the right people for your program and really develop them every year, physically, academically, emotionally, Bret does all those things."
Sports on 08/21/2014