FAYETTEVILLE — It wasn’t really reflected in the score, but Arkansas’ defense was excellent a week ago at Oklahoma State.
Playing on the road against a top-25 team, the Razorbacks completely shut down last year’s national rushing leader and didn’t allow a touchdown until the fourth quarter.
Of the Cowboys’ 39 points, eight came in overtime, seven came on a pick-six and another 11 were set up by turnovers that gave them the ball in Arkansas territory. They managed only four drives longer than 31 yards and those resulted in just 13 points.
Throw in the shutout in the opener against UAPB and the Razorbacks’ defense had reason to be feeling confident going into Saturday’s home opener against UAB — perhaps too confident.
“I think we’re going to shut them out,” safety TJ Metcalf told reporters after practice Tuesday night.
Not only did they fail to keep the Blazers off the scoreboard, but Arkansas’ defense provided little resistance as they moved down the field with ease.
Had it not settled for a pair of red zone field goals, UAB — the same UAB team that managed just 6 points at ULM a week earlier — might have been able to pull off an upset as a 22.5-point underdog. Instead, Arkansas escaped with a 37-27 win inside Razorback Stadium.
It wasn’t exactly an encouraging tune-up performance on the brink of beginning SEC play next week at Auburn.
“Any team in the SEC is going to beat the hell out of us if we play like that,” defensive end Landon Jackson said. “So we need to find a way to clean up those mistakes and play a lot more physical. We didn’t play our brand of football today. We came out with a win, so that’s always good, but at the same time we’ve got a lot to clean up.”
UAB Executes Its Plan
Heading into Saturday’s matchup with a clear talent disadvantage, UAB football coach Trent Dilfer said their plan — which was put together by offensive coordinator Alex Mortensen, a former Arkansas quarterback — was to chip away at Arkansas’ stout defense.
“We wanted to create as many short-yardage situations as possible,” Dilfer said. “We felt like we could run the ball — not explosively, they’re very good — but we felt like we could be stubborn with the run and pick our spots in the pass and make some plays.”
That’s exactly what the Blazers did. They nickel-and-dimed their way down the field with very few big plays. In fact, only five of their 32 pass attempts gained at least 15 yards and only two of their 35 rushes resulted in double-digit yards.
UAB finished with 354 yards, which was actually fewer yards than Oklahoma State gained in the last game, but it certainly didn’t seem like Arkansas played better than it did against the Cowboys.
“I thought that UAB physically were dominating us with their offense,” Pittman said. “Their offensive line seemed like it was second-and-3, second-and-2. Now the stats don’t necessarily say that, but that’s how it felt.”
Disappointing 1st Half for Arkansas Football
Arkansas knew early on that it was in a dogfight, as UAB converted its first three third downs and ate up nearly half of the first quarter on the game’s opening drive. The Razorbacks limited the damage to a 27-yard field goal, but it was indicative of what was to come.
An interception and long return set up a short touchdown for the Blazers, but they followed that up with a 75-yard touchdown drive and 70-yard field goal drive sandwiched around a three-and-out.
UAB scored on four of its first five drives and put up 212 yards of offense in the first half, averaging 5.7 yards per play. Sam Pittman vented his frustrations in his quick interview on the UA radio broadcast heading into halftime.
“We ought to be thumping this football team and we’re not,” Pittman said. “We are not playing very good at all on defense.”
That was a small preview of what was about to happen in the locker room, as Pittman later described the halftime talk as “loud” and “to the point.”
“They were whipping our butt, so we needed to understand that we knew it and how we could fix it,” Pittman said. “It had a lot to do with tackling better. We didn’t tackle at all well in the first half.”
After not generating any sacks against Oklahoma State, one of the defense’s major points of emphasis this week was getting more production from a defensive line that figured to be one of the strengths of the unit, led by preseason All-SEC defensive end Landon Jackson.
Not only is Jackson still looking for his first sack of the season, but Arkansas managed just one as a team against UAB — and that was by linebacker Brad Spence. Neither of the two tackles for loss were made by a defensive linemen, either, and the unit was credited with only three quarterback hurries (one apiece by Eric Gregory, Nico Davillier and Quincy Rhodes Jr.).
“I don’t particularly think we did a great job of that,” Pittman said. “That was one of the things that we talked about at half, as well. I don’t believe we pressured them well at all.”
Specific Issues for the Defense
As one of the team leaders, Landon Jackson didn’t sugarcoat things when diagnosing what went wrong for the Razorbacks, particularly in the first half.
“We’ve got the iPads on the sidelines now and we just weren’t playing our football,” Jackson said. “We could talk about, yeah physicality is one thing, but then on the iPads we were out of our gaps, we were fitting the wrong holes. We literally just weren’t playing good ball all around. It doesn’t matter if we’re playing against the worst team in the country, they’re going to do the same thing if we’re not in the right spot that we’re supposed to be in.”
The Razorbacks especially had fits with “nakeds.” In football terms, those are bootleg plays on which the quarterback runs in the opposite direction as the rest of the offense and without any blockers.
UAB ran those kinds of plays several times and they consistently worked, picking up small chunks of yards at a time.
“We knew when they were coming,” Pittman said. “I mean, that’s the sad part about it. And we didn’t cover it. Linebacker didn’t go out and cover it. But I think what they saw is, is that our linebackers have to get out there and make those tackles. And in certain defenses, the linebackers are responsible for it, and I think they took advantage of that, to be honest with you.”
One of those linebackers was Stephen Dix Jr., who matched Jayden Johnson with a team-high 10 tackles Saturday.
He said the Razorbacks needed to be more disciplined and not shoot themselves in the foot with self-inflicted mistakes.
“For the most part, they were who we thought they were,” Dix said. “I think it’s just us being more diligent, man, with our preparation. When it came to the game, just obviously being able to apply what we’ve been going through in practice to the game, and just being locked in on our keys and stuff.”
What Went Wrong in Arkansas vs. UAB
In hindsight, Arkansas vs UAB was a prototypical trap game.
The Razorbacks put a lot into the Oklahoma State game a week earlier, spending six of their fall camp practices preparing for it and getting a couple extra days of game week prep because of the Thursday night opener against UAPB.
At the same time, Arkansas played well enough to earn its fair share of praise. It easily could have overlooked the Blazers, which were coming off a 32-6 loss to ULM.
Sam Pittman acknowledged his team could have experienced a letdown, but his theory for why the defense played so poorly stemmed from the fact that they were so beat up from that game, it impacted the way they practiced. He said five defensive players and two defensive players wore green non-contact uniforms throughout the week and he had an idea it might not be pretty Saturday.
“It slowed practice down, and I was worried, especially defensively. I was worried about how our physicality and how we would fly to the football and all those things because during practice, with a lot of green out there that you can’t hit, it slows down.”
Another thing at play was the fact that defensive coordinator Travis Williams missed Tuesday’s practice to be with his wife, Jeanine, as she gave birth to their fourth daughter.
“There were some distractions with him … and that’s wonderful,” Pittman said. “He needs to go see his baby and his wife and all those things. And we may have played the same if he had been there all the time. But I just felt going into the game that we didn’t have the drive going into practice and I thought it was because of the green jerseys.”
While Pittman wasn’t sure of the impact Williams’ absence had on the defense, Jackson admitted it was a factor.
“I feel like it did, but it shouldn’t,” Jackson said. “That’s on the players. We can’t allow a coach not being there to affect the way that we go about our day.”
Potential Solutions for Arkansas Football?
The good news for Arkansas football is that these issues flared up in a game it was still able to win and the fact that it’s only Week 3.
Sitting at 2-1, the Razorbacks still have a chance to make a bowl game, but only if they take Saturday’s ugliness and turn it into cleaner play moving forward.
“I think overall, we need to get in the playbook more and know what we’re supposed to be doing,” Jackson said. “We had a lot of busts today and we can’t be doing that. And along with penalties, there’s a lot of penalties. We gave up way too much. … We can’t have a second-and-10 and then a 15-yard penalty. We can’t continuously have these penalties because that just kills our defense.”
The bad news is that things don’t get any easier from this point on. Arkansas opens SEC play at Auburn next weekend and that’s the first of seven consecutive conference games with a couple of open dates mixed in.
If the Razorbacks are going to have any chance of being competitive in those games, much less make a bowl game and save Sam Pittman’s job, their defense must play better than it did against UAB.
“The standard of football that we’ve played and that we’ve shown, it wasn’t on display tonight,” Dix said. “Maybe on the back half of the game, (but) we’ve just got to consistently be who we are and who we say we want to be all the time. I know that if we do that, then we’ll be unbeatable.”
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After Arkansas vs UAB, some locker room drama erupted over Jarius Wright and Joe Adams getting denied entry into the UA locker room. BoAS reached out to Wright, along with a couple other former Razorbacks, to get the story:
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Hear from Landon Jackson and Stephen Dix Jr. following the close win over UAB:
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More coverage of Arkansas football and Arkansas vs UAB from BoAS…
