North Alabama Scouting Report: What Arkansas Actually Has To Stop In The Opener

Arkansas opens the Ryan Silverfield era on Saturday against North Alabama, and the line says it all: the Razorbacks are favored by more than 40 points. Arkansas should win, and win big. But if you actually study North Alabama, this is not a team that just shows up to collect a check. They already won their opener, their defense just set school records, and there is a Memphis storyline running underneath the whole thing. Here is the honest scouting report, cross checked against North Alabama's own athletics site, the box score, and what both coaching staffs said on the record this week.

Watch: the full 4th & Five breakdown.

This Is Not North Alabama's Opener

Start here, because it changes how you watch. North Alabama already played. On August 29 the Lions beat Samford 22 to 10 at a neutral site in Huntsville. So this is not a team knocking off the rust. There is real film on them, and Arkansas has been studying it all week.

Now, keep the expectations honest too. North Alabama plays at the FCS level in the United Athletic Conference, they went 2 and 10 last year, and they have never beaten an FBS team in their history at this level. Silverfield's old Memphis team beat this same North Alabama program 40 to nothing back in 2024. The talent gap is real. But the Lions are climbing, and the tape from the opener shows a defense playing at a high level.

The Coach: An RPO Author With Arkansas Roots

North Alabama is led by fourth year head coach Brent Dearmon. He is an offensive mind who literally wrote a book on the run pass option, and he has real Arkansas roots. He was the offensive coordinator at Arkansas Tech in Russellville from 2015 to 2017, and later the offensive coordinator at Kansas. This year he handed the play calling to a new coordinator, Travis Partridge, so he could run the whole program. On defense, first year coordinator Clint Bowen comes from the Big 12 and was the interim defensive coordinator at Oklahoma State last season, where his unit tightened up late in the year.

North Alabama went heavy in the transfer portal this offseason, bringing in about 25 Division I transfers, and eight of them are former Memphis players. That last part is the whole subplot, and we will come back to it.

The Offense: Run First, Then Take A Shot

North Alabama wants to run the football. Arkansas defensive coordinator Ron Roberts described their approach cleanly this week: "They're going to run the football, give you all the formation issues they can to run the football, and then take their shots deep and big play. That's kind of been their MO."

The quarterback is Destin Wade, a 6 foot 3, 225 pound junior who once started as a true freshman at Kentucky, in the Music City Bowl against Iowa, and has also been at Colorado. He is a dual threat. Roberts called him "athletic," "big," and "long," able to "make all the throws" with a strong arm, but added that he "can't make people miss in open field." His accuracy was only about 51 percent last year. So the plan against him is simple to say and hard to do: take away his legs and make him win from the pocket.

Their one home run threat is wide receiver Xavier Johnson, a former Memphis signee who caught a 95 yard touchdown against Samford, the longest pass in North Alabama history. They will take a deep shot at him. Behind Wade, the Lions run a three back committee that Arkansas' own staff called a three headed monster. There is no single feature back, so North Alabama tries to grind the clock and then hit you over the top.

The Defense Is The Story

Here is the part most people watching a 40 point spread will miss. North Alabama's defense is legitimately disruptive. Against Samford, the Lions set an FCS-era school record with 13 tackles for loss, tied a school record with six sacks, and held Samford to minus 8 rushing yards, the first time a North Alabama defense has allowed negative rushing at this level. That is not a typo. Negative rushing yards.

And they do it with pressure from everywhere. In the opener, two different defensive backs each had a two sack game. Coordinator Clint Bowen brings heat from the secondary, not just the front four. Silverfield did not hide his respect for that unit. He said Arkansas is "treating this like the Super Bowl. It's the most important game of the year," and compared preparing for the Lions to "playing the 85 Bears."

The one crack on the tape: North Alabama stopped the run but gave up a lot of third and long situations against Samford, and the one play that beat them was a long touchdown pass. So the pressure is real, but if you stay on schedule and protect the quarterback, the deep windows are there.

The Memphis Wrinkle That Cuts Both Ways

This is the storyline that makes the game interesting on paper. North Alabama has eight former Memphis players. Arkansas also has eight. Silverfield was Memphis' head coach, and his offensive coordinator, Tim Cramsey, was his coordinator at Memphis. So both rosters and both play callers are Memphis flavored.

The edge is that North Alabama's defensive line is loaded with former Memphis players, and their defensive line coach was on Silverfield's Memphis staff too. That means they know Arkansas' original protection calls. Silverfield admitted the Razorbacks are adjusting because of it: "We're going to have to change up our calls completely... all of our offensive line calls in run and pass protection." Knowing the words is a real advantage. But as our crew always says, knowing what is coming and stopping it are two different things, and Silverfield's Memphis teams handled this same group.

What Arkansas Has To Do

Stack it up and it comes down to four things. Contain Wade's legs and make him a pocket passer. Do not let Xavier Johnson get behind the defense for the one cheap deep ball. Protect against North Alabama's defensive back blitzes, which is exactly where that Memphis terminology battle shows up. And take care of the football, because the only realistic path to this game getting interesting is Arkansas turning it over or giving up an explosive play.

Do that, and the depth and size of an SEC roster take over across four quarters. This should be a comfortable Arkansas win. But North Alabama is not a walkover, and now you know exactly why.