AJ Hill’s Spring in Fayetteville: From Memphis Legacy to Arkansas’s Wide-Open Quarterback Race

FAYETTEVILLE — The first real chapter of AJ Hill’s college career is being written on the Arkansas practice fields this spring, and every rep is freighted with history, relationships, and a competition the coaching staff still calls a literal coin flip.

Hill, a former five-star recruit from Warner Robins, Georgia, arrived in Fayetteville by way of Memphis, where he became the highest-rated quarterback signee in program history. He chose the Tigers after de-committing from Colorado and watching larger programs back away. “Memphis was just real and authentic,” Hill said. “Coach Cramsey and Coach Silverfield gave me a plan and I really just stuck with it.”

That plan detoured north when Ryan Silverfield accepted the Arkansas head job in December and brought key staffers — including offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey and wide receivers coach Larry Smith — with him. Hill followed, walking into a quarterback room where no depth-chart promises are made. He and redshirt sophomore KJ Jackson have alternated with the ones and twos all spring, each snap an audition for the season-opener.

“It has been going good for me and KJ,” Hill said. “We love to compete with each other. Making each other better every day is going to have us ready for the season.”

Comfort in the scheme helps. Hill spent the 2024 season learning the offense at Memphis, giving him a head start most true freshmen never receive. “I’m real comfortable with the offense,” he said. “I’m really just trying to hone in on the protection part of it … get the timing right on a couple more things and I’ll be good.”

Self-scouting is already a strength. Hill trusts his pre-snap reads and wants the ball out quickly, but he knows pocket patience must improve. “I can move a lot in the pocket when I don’t need to,” he admitted. “Staying calm and just trusting my protection more” is the daily emphasis.

An unexpected reunion has aided that growth. After the Tigers’ Gasparilla Bowl loss, Hill thought he had seen the last of Mitch Stewart, the former Memphis analyst turned quarterbacks coach. Stewart had accepted a job at South Alabama, but when Clint Trickett left for Maryland, Silverfield asked Hill about bringing Stewart to Arkansas. Hill’s endorsement was immediate; days later Stewart was on campus, emotional about the second chance to coach his protégé.

The connection runs deeper than football. Stewart held a clipboard at Valdosta State in the early 2000s while Hill’s uncle, Derrick Hill, started on the defensive line. Neither coach nor player knew the link until months into their Memphis relationship, but it reinforced the trust already in place.

“That did not play a role” in any decision, Hill said, “but it just goes back to say with Georgia football this is all connections and relationships.”

Those relationships have now converged in the Ozarks, where a freshman who once fielded offers from Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Miami and Penn State is simply trying to win the next practice period. The quarterback battle may still be 50-50 on the coaches’ internal ledger, yet Hill’s grasp of the offense, candid self-evaluation, and chemistry with a position coach he helped hire give him a legitimate shot to flip that coin by August.

Spring drills continue this week, each throw and read moving Hill closer to a decision that will shape Arkansas’s 2025 season — and prove once again that the paths connecting player, coach, and family can stretch across decades before arriving, unannounced, on a Fayetteville practice field.