Former Mizzou analyst, Central Arkansas QB new head coach at CAC
By Kyle Sutherland
NORTH LITTLE ROCK - Ryan Howard has been coaching for less than a decade, but he has already had first-hand experiences at the highest level of college football.
For the past two seasons Howard has been on Eli Drinkwitz’s staff at the University of Missouri as an offensive analyst. Prior to his time in Columbia, Howard coached multiple positions on offense as well as special teams at his alma mater, the University of Central Arkansas, for six seasons following his playing career as a quarterback from 2010-14.
Central Arkansas Christian selected Howard as its seventh head football coach in program history on Jan. 24 following a search that lasted almost two months after Tommy Shoemaker, who led the Mustangs since 2008, announced his resignation in early December.
“When we met with Coach Howard, it was apparent that he offered everything we were looking for in the next head coach of Mustang Football,” Athletic Director Hayden Cruce said in a press release from the school. “He prioritizes relationships with his athletes, he is detail-oriented, and he has experience coaching with high-level programs.
“He is also a man of deep faith who believes in our mission at CAC. He is the right person to lead our program into the future.”
Howard, 31, has already made the move back to central Arkansas and will substitute teach at CAC this month to get familiar with the campus and his students before beginning his full-time contract in March.
“The central Arkansas area is kind of home to my wife and I having gone to UCA,” Howard said. “We want to start a family soon and what better spot with the roots that we already have in that area, along with the chance to be a head football coach. When the job came open, I saw a lot of potential in CAC because they have had success in years past and it just seemed like a good fit.”
During the 2020 COVID season under Howard’s direction as special teams coordinator, UCA held opponents to just 15.6 yards per kick return and was one of nine FCS programs to return a punt and kick for touchdowns.
Howard spent his entire career both as a player and coach at UCA in some capacity under the tutelage of current head coach Nathan Brown. Brown, a UCA legendary signal caller, was the Bears’ quarterbacks coach from 2010-14 and served as offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach from 2014-17 before being promoted to head coach in 2018.
Having eight years of experience at the Division One level, the previous two in the Southeastern Conference, Howard acknowledged that he has had the opportunity to learn multiple strategies from a variety of coaches, though many of the concepts are still the same.
“At the end of the day football is football,” Howard said. “People are doing the same stuff at all levels. The biggest thing in coaching is just learning something different. There is nothing wrong with being in the same place for a long time, but you just have to be careful that you do not get stagnant in doing what you want to do.”
One of the mentors Howard worked with at Missouri is Arkansas and Oklahoma high school coaching legend Rick Jones, who won eight state titles at Greenwood and now serves as the Special Assistant to the Head Coach for Drinkwitz.
“During the interview process I talked with Coach Jones on the things that he did to have the success that he had at Greenwood and the things that he implemented there,” Howard said. “In the state of Arkansas, he did about as good of a job as you can.”
The Vestavia Hills (Ala.) native comes from a coaching family as his father, Mike, served as offensive line coach on Howard’s high school team. Former Central Arkansas head coach Clint Conque worked with Mike Howard at Samford University in the early 1990s, which played a major part in Ryan Howard coming to play quarterback for UCA at the time Conque was still leading the program.
Howard lettered three times for the Bears from 2012-14 and started nine games his senior season when he threw for 2,380 yards and 23 touchdowns.
CAC has plenty of talented players on the roster, especially offensively, that Howard will be able to work with immediately, headlined by quarterback Grayson Wilson. The 2025 signal caller will likely be the most highly recruited player from CAC since Joe Adams (University of Arkansas star receiver) in 2008. Wilson already has offers from Central Arkansas and Illinois with many others showing interest, including Arkansas.
“No matter what level of football it is, it all starts at the quarterback position no matter what anybody says,” Howard said. “If you have all of the other pieces but you don’t have a guy that can make the decisions, get the offense in the right situations, and then just deliver the football to who it needs to get to then you just put yourself in not great situations.”
In the early 2000’s, CAC was one of the premier programs in Class 3A under Tim Perry, finishing in the state quarterfinals in 2003 - the best finish in school history at the time - and then won the state championship in 2004. The Mustangs returned to the state championship in 2005 before bumping up to Class 4A the following year in the brand-new reclassifications and made deep playoff runs in 2006 and 2007.
CAC experienced some success under Shoemaker, winning a conference title as recent as 2019 but has since fallen on hard times the past two seasons, winning just four games.
Howard knows it will be a difficult task to reach heights the program saw almost two decades ago, but he feels it can be done with a one-step-at-a-time approach beginning with earning the players’ trust and getting them to buy in.
“First and foremost, it is going to start with love,” Howard said. “We have got to love those kids because at the end of the day the way you get to people is by love. When you truly love and want to serve someone, you are going to get the best out of them. There will also have to be a foundation laid of hard work and discipline because that is what the game of football is - discipline and laying that foundation.
“As coaches we are going to demand a lot out of ourselves, out of the players, and everyone who supports the school. If we want to get back to the caliber years that CAC had then everyone is going to have to be on board. They are going to get the best out of me every single day and I am going to ask for the best in return.”
