Travis Williams looks a lot like Barry Odom.
Not physically, of course.
But Arkansas’ current defensive coordinator’s nearly two full seasons running the Hogs on that side of the ball look similar to his predecessor’s. It’s especially clear after the Razorbacks shellacking at the hands of Ole Miss on Saturday, 63-31. Williams’ crew gave up 694 yards of total offense, including 362 in the first half, burying the team after a half-hour’s worth of football had been played. The Rebels’ yardage total in the first 30 minutes was more than Arkansas had been giving up per game through its first eight.
Is Travis Williams’ Star Still Rising?
Talk about a back-handed compliment. The results Williams has yielded this season have been a lot like the Hogs’ overall. They were good against Texas A&M and Tennessee. Lucky but pretty bad against Auburn. Unlucky and pretty bad against LSU. And, now, over the last two weeks, the best adjectives have been “subpar” and, what? “Atrocious?” Jaxson Dart ended up finishing the game as the Ole Miss record-holder in single-game yards passing (515) and touchdowns (6) and Jordan Watkins did the same in for yards receiving (254) and touchdown receptions (5).
“I told T-Will I said ‘I don’t care if they rush for 500 yards, we gotta quit getting them behind, we can’t let them get behind us and make him run the football,’” Sam Pittman said afterward. “That’s when he went back into soft coverage and unfortunately they ran by us in that today too.”
All the same, coaches and talking heads credit Williams as one of the sport’s rising stars at defensive coordinator. Greener pastures surely await, but it might behoove him to get while the getting’s good. The downward trend is real, even if it isn’t pronounced yet, and it started last year when Auburn rolled for 517 yards and Missouri scored 48 points in the season finale.
But when a defense is ranked 47th in FBS but the team is 4-8, it’s dynamite work, even without those poor results against both Tigers. When a defense is ranked 54th in FBS – but its teammates on the other side of the ball are ranked seventh entering the game – then it’s the defenders holding the team back.
Or something like that, anyway.
Ole Miss Is Good, But Not That Good
Ole Miss sliced its way through a good-not-great Arkansas defense like late-stage Robb Smith or entire-time John Chavis was coordinating again. Another regular in the Razorbacks press box and I discussed how things became so bad so quickly. His argument was legitimate, and is a mark on the right side of the ledger for Williams: Arkansas just doesn’t have the players.
On one particular play midway through the third quarter, with Ole Miss at its own 36, Dart took a snap and stood in the pocket for a good three seconds without a pass rusher within what seemed like 15 feet. Theoretically the Hogs had downfield covered, seeing as how it took so long for Dart to throw the pass. They didn’t. Dart found a wide-open Cayden Lee 25 yards downfield on the hash-marks. Arkansas missed a tackle and Lee ambled to the Arkansas 6 before he was tracked down from behind.
The Razorbacks’ pass rush isn’t Chad Morris-era levels of bad, but tied for ninth in the SEC through eight games is hardly the mark of high-quality pocket pursuit. Doneiko Slaughter and Jayden Johnson, the two best in Arkansas’ secondary, can only hold out for so long. Nevermind the rotating cadre of players at cornerback. For a while the team admirably weathered the loss of Jaylon Braxton, who was All-Freshman in the conference last year, in the second week of the season.
Now, it stings something awful.
Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin packed dirt into the wound with his decision to leave Dart in the game into the fourth quarter with the Rebels up by more than 30 points. Dart broke Matt Corral’s single-game yards record midway through before being pulled for Austin Simmons. For good measure, Jordan Watkins, who caught five of Dart’s six touchdowns, also set Ole Miss single-game records for touchdown receptions and yards receiving with 254.
Memories of Arkansas’ Quitting In 2023
Not everything can be blamed on personnel, though. Arkansas looked a lot like last year’s team, the one outsiders claimed had quit about halfway through the year. It’s hard to imagine they’ll keep up such lax play with three regular-season games left, but the effort left a lot to be desired Saturday. And if it does continue, it will seem more like a mark on the coaching staff rather than players who left like KJ Jefferson or Rocket Sanders. Effort was definitely never an issue with former Hog Chris Paul Jr., who, by the way, registered six tackles, including two for-loss, for Ole Miss on Saturday.
By no means does a single game ruin Williams’ credibility. He deserves leeway after overachieving last year and what Arkansas did vs Auburn and Tennessee earlier this season. Clearly, before today, things had not been terrible in 2024. Nor did the Razorbacks look punch-less offensively. Taylen Green did what he does – followed an excellent game with a poor one – but Malachi Singleton looked the part of future starter (not future star, necessarily) in his nearly two quarters of duty.
Still, it’s clear something is lacking from the Arkansas football team. Maybe it’s players. Maybe it’s coaching. Probably, it’s money, something that weighed less in Barry Odom’s decision to leave for Las Vegas after three seasons in Fayetteville than the opportunity to run his own program again. Odom has found the grass greener… well, as much grass as there may be in the desert, anyway.
He, too, was trending down after 2022, his second real year in Fayetteville (it’s silly to count 2020 as either good or bad). It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility Williams does the same, because the truth is, maybe this is just who Arkansas is.
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Could something else have been at play in the Arkansas vs Ole Miss game? Sam Pittman thinks so…
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