Arkansas head football coach Sam Pittman didn’t have to deliberate long on who his next defensive coordinator would be.

Pittman said Wednesday he knew immediately upon interviewing him in December he wanted to hire Travis Williams, the former Auburn linebacker and assistant coach who was then at Central Florida. Pittman quickly placed a call to his athletics director to let him know.

“I interviewed four or five guys,” Pittman said Wednesday at SEC Media Days in Nashville. “I got done with him, I called Hunter Yurachek and told him ‘this is the guy.’ … Travis, he’s a great man, very positive guy, really good coach.”

The 40-year-old Williams — an All-SEC linebacker and team captain at Auburn in the mid-2000s — has been on the coaching fast track in recent years. He got his first major-college job as Auburn’s linebackers coach under Gus Malzahn in 2016, and three years later was bumped up to co-defensive coordinator.

After spending the 2021 season as Miami’s linebackers coach, Williams was re-hired by Malzahn to be defensive coordinator at UCF. After two years with the Knights, he landed back in the SEC at Arkansas.

Williams is particularly well-regarded in the recruiting world, including when it comes to the transfer portal, Pittman said.

“In the portal world and the coaching world, he’s very aggressive,” Pittman said. “I knew in the portal world, if we lost somebody, I could dang sure replace them.”

Williams is one of two new coordinators for the Razorbacks, along with offensive coordinator Dan Enos. It’s the second stint at Arkansas for Enos, who was also OC under Bret Bielema from 2015-17 (when Pittman was offensive line coach) and was Alabama’s quarterbacks coach in 2018.