It was a sight Ryan Mallett had visualized throughout his entire life, but this January evening in 2008 was different. The life-long Arkansas Razorback fanatic’s dreams were about to come true as he soaked in one of the United States’ most underrated views.
Mallett had just returned home to Arkansas after transferring out of the University of Michigan, where he played his true freshman football season.
“I am overlooking the most beautiful sight I have ever seen,” Ryan’s mother, Debbie Mallett, recalled in a interview with HawgBeat. “I am in Fayetteville and overlooking Razorback Stadium.”
That was the start of what would become one of the greatest careers in Razorback football history and certainly the highest of times for the Arkansas program in the 21st century.
After sitting out the 2008 due to the previous transfer rule, Mallett literally re-wrote the Arkansas passing record book in his first season with a Razorback on his helmet.
The towering 6-foot-6 rocket-armed signal caller set or tied 16 school records during the 2009 season, finishing with 3,624 yards and 30 touchdowns to only seven interceptions while completing 55% of his passes, then led the Hogs to their only BCS Bowl berth in program history the following year.
Following a seven-year NFL career, Mallett remained a part of the gridiron by entering the coaching ranks, like so many of his family members before him. Unfortunately, that was short-lived.
About two months before his second season as White Hall High School’s head football coach was set to begin, Mallett tragically lost his life in a drowning accident on June 27, 2023 at the age of 35 while vacationing in Destin, Fla,.
“It has been so touching… so touching,” Debbie Mallett said of seeing the impact her son’s legacy had on so many. “We have heard so many wonderful stories that Ryan would have never told us.”
Road to Lifelong Dream of Being A Razorback
Coming out of Texas High in Texarkana in 2007, Ryan Mallett was one of the most sought after football prospects by college coaches in the nation. He was a five-star recruit and ranked the fourth-best player overall in his class, second pro-style quarterback, by Rivals. His first varsity start was in a state semifinal playoff game at the now-demolished Texas Stadium.
Mallett had always desired to play for the Razorbacks throughout his childhood since he helped park cars at Reynolds Stadium on game days just to get in for free. However, at the time he was being recruited the Arkansas program was riding a rollercoaster.
A 10-win campaign that included the Razorbacks’ most recent appearance in an SEC Championship was sandwiched between consecutive losing seasons, plus former head coach Houston Nutt was bringing in a 2006 class that included 5-star quarterback Mitch Mustain, the other four of his ‘Springdale 5’ teammates and Mustain’s head coach Gus Malzahn, who came to be Nutt’s offensive coordinator, at least by title.
“There was just a lot of stuff going on at The Hill and I just did not want to be a part of it,” Mallett said during a 2020 episode of the HogPod. “I wanted to get a fair shake because I knew my talent level, also who was coming in and how it was going to go.”
Though the timing was not right, Arkansas was still high on his list.
“He really wanted to go to Arkansas the whole time but there was some stuff going on,” Debbie Mallett said. “He loved Houston Nutt, he came to every camp up there that he could when he was little.”
Mallett made the best decision for himself, and opted to play 15 hours away for the Michigan Wolverines and legendary head coach Lloyd Carr. The Wolverines had been on Mallett since his sophomore season when then-quarterbacks coach Scot Loeffler got wind of him from a University of Texas coach after the Wolverines had played the Longhorns in the Rose Bowl.
“Michigan started recruiting Ryan really hard around that time and we took him up to a camp (in Ann Arbor) his junior year,” Debbie Mallett said. “Coach Carr was the kindest, sweetest man and we loved everything up there.”
Mallett played in 11 of the 13 games for the Wolverines his true freshman season in 2007, completing 61 of 141 passes for 892 yards with seven touchdowns and five interceptions. Carr retired at the conclusion of the season following a 13-year tenure leading Michigan that included a national championship in 1997.
Some expected the Wolverines to hire from within the current coaching staff, but the university went with West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez. Rodriguez was one of the top names of the 2007 coaching carousel and brought his up-tempo, run-option offense with him.
A quick meeting with Rodriguez solidified Mallett’s decision to move on, right around the time when Arkansas hired Bobby Petrino as head football coach from the Atlanta Falcons.
Beautiful Scenery Leads to Historic Results
By the time Mallett finished his freshman season at Michigan, four of the the five Springdale 5 had transferred elsewhere, with tight end Ben Cleveland – who would become Mallett’s roommate at Arkansas – being the lone one remaining on the roster.
Malzahn took the offensive coordinator position at Tulsa and Nutt resigned as head coach of his alma mater, then was hired at Ole Miss “hours” after.
Arkansas replaced Nutt with offensive genius Bobby Petrino from the NFL and one month later, Mallett called his mother to tell her about looking over Reynolds Razorback Stadium, the most beautiful site he had ever seen.
He also reached out to tell her that she and his father, the late Jim Mallett, needed to head up to Fayetteville to meet with Petrino and his staff the next morning.
While happy that all signs were pointing to her son’s lifelong plans finally coming to fruition, there was some hesitation. Petrino’s exit from the Falcons was an ugly one as he resigned from the team with three games remaining and did so by putting a letter in each of his players’ lockers.
“Coach Petrino was getting killed in the media so I was a little leary of him,” Debbie Mallett said.
Debbie requested to talk with another one of Petrino’s former quarterbacks’ parents and she was given the contact information of Brian Brohm’s dad. Brohm was the 2005 Big East Player of the Year at Louisville under Petrino and is now the offensive coordinator for the Cardinals.
“I asked Brian’s dad if he would want his son to play for Coach Petrino again and he said that he would in a heartbeat,” she mentioned.
While Debbie may have gone into the meeting with some concern, always-upbeat Ryan knew he was in the right place.
“He was so excited,” Debbie said. “They were all talking terminology and they might as well have been speaking Chinese to me.”
Mallett enrolled and he was officially a Razorback. Under the previous transfer rules, players had to spend one full academic year on campus before suiting up for their new team. He appealed, but it was denied.
Though he had to, again, be patient, Ryan knew from his arrival on The Hill that the bond between he and his equally fierce competitive head coach was going to be a special match.
To this day, the Razorback football program has not experienced the success it did in the two seasons with Petrino and Mallett shredding defenses.
Mallett was twice named All-SEC and led the Hogs to a Liberty Bowl victory over East Carolina and a Sugar Bowl appearance against Ohio State. His 3,869 yards and 32 touchdowns in 2010 are still the most in school history for a single season and he was on the throwing end of three of the 10 longest pass plays in Razorback football history.
Following his junior season in 2010, Mallett entered his name in the 2011 NFL Draft and was selected 74th overall in the third round by the New England Patriots. In his seven-year career, he played for the Patriots, Houston Texans and Baltimore Ravens and appeared in 21 games with eight starts.
Fulfilling Second Goal in Life Post Playing Career
Ryan Mallett had two goals in terms of his football life: become an NFL quarterback, which he accomplished, and then start a career in coaching as his father and so many other family members did, while others, including mother Debbie, were teachers.
When Ryan was born, his father Jim Mallett was coaching at Salem, Ark., though Ryan and sister Lauren were each born in Batesville. Jim also served coaching stints at Parkin – Debbie’s alma mater – along with Lincoln in northwest Arkansas and then later Hooks, Texas, and Texas High.
Though both Jim and Debbie Mallett taught in Texas and their kids went to school in that state, they resided on the Arkansas side of Texarkana. Jim passed away in 2021.
“There were four boys and a girl in Jim’s family: all four boys were coaches and their sister is a teacher and she married a coach,” Debbie said. “Jim’s dad was a former coach and principal, and my dad was a former girl’s basketball coach.”
Mallett’s final NFL season was in 2017 with the Ravens and he dipped his toes in the semi-pro ranks, but his primary focus was set on achieving his second goal in coaching.
His first opportunity in his new career came at Mountain Home High, two-and-a-half hours east of Fayetteville. No one knew it at the time, but Mallett played a key part in revitalizing a program that, frankly, could not get much worse.
Missouri Hall of Famer Steve Ary had just been hired to lead Mountain Home and was the one who brought Mallett on staff with him. Along with all of the tribulations COVID put on the 2020 season, Mountain Home was riding a riding a 21-game losing streak when Ary was hired and the Bombers had gone 1-29 over the previous three seasons.
The Bombers got some things clicking in Ary’s inaugural season and clinched a spot in the playoffs, then upset Pine Bluff for the program’s first playoff win in 14 years. Since then, the Bombers have won at least one playoff game in every season under Ary and finished in the Class 6A semifinals last fall. Ary credits Mallett for being a key building block when the program needed it most.
“Ryan brought immediate credibility just being a Razorback, so he was a rockstar walking around town,” Ary said. “He created a lot of enthusiasm and people gravitated towards him and he was instrumental in getting kids recruited.
“From the very first meeting, he was all in. He knew there would be a lot of hoops to jump through, but he was willing to do whatever. He bought our receivers gloves, would work extra with them and was just a loving guy with a big heart.”
After two seasons coordinating Mountain Home’s offense, Mallett was hired for his first head coaching job at White Hall. The Bulldogs were fresh off of a 5A state championship runner-up finish, but graduated a large amount of that team’s production. White Hall finished 4-6 in Mallett’s lone season with the squad.
At the time of Mallett’s passing, White Hall was already grieving the loss of former player Ben Redix, who was accidentally shot and killed in late May of 2023.
Redix was one of many players Mallett had taken under his wing, along with Redix’s teammates at White Hall and Mallett’s players before at Mountain Home.
Long before that, there were young kids looking up to him during his exceptional career at Texas High, then for so many Razorbacks fans during his storied career at Arkansas.
As Ryan’s fame grew larger, Debbie recalled times where he was out in public to make sure and sign autographs for kids that wanted them, because there was a point as a child he was in their shoes wanting a signature and was, at least one time, ignored.
“I reminded him of the time at a game where the players just walked on and how that made him feel,” Debbie said. “You always give kids autographs. I do not care if you give adults autographs or not, but never turn down a kid. He was always good about that.”
Along with the favorite moments of Ryan shared over the past two years from so many, his memory is kept alive through the Mallett Family Foundation, which was co-founded by Debbie and Ryan’s sister, Lauren Mallett-Hays.
Ryan lived out both of his goals as an NFL quarterback and later a football coach, even though the latter was cut way too short.
Ryan Mallett’s name will likely forever live somewhere in the Arkansas football record books, but the legacy of ‘No. 15’ will undoubtedly never be forgotten.
