photo credit: AP / Craven Whitlow
Smash That “Follow” Button
After his name was floated as a candidate the last two times the job was open, Mike Norvell had a much different perspective of the Arkansas coaching search this year.
While navigating the hot seat himself, the sixth-year Florida State coach watched from afar as one of his prized pupils and successor at Memphis landed the Razorbacks’ gig.
Ryan Silverfield served as Norvell’s offensive line coach with the Tigers from 2016-19, the only assistant who remained on staff throughout his entire tenure that included a pair of top-25 finishes.
Even though he never coached at Arkansas, Norvell’s connections to the Natural State — starring as a receiver at UCA and marrying a girl from Fort Smith who still has family in the area — made him especially proud for his friend and former assistant.
He expressed his excitement, both for Silverfield and the Razorbacks, in an exclusive one-on-one interview with Best of Arkansas Sports.
“We spent so many great years together,” Norvell said. “(More than) the work that he’s done and things he’s been able to accomplish as a head coach, he’s just a great person.”
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That feeling is reciprocated by Silverfield, who considers Norvell a brother.
“I can’t hide the fact that I wouldn’t be standing here today if it weren’t for Mike Norvell,” Silverfield said last year. “I think there’s not only a mutual friendship, but a great deal of respect for one another.”
Their time together at Memphis is well-documented, but it’s a relationship that actually started in the old Pac-12 and never would have formed had it not been for some advice from Norvell’s wife.
Fate Intervenes for Norvell, Silverfield
This story begins a quarter-century ago, with Mike Norvell looking for a new home after deciding to leave Louisiana Tech, where he had been a walk-on.
He ultimately decided to transfer down to the DII level. It worked out well, as he became a record-breaking receiver at UCA while catching passes from former Arkansas quarterback Zak Clark.
That’s also where he began his coaching career as a graduate assistant in 2006 and met his wife, the former Maria Chiolino of Fort Smith.
It was Maria who convinced Norvell to turn down his first full-time job offer. Instead of going to Delta State to work for new head coach Ron Roberts, he took another GA position at Tulsa to work under Todd Graham.
“I just felt like this wasn’t the path,” Maria Norvell told the Commercial Appeal in 2016. “I just didn’t think that was where he should be.”
She couldn’t have been more right.
While two of his three offensive coordinators with the Golden Hurricane — Gus Malzahn and Chad Morris — moved on to bigger positions, Norvell stuck with Graham and it led to him climbing the ladder from wide receivers coach (Tulsa) to co-offensive coordinator (Pitt) and finally sole offensive coordinator (Arizona State).
Between his third and fourth seasons at that last stop is when Norvell first crossed paths with a 34-year-old Ryan Silverfield. After working as a consultant for Matt Campbell at Toledo, the young coach was wandering in search of his next job.
“He was going around seeing a few different schools and visiting with coaches, like a lot of coaches will do in the offseason,” Norvell told BoAS. “We kind of hit it off and really respected his perspective of things and talking ball.”
As fate would have it, an analyst position opened up on the staff and Silverfield jumped at the opportunity.
Some midseason firings within the Detroit Lions organization led to him leaving Arizona State before the end of the year, but his time in Tempe made quite the impression on Norvell.
When the Louisiana native landed the Memphis job that offseason, he called up Silverfield and convinced him to become his offensive line coach. That was Silverfield’s first full-time job at the FBS level — and only his second in the DI ranks, with his first coming a decade earlier at FCS Jacksonville.
“He does have wonderful connections there in the NFL, but I think his passion really showed just to help these college-aged kids and seeing their growth, seeing their development,” Norvell said. “He definitely has a great heart when it comes to that and I think that’s what drew him back to being in the college game.”
Over the next four years, Norvell and Silverfield went 38-15 at Memphis. The Tigers won at least a share of three division titles and had a pair of top-25 finishes, highlighted by a trip to the Cotton Bowl in 2019.
Silverfield added a title to his name each year, adding run game coordinator in 2017, assistant head coach in 2018 and finally deputy head coach in 2019, all while turning down other schools that came calling. He impressed Norvell as a tremendous teacher who cared about the details and has a great worth ethic — traits he first noticed at Arizona State.
“He will meet guys where they are and help them through their process of getting better,” Norvell said. “It didn’t matter if it was the first-team starter or if it was somebody that was maybe redshirting. He was still going to take the time to pour into them.”
That made Silverfield a logical choice to take over as the interim head coach when Norvell took the Florida State job. That tag was removed before the Cotton Bowl, which the Tigers lost to Penn State, and he remained Memphis’ coach for six seasons.
Student Takes Down Teacher
During his time with the Tigers, Ryan Silverfield won two-thirds of his games and put together back-to-back seasons with double-digit wins in 2023 and 2024.
While his failure to reach the American Conference championship game was a growing point of contention amongst the fans, he had a knack for knocking off bigger programs. In fact, he was 5-3 against Power Four schools.
Arkansas got a taste of that this year, blowing an 18-point lead in September that proved to be the penultimate nail in Sam Pittman’s coffin.
Silverfield also managed to take down his predecessor, and mentor, at Memphis a year earlier.
Coming off a 13-0 regular season in which it was snubbed from the College Football Playoff, Florida State stumbled out of the gates in 2024 with ACC losses to Georgia Tech and Boston College.
The Seminoles’ first non-conference matchup was against none other than Silverfield and the Tigers, who were at just the beginning of what became an 11-2 season that ended with them ranked No. 24 in the AP Poll.
“He and I are very close friends,” Silverfield said leading up to the game. “We sat within arm’s length of each other for four years, we know everything about one another and the way each other think and move and breathe, but we’ve both grown as people and as coaches.”
That growth helped Memphis stroll into Doak Campbell Stadium and come away with a 20-12 victory. The Tigers out-gained Florida State 337-238 and won the turnover battle 3-1.
“They were a well-coached team,” Norvell recalled. “They were multiple in concepts and tried to play to the strengths of their players. They did a really good job that day.”
Norvell added that Silverfield has always shown a propensity for coming up with a variety of ways to attack opponents, always looking for matchups in his favor.
Despite that 2024 game continuing Florida State’s spiral to a 2-10 campaign, the two coaches are still close and stay in touch.
Their communications have almost certainly involved the portal, as five different players have transferred between them. That includes two key members of Memphis’ defense this year in cornerback Omarion Cooper and safety Demarco Ward, as well as a part-time starter for Florida State in linebacker Elijah Herring.
This offseason, Silverfield plucked running backs coach David Johnson away from Tallahassee, as well.
“If there’s ever anything that we need to bounce off each other, we will,” Norvell said. “It’s pretty busy in (our) roles and responsibilities, but we do get to touch base and we try to take advantage of those opportunities.”
Luckily for the two friends, Arkansas and Florida State won’t square off on the gridiron any time soon, barring a postseason matchup.
That doesn’t mean they won’t go head-to-head on the recruiting trail, though. In fact, with numerous ties to the Sunshine State on Silverfield’s reported inaugural staff, that seems inevitable.
Chief among those was the hiring of Florida’s defensive coordinator who actually helped the Gators beat Norvell and Florida State the last two years – a coaching veteran named Ron Roberts.
That’s the same coach Norvell turned down nearly two decades ago, setting in motion the chain of events that ultimately led Silverfield to Arkansas.
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Best of Arkansas Sports also caught up with the coach who gave Ryan Silverfield his first Division I job, who compared him to another pupil:
Want to learn more about David Johnson, the running backs coach Ryan Silverfield stole away from his former boss? We took a closer look at him, as well as some potential running backs Arkansas could target in the transfer portal, in this piece:
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More insight from new Arkansas football coach Ryan Silverfield:
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More coverage of Arkansas football from BoAS…
Hailing from Springdale, Andrew Hutchinson graduated from the University of Arkansas with a journalism degree in 2016. While he played baseball, basketball, football and ran track growing up, he quickly realized he lacked the size and athleticism to play anything beyond high school and shifted gears to stay involved with sports. Starting his career covering the Razorbacks with The Traveler while in college, Hutchinson has also worked for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Hawgs Illustrated, WholeHogSports, 247Sports, HawgBeat/Rivals and now BoAS, where he’s been the managing editor since the summer of 2022. In 2020, he was named the Arkansas Sportswriter of the Year by the NSMA. When he’s not writing, Hutchinson is spending time with his wife, Marley, and two daughters.
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