When Arkansas joined the Southeastern Conference ahead of the 1992 season, then defensive coordinator and soon-to-be interim head coach Joe Kines was quoted as saying, “In the SEC, they’ll slit your throat and drink your blood.”
That comment was a warning that the Razorbacks needed to get out of the warm cocoon they were used to in the Southwest Conference and prepare for the weekly gauntlet that was going to be playing in the SEC. There weren’t going to be any more cakewalk games, or if there were, they would be few and far between.
The conference has expanded twice since, with Missouri and Texas A&M joining in 2012 and then Oklahoma and Texas prior to this season. An already brutal schedule hasn’t and won’t get any easier in the years to come.
Football, especially in the power conferences, is an arms race, and the further and further one falls behind, the harder it is to roll the ball back up the mountain. Which may speak to Sam Pittman’s comments prior to the Ole Miss game, when he mentioned that the Rebels’ lines resembled Louis Vuitton and the best the Razorbacks could muster were a Blue Light Special.
Former Hogs Address Potential Culture Issues
As bad as Arkansas’ offensive line was whupped by Ole Miss in last week’s 32-point drubbing, the Hogs at least did better than what No. 2 Georgia could muster in Saturday’s 28-10 loss in Oxford.
After the last two and a half games, it’s clear that Lane Kiffin has his program in peak form and humming nearly on all cylinders. It didn’t matter that Ole Miss hadn’t won in Fayetteville since 2008, or Georgia hadn’t lost to a non-Alabama team in 52 games.
The Rebel defensive line, ranked No. 1 in havoc plays, has shown out. Against Georgia, Ole Miss notched 5 sacks and 8 tackles for loss overall – including the game-clinching strip sack of Bulldogs quarterback Carson Beck.
Against Arkansas, they harassed Taylen Green all day too, eventually knocking him from the contest. Ole Miss never allowed any running lanes to develop, either, as the Razorbacks ran for only 132 yards as a team – a meager 3.6 yards per rush.
Even though an early goal line stand gave the home fans some hope, it was immediately extinguished when the offensive line failed to block on third down and Green was strip-sacked in the end zone and the Rebels recovered for a touchdown to take a 7-0 lead.
Former Razorback and Jonesboro native Grant Cook described the situation on a 4th & 5 podcast in no uncertain terms: “Ole Miss came ready for a bar fight and we (Arkansas) were hiding under the barstool.”
When the Rebels got that first score, it was the equivalent of punching Arkansas in the mouth. On the podcast, Cook and host DJ Williams both spoke on how the Razorbacks, especially in the Pittman era, have rarely recovered from an early blow to the face (the third quarter of the Tennessee game notwithstanding).
Teams have come into Fayetteville and hit Arkansas early and often. The response is less than stout more often than not, to say the least.
This most definitely wasn’t the case when the two played together for Arkansas. The pair shared a story on the podcast about practice during their college days in the 2007-10 range when former defensive lineman Jake Bequette was trying to punk the offensive line by taunting and overdoing it in a drill.
Both Cook and teammate DeMarcus Love ended up jumping Bequette and putting him back in his place, Cook recalled. Bequette, who was a legacy of course with his father and grandfather both playing for the Razorbacks, turned into an All-SEC defensive lineman by the time he finished up in 2011.
Neither 4th & 5 host was able to come up with anyone on the current Arkansas offensive line who would do any such thing. That being said, the team isn’t totally bereft of players with a dawg mentality, as Andrew Armstrong organized a players-only team meeting before the Tennessee game to rile players up, according to a source.
Kiffin was Clearly Fired Up
It would’ve been real easy for Ole Miss to let up at halftime in Fayetteville with a big lead and start looking ahead to the impending clash with Georgia this past weekend at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford.
A Twitter clip that made the waves Thursday night showed that this was the furthest thing from Kiffin’s mind.
Kiffin wanted to land a knockout blow. He remembered the 2020 game when Matt Corral threw six interceptions, which probably led to his postgame commentary with Hudson Clark on Saturday, and then I’m sure 2022 came to mind. Arkansas led that game 42-6 midway through the third quarter and almost let the Rebels come back before eventually holding on 42-27.
Eventually, however, it got comfortable enough for him to take his jacket off and his adolescent son Knox to shoot smoke out of a gun on the sideline while on the shoulders of one of the Rebel linemen.
Arkansas wasn’t coming back from down 56-17, whether they had Taylen Green or Cam Newton in the pocket, thanks to Jordan Watkins treating the Razorback secondary like playground equipment.
Hope for Arkansas Football
The way forward is that the Razorbacks had two weeks to lick their wounds, fix what was glaringly wrong from the Ole Miss game (maybe cover a receiver that keeps catching touchdowns against you?) and hope the fans are fired up for an 11 a.m. kick with old-school rival Texas.
Tennessee hadn’t beaten Arkansas since 2007 and found Razorback Stadium to be a house of horrors.
Texas and Steve Sarkisian undoubtedly remember 2021 and the Longhorns haven’t beaten Arkansas on the gridiron since 2008.
Maybe the Razorbacks will get some motivation from Mike Tyson. Teams with orange and UT in their name haven’t had much luck lately against them, and the much maligned boxer who wore orange for most of the early 1990s because of legal issues and who built his legend on knocking his opponents out early, happens to be fighting Jake Paul on Netflix the night before the Arkansas vs Texas tangle.
If the Hogs can punch the Longhorns in the mouth early, they might be able to pull off the upset.
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More on that matchup here:
Watch the full episode of 4th & 5 here:
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