STILLWATER, Okla. — A national television audience in a premier time slot on ABC meant the entire country was introduced to a brand of Arkansas football that is all too familiar for fans of the program.
Despite dominating most of Saturday’s game in almost every facet, the Razorbacks found a way to make enough mistakes to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in a 39-31 double overtime loss to No. 16 Oklahoma State at Boone Pickens Stadium.
The heartbreaking result drops Arkansas to an abysmal 6-15 in one-score games during head coach Sam Pittman’s tenure, which began in 2020. Those 15 losses are tied with Texas for the fourth-most in the FBS over that span.
If it seems like it’s been even more painful than that, you can blame it on recency bias. Nine of the Razorbacks’ last 12 losses, starting with the 21-19 loss to Liberty in 2022, have been by eight points or less.
Making Saturday particularly tough is the fact that Arkansas led the Cowboys by 14 on two different occasions — 14-0 early and 21-7 at the half. It was actually the Razorbacks’ largest halftime lead in a true road game since 2016, when they blew a 24-7 lead at Missouri to cap the regular season.
Arkansas has also now lost four games it led by at least two touchdowns since Pittman was hired, with the others being at Missouri in 2020, against Texas A&M in 2022 and against BYU last year.
Still, even with those kinds of losses mounting, Pittman kept a relatively positive outlook during his postgame interview with the media. He’s confident his team will “roll up our sleeves” and respond, which starts with next week’s home opener against UAB.
“We’ve got to learn how to finish games and hang on to the football,” Pittman said. “I think if we do that, we’ll have a really good year.”
On one hand, it was encouraging to see the Razorbacks on the brink of knocking off a top-25 team in a hostile environment, but learning how to finish games was also a major focus during the offseason after they struggled with it the last few years.
Here’s a rundown of everything that went wrong this time…
(READ NEXT: At This Point, There’s Probably Just One Answer for What Haunts Arkansas)
Turnovers Prove Extra Costly
The first statistic both head coaches – Sam Pittman and Mike Gundy – brought up in their postgame press conferences was the turnover margin.
Arkansas officially committed three turnovers that led to 17 points for Oklahoma State, which had just one that ultimately didn’t hurt it just before halftime.
“We have to hold on to the football,” Pittman said. “If we do that, this game would’ve been, in my opinion, quite a bit different. But we didn’t, so we have to figure that out.”
The first of those was a pick-six by Kale Smith, who raced 73 yards to the end zone after reeling in the duck thrown by Taylen Green as he was hit by Collin Oliver.
Late in the third quarter, the Razorbacks were marching and had a first down near midfield when they dialed up a pitch play. They botched it, though, and Oklahoma State jumped on the loose ball. Luckily for Arkansas, its defense limited the damage to a field goal.
The turnover that really burned the Razorbacks came early in the fourth quarter. They forced a punt and looked like they had a chance to add to their 8-point lead, but Isaiah Sategna muffed the punt and the Cowboys recovered.
“Exactly what happened was one of our guys got knocked into Sategna’s legs. I mean, it was legal. But about the time he was getting ready to catch it, some guy hit him in the legs and he dropped it.”
The player who ran into Sategna was true freshman Krosse Johnson, a speedy two-star recruit who Arkansas flipped from Louisiana-Lafayette late in the process. He was tasked with blocking Oklahoma State’s gunner and got knocked into Sategna. What’s particularly concerning about that mistake is that the same thing happened on the Cowboys’ first punt of the game, but Sategna was able to hold on to the ball even as Johnson hit him.
Kicker Struggles in Arkansas vs Oklahoma State
The Razorbacks knew they had a kicker problem in the spring. Not only was Cam Little gone to the NFL, but Hawaii transfer Matthew Shipley and Wisconsin boomerang transfer Vito Calvaruso were wildly inconsistent. Their solution was to bring in Kyle Ramsey, an FCS All-American at Abilene Christian, over the summer.
With Calvaruso sidelined with a hamstring injury early in fall camp, the battle was between Shipley and Ramsey.
Based on all of the reports from the UA, it seemed like Shipley had finally asserted himself as the No. 1 guy. He went 3 for 4 in both of the scrimmages, which were closed to the media, and capped both of them with a “game-winning” kick of at least 50 yards in a two-minute drill.
Throw in the fact that Ramsey went 0 for 4 in the final scrimmage and was battling an injury of his own, it seemed like a no-brainer: Shipley, who is on scholarship, beat out the walk-on.
However, it was Ramsey who attempted – and made – all 10 PATs in Arkansas’ blowout win over UAPB in the opener.
“We just weren’t kicking quite as well as we’d like to and when (Ramsey) came back, he was pretty solid in there,” Pittman said earlier this week when asked about the decision. “It was just a ‘decide who we’re going to go with’ type deal, wasn’t really cut and dry, and it’s his job until we figure something out differently.”
It might be time for the Razorbacks to figure something out differently.
Ramsey’s first field goal attempt of the year was a 41-yarder that he missed wide right early in the fourth quarter. It would have made it an 11-point game.
That miss not only cost Arkansas three points there, but it also might have cost it three points on the next possession because Pittman opted to go for it on fourth-and-5 at the exact same spot on the field instead of kicking a field goal. Afterward, he admitted the miss “probably had a little bit to do with it.”
“I just felt like at that point we just missed one from the same distance and I feel like we needed a little bit of momentum,” Pittman said. “Honestly, I felt like we were going to make it on 4th-and-5, (but) we busted a protection. In all honesty, we were probably lucky to get the four-and-a-half (yards) that we got.”
Ramsey bounced back to make a 45-yarder as time expired that forced overtime, but then missed a 46-yarder in the first overtime period that would have won the Razorbacks the game.
The 1-for-3 performance means the competition with Shipley is back on.
“I hate it for him,” Pittman said. “I know he missed a couple, but he also made the one that put us into overtime and if we played a little bit better, maybe that wouldn’t have come up. But their kicker missed, as well, to put us into overtime 2. But yeah, that competition is always (open), it certainly is now.”
Taylen Green Feels the Pressure
Even though Oklahoma State finished with only three sacks, it was in Arkansas’ backfield much more than that.
On numerous occasions throughout the game, particularly on third down, the Cowboys blitzed and flushed Taylen Green from the pocket, even if it didn’t always get him on the ground.
Pittman said the issue wasn’t necessarily protection by the offensive line, but rather the looks Oklahoma State was giving. It went to a cover 0 coverage, in which no safety is deployed and all cornerbacks play man to man, and brought more pass rushers than Arkansas had available blockers.
“We certainly prepared big time for that,” Pittman said. “We missed a couple. We had Sategna open on the post once that we missed in that same situation. But the pressure got there a little bit faster than what we wanted to.”
There were a couple of times when Green might have held onto the ball too long, too. He owned up to that after the game.
“Of course it is tough, but I have to do a better job of getting the ball out,” Green said. “(Bobby) Petrino talks about getting my hips up and fading more. That’s just what we are going to work on, get to the drawing board and work in practice so it’s not going to happen again.”
Questionable Time Management
The one turnover Arkansas forced came late in the first half when Jaheim Singletary made a really nice play on a deep ball, coming down with the interception.
Considering they were set to receive the second half kickoff, it gave the Razorbacks a chance at a two-for-one if they could cash in on a two-minute drill.
However, Green took one of those aforementioned sacks on the first play of the ensuing drive and Arkansas chose to let more than 30 seconds run off the clock before using its first timeout.
It was clear Pittman was content with taking a 21-7 lead into the half, especially after the Razorbacks didn’t use a timeout following a Green scramble. That left only 5 seconds on the clock when Ja’Quinden Jackson moved the sticks with a 13-yard gain on a screen.
Despite being close to midfield, there wasn’t really time for Arkansas to do anything. The sequence was understandable because of the first-play sack and 14-point lead, but it wasn’t the aggressive play calling fans came to expect during Bobby Petrino’s tenure as head coach. (See: Cobi Hamilton in 2010 Arkansas-LSU game)
What was less excusable was the two-minute drill at the very end of the game. Needing a field goal to tie it up with 55 seconds left and no timeouts remaining, the Razorbacks wasted quite a bit of time.
The first instance came after Rodney Hill rushed for a first down. Even though the clock stopped with 37 seconds left as the ball got set, 10 seconds came off the clock before Arkansas finally spiked it.
Later in the drive, Green found Andrew Armstrong for a 33-yard gain that got Arkansas down to the 27 and into field goal range. The clock stopped with 12 seconds left because of the first down, but instead of immediately spiking the ball, it allowed six seconds to tick away before running a rushed play.
Thankfully for the Razorbacks, Armstrong didn’t catch the pass and it fell incomplete with 2 seconds left, giving them a chance to kick the game-tying field goal.
Arkansas might have had an opportunity to take a shot to the end zone had it managed the clock a little better in those two instances, but it worked out in the end. Because of that, Pittman said he was “proud” of the drive and Green said he was comfortable the entire time.
“We work on the two-minute (drill) all the time, so it was just going through each situation, what coach is thinking and the plays,” Green said. “That’s why I felt comfortable in the situation because they do a great job constantly… Every Wednesday or Thursday practice, they do like two-minute situational stuff.”
Other Costly Mistakes for Arkansas Football
Two plays before Taylen Green’s pick-six, the Razorbacks should have scored a touchdown. Green made a great play to escape pressure and managed to fire a strike to Tyrone Broden in the end zone, but the ball went through his hands. The pick-six made it a 14-point swing.
Another issue Sam Pittman brought up was 2-3 snaps that ended up on the ground in the second half. He wasn’t sure if they were low snaps by the center or dropped by the quarterback, but Green owned them anyway.
“I’m athletic enough,” Green said. “I put that on myself too to catch the ball because the ball is the most important thing and that’s what we are going to focus on and get back to practice on.”
There was also a miscommunication between Green and Ja’Quinden Jackson on a play in the fourth quarter. Oklahoma State had just tied the game at 21-21, but Arkansas immediately answered with gains of 10 and 26 yards on its first two plays.
That got the Razorbacks into OSU territory with some regained momentum. The miscommunication, though, resulted in a 4-yard loss and they ultimately turned the ball over on downs, coming up a yard shy of the first down.
The Razorbacks were on the brink of forcing Oklahoma State into a third-and-9 in the second overtime, but Xavian Sorey Jr. picked up Brennan Presley and slammed him into the ground. Instead of having a chance to hold the Cowboys to another long field goal, it was a 15-yard personal foul penalty that gave them a fresh set of downs and set up the game-winning touchdown.
Pittman admitted it was a good call. “On that one, I said, ‘Hey, he was still trying to move forward,’” Pittman said. “And the official said, ‘No, coach.’Any time they pick him up and slam him to the ground, that’s going to be a personal foul.’ And you know what? He’s right.”
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Arkansas didn’t record a single sack on Oklahoma State quarterback Alan Bowman. Late in the fourth quarter, what was almost a sack on third down instead ended up with Bowman hitting his receiver deep in Arkansas territory, setting off a pantomimed pistol firing from the seventh-year senior toward the Razorback bench that resulted in an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
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