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Missing Pieces: What Your College Football Team Can't Seem To Fix

date
2026-03-26
episode_type
fan-mailbag
source
public

Hosts: Ty Hildenbrandt & Dan Rubenstein Date: March 26, 2026 Source: Listener submissions via Verballers.com

[!note] Episode Concept Ty and Dan asked Verballerhood listeners: What is the one thing your program can never seem to fix, year after year? Teams were 0 for 4 with Sam Pittman, 0 for different coordinators — what haunts you as a fan that your team just can't write over?

Teams Discussed

Arkansas Razorbacks — Defense

Submitted by: Michael

Arkansas has not produced a first-round defensive draft pick since 2007. A revolving door of defensive coordinators. 2025: #1 rushing offense by efficiency metrics, lost 6 one-score games, outscored on the season. New coach Ryan Silverfield brought in DC Ron Roberts and 42+ new transfers to try to fix it again.

Dan

"Arkansas is the most college football team in college football. Selfishly, I kind of love that Arkansas never really has a defense, because they make for great TV."

[!note] Best Arkansas defense in recent memory 2021 under Barry Odom. He left and they cratered. The 2023 52-51 loss to Ole Miss (Lane Kiffin: "That just took eight and a half years off my life") is emblematic.

Upcoming schedule concern (2026): Faces Devon Dampier, Gunner Stockton, Marcel Reed, Arch Manning, Sam Leavitt among QBs.

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets — Defense + Uniform Color Confusion

Submitted by: Matthew

Two-part problem: (1) Can't build a consistently strong defense even in the ACC. Played Paul Johnson option for years, which masked it. Under Brent Key, made ACC contender strides but defense remains inconsistent. 83rd in defensive points per drive allowed in 2025; 79th in 2024 under Tyler Santucci. (2) Which shade of gold?

New OC Alberto Mendoza takes over the offense (transferred down from Indiana; Josh Hoover transferred up to Indiana from TCU). New QB Justice Haynes.

[!note] Sonny Dykes quote context Dykes went on a podcast and noted Josh Hoover turned the ball over 42 times in 31 games at TCU before transferring to Indiana.

Other Teams Referenced

  • USC — "Phil Steele o'clock" optimism; Ja'Kobi Lane and Makai Lemon gone but "receiver room has a chance to be better than ever"
  • Missouri/Eli Drinkwitz — referenced as a program searching for the same fixes year over year
  • Washington, Cal, Mississippi State — referenced in the broader framing of teams with permanent issues etched into fandom

Key Recurring Themes from Listener Submissions

The episode identifies a concept Dan describes as the "SSD problem" — something permanently etched into a fan's relationship with their program that no transfer portal class, new coordinator, or new coach can seem to overwrite. Like the unspecified gray bar eating storage on your iPhone that you can never get rid of.

For most programs it falls into one of these buckets: - A chronic position group weakness (usually D-line or secondary) - Inability to retain coordinators - Situational failures (red zone, third down, late-game defense) - A specific rival or game type they can never win

Full Transcript

Welcome to The Solid Verbal. The Solid Verbal. Come after me! I'm a man!

I'm 40! I've heard so many players say, well, I want to be happy. You want to be happy for a day?

Eat a steak. It's that whoop, whoop. And now, Dan and Ty. Dan Rubenstein, welcome back to the show.

Thank you for having me, Ty. God, it's nice to be here with you. This is the time of year. You always like to say, oh, this is the bottom of the offseason.

And like, spring practice isn't in full swing. It's not the draft yet. The season's in the rearview mirror. Excuse me.

Have you seen the numbers? The numbers tell me that is the bottom of the offseason right now. This is what we find our people tell you. It is.

I love this time of year. It gives us time to explore and reflect and get a little bit weird and figure out, like, a lot of the shows we do around now tap into, I think, the inner psyches and emotions of the college football fan experience, right? That we're talking about, I don't even remember what we did earlier in the week, we did something. With emotion, right?

We do these things like it was the Ralph Wiggum break. Yeah.

Right.

And I just, I love that kind of stuff because I love exploring. The, you know, why you're ready to be heard again, what is getting people excited, and then what you fear once again won't be solved by Eli Drinkwitz or whoever. I don't know. I mean, I guess we are going to talk about Eli Drinkwitz some.

We are.

But. There is something that is sort of permanent as much as everything changes in this sport, right? That transfers and assistance and NIL rules and conferences and postseason. Sometimes it spans multiple coaches, three, four coaches.

Sometimes it's just one coach who can't solve the same thing year over year over year. But if there's anything consistent about this sport that has no consistency whatsoever. Is there's that, what is the hard drive called, Ty, that you can't, it's like an SSD, right? Solid state. Right.

There is something that is permanently etched in all of our hearts and our brains and our souls when it comes to college football fandom, where you're like, yes, our team has taken strides moving forward in all of these different places. But they can't seem to write over this little bit of data ever. And I always like educating myself on how, again.

A Mizzou fan feels, a Washington fan feels, a Cal fan feels, a Mississippi State fan feels. And this helps me, if I'm going to be selfish here, but I think it helps all of us understand each other better. And isn't that the point in this turbulent world, Ty, to understand each other just a little bit better as a human society?

Yes? You really took that on a journey. You were talking about hard drives. I was thinking of like.

Because we had this discussion recently about trying to free up space in your iPhone. And when you plug it in or when you like load up the settings, you see that gray bar, that like unspecified gray bar, that's taking up 80 gig. And you can't, it doesn't matter what you do. You can't get rid of it.

You got to buy programs. Sometimes you got to call out. You can never actually get rid of that, whatever that's supposed to be. I still don't know.

And I'm supposed to be the techie between the two of us. Yeah.

But in effect, that is sort of what today's episode is about, is it not? It is.

Oh, it absolutely is. You know what? It didn't directly give me the idea. But I saw something that told us it was the off season in a very specific way this past week in like three different places.

[Transcript continues — Arkansas, Georgia Tech, and additional team submissions discussed in detail...]