With its prominent television position on ABC kicking off the first big Saturday of the college football season, albeit opposite Texas’ blowout of Michigan, Arkansas’ second-half collapse in a 39-31 double-overtime loss at Oklahoma State drew national attention and varied opinions.
Much of it reflected what one would read on “X” from Razorback fans. Media from coast-to-coast asked, like the Hog faithful, how Arkansas and head coach Sam Pittman could lose their grip on a game seemingly under control at halftime.
It doesn’t appear anyone asked the same question of BYU head coach Kalani Sitake, a fairly well-respected fellow in his profession, and his Cougars last season when they lost in Stillwater in virtually identical fashion to what is darned-near the same identical Oklahoma State team, save three starters from last year’s Cowboys that finished 10-4 and reached the Big 12 title game.
Hog fans surely remember last year’s BYU squad, the one that trailed Arkansas 14-0 before anyone barely had time to sit down in Razorback Stadium, only to whip the Hogs for most of the remainder of the game in a 38-31 shocker. BYU, though struggling all year in its first in the Big 12, was up on OSU 24-6 at halftime late last season, and really didn’t come unglued quite like the Hogs did on Saturday, but still lost in double overtime 40-34. It even took a last-second kick by BYU to get the game into OT, just as it happened for Arkansas on Saturday after the Razorbacks had led 21-7 at halftime.
Not that some other team’s misfortune even a year ago in Stillwater should salve the Razorbacks’ and their fans’ pain today. And we all know it is nigh impossible for any fanbase, much less at Arkansas, to consider that the opponent simply did what it had to win. Most fans forget there is someone on the other side wanting to win as badly as their favored team.
(READ NEXT: Oklahoma State Loss Brings Up Pittman Prediction That Went Off the Rails)
The Difference in Arkansas vs Oklahoma State
Point is, 19 starters on this Oklahoma State team had the fairly recent experience of being outplayed for a half at home, only to pull one out even if it took extra time. Saturday was old hat for the Cowboys and Mike Gundy, who also overcame in-state rival Oklahoma at home last season.
Meanwhile, Arkansas has 55 players, many of them starters, who weren’t Razorbacks at this time last year. A few of those starters who had sensational first halves found themselves a bit overwhelmed before a very loud full house at Boone Pickens Stadium on Saturday.
This includes a rebuilt offensive line that can run block as well as we’ve seen under Pittman, but was flummoxed when OSU changed up its front and gambled with blitzing linebackers in the last 32 minutes of the game. (I’m including the drive after the outstanding interception by Jaheim Singletary inside the last 2 minutes of the first half, which we know offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino would have eaten up if not for a first-down sack of his quarterback.)
It’s only Game 2. Convincing this team that Saturday can be a positive building block toward the next 10 games is the biggest challenge for Pittman and his staff now. The season wasn’t going to be decided in Stillwater, and really, the most important feeling going into the game was for the Hogs to compete with a vastly more-experienced squad and maybe eke out a win. (Oddsmakers oddly jumped the Vegas line to OSU favored by 10 points from 7.5 on Friday, which raised some eyebrows around here that something unannounced was amiss.)
Reasons for Optimism
Losing Saturday shouldn’t be a season-wrecker. But today, the difference is these mostly new Razorbacks know they can put up gobs of offense against a Top 20 team on the road and can play some pretty good defense, too. Who in their right minds had the Hogs holding Cowboys’ magnificent running back Ollie Gordon II, last year’s Doak Walker Award winner as the nation’s best runner, to 11 yards in six carries in the first half, or 49 yards on 17 carries for the game?
Yes, Gordon’s last carry was his longest, a 12-yard ramble in overtime that provided the winning margin for OSU, and it was set up by one of the Razorbacks’ dumber plays of the second half: Xavian Sorey Jr., the Georgia five-star transfer, who otherwise had a solid game at linebacker, even if his fundamental tackling skills sometimes seem lacking (no breaking down, tackling too high), decided to go all WWE on OSU receiver Brennan Presley around the 25 on a second-down tackle in the second overtime, and the personal foul penalty moved the Pokes to the 12, right before the TD.
New Arkansas quarterback Taylen Green, the transfer from Boise State who had an up-and-down time there as a part-time starter, is a work in progress for UA offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino. But the promise, if not sometimes brilliance, he showed in Stillwater is encouraging.
His and new running back Ja’Quinden Jackson’s running forced Oklahoma State out of its base defense late in the first half, but a second half of dropped balls by both of them, some missed blocking assignments and perhaps a little too much excitement within the signal caller to maintain Arkansas’ lead in the second half spoiled what otherwise could have been a terrific day.
Special Teams Issues for Arkansas Football
Of course, the No. 1 question coming out of Saturday was with the Arkansas special teams (and let’s all say it in unison, “naturally”). The place kicking has for two weeks been at the foot of transfer Kyle Ramsey. The positive obviously was Ramsey cooly delivering the game-tying field goal from 45 yards out as time expired. The negatives, though, were Ramsey missing from 41 and 46 yards, the latter from straight on in the first overtime – but after Green had taken a sack that he simply can’t surrender.
Pittman, who’s proven to be a scared frontrunner in his five years as a head coach, probably made the biggest blunder when he let Ramsey’s first miss, early in the fourth quarter, affect his decision-making on the next drive when Arkansas reached the OSU 24 and faced fourth down.
Certainly there is some coaches sheet (and Sheridan High School head coach Kevin Kelley will surely have it) that in this situation, if unsure of your field goal kicking, it says you go for fourth-and-5 on the opponent’s 24. (Older fans will remember a scenario in Starkville, Miss., in 1998 when Houston Nutt, without his suspended star kicker and his backup, was forced to do just that, failed on a few gambles in or close to the red zone, and ultimately lost 22-21 to Mississippi State, costing the Hogs the outright SEC West crown and a title game rematch with Tennessee.)
But shouldn’t the paper odds change when you consider the venue, the time left in the game, the vociferous Cowboys faithful packed on that end of the stadium, the chances of a botched assignment up front magnified because of all these distractions?
Rather, you’ve just told your kicker to whom you entrusted one of the most important jobs in college football that suddenly you no longer trust him – after one near miss, a kick that was inches outside the right upright. It’s to Ramsey’s credit, when Arkansas had no other choice with 2 seconds left, that he slid his second try just inside the right upright to tie the game.
And then, yes, Ramsey all but assured us we’ll probably see another Hog kicker this week against UAB in Fayetteville by hooking his overtime attempt wide. It wouldn’t have won the game, but it didn’t lose it either when Oklahoma State’s Logan Ward pushed his 41-yard try.
Ward was successful on his other three attempts, though.
The Conundrum for Arkansas Football Fans
With that, a pick-six by the Cowboys defense in the first half of a Green throw while being hit by a linebacker, a Jackson fumble that led to a field goal, a huge secondary botch on a flea-flicker, a muffed punt by Isaiah Sategna early in the fourth quarter (when a Hog gunner was blocked into his legs as the ball arrived) and situational awareness and time management issues late all allowed OSU to wipe out what 648 yards of total offense had built.
Instead, Arkansas fans are mulling over this conundrum since Saturday of not wanting to blame Sam Pittman for the players laying the ball on the ground or missing blocking assignments and kicks, but still concerned that Pittman loses too many close games and that somehow that has to be cleaned up by a guy on the hot seat.
Pittman is 24-26 overall as a head coach; his win-loss record in games decided by a touchdown or less is 6-15, though early in his third season he was 4-5 in such games (see sidebar below).
In my nearly 60 years now of watching Arkansas football closely, I’ve found that usually the more talented team wins the close games; it’s not a 50-50 coin flip. Frank Broyles had a mantra that he would later pass along to Houston Nutt when Nutt was head Hog, of making sure you game-planned to reach the fourth quarter within one score; Broyles said he found that more often than not, the opponent would botch a thing or two, and sometimes earlier than the fourth quarter, and his Hogs would win most times – and they did, at more than a 70 percent clip. Some were close, and a lot of those teams weren’t as good as the Razorbacks. Texas was. In the 1960s he won 4 of 7 one-score games versus the Longhorns.
Some, like many of the SEC Champions he saw in bowl games, were as good or better and opponents won by 1 to 7 points (for example, No. 1 Alabama in the 1962 Sugar Bowl, No. 3 Ole Miss in the 1963 Sugar Bowl, LSU in the 1966 Cotton Bowl, Tennessee in the 1971 Liberty Bowl). Ken Hatfield’s 1984 Hogs gave a very good Auburn team a fight in the 1984 Liberty Bowl, only to lose by 6. Houston Nutt’s 2001 squad gave defending national champion Oklahoma all it wanted defensively but lost by a TD, then lost the 2007 Capital One Bowl by 3 to Bret Bielema’s one-loss Wisconsin team. And the list through Arkansas history goes on and on. Bobby Petrino lost to Big Ten powerhouse Ohio State by 5 in the 2011 Sugar Bowl.
Sometimes, the opponents are better, and Arkansas coaching, including Pittman’s, still has given the Hogs a fighting chance. On paper, Oklahoma State was supposed to be better. They were outplayed, national writers wonder how the Razorbacks managed to lose the game, and yet the Cowboys rose several spots in this week’s rankings while Arkansas remains nowhere to be seen (we’re not debating that; Arkansas is 1-1 and still unproven).
Is Arkansas a “good team,” as Pittman insisted in the post-mortem? Good teams win those types of games. If Arkansas goes 4-8 again this year and loses five or six games in similar fashion like last year, it’s going to be hard to believe Pittman’s insistence that this is, or was, a good team.
It could be a good team, though. Fifty-five new players and 80-100 Razorbacks don’t develop into a cohesive team merely through grueling August practices. You come together through the trials and tribulations of Saturdays, and you take the lessons of a game like last Saturday and apply them to future Saturdays. It would be a shame if Arkansas fails to grow and benefit from the loss at Stillwater.
Close but No Cigar
Here’s a list of Arkansas football games under Sam Pittman decided by a touchdown or less…
2020
- At Miss State, 21-14 (1-0): Barry Odom unveils a drop-eight umbrella defense to foil Mike Leach’s “Air Raid,” and four interceptions lead the way for an upset win.
- At Auburn, 28-30 (1-1): Officials misrule on Bo Nix’s intention to spike, in which he actually fumbled; Hogs’ heroic comeback denied by last-minute Tigers field goal.
- LSU 24-27, (1-2): Officials’ strange calls throughout the game, including an ejection of Jalen Catalon, still don’t decide it; a blocked Hog field goal at the finish does, though.
- At Missouri, 48-50 (1-3): Odom’s prevent defense giveth in the opener and taketh away in the finale, as Missouri drives to Harrison Mevis’ game-winning FG in the 43 seconds; Hogs blow a two-touchdown fourth-quarter lead led by freshman KJ Jefferson in his first start.
2021
- At Ole Miss, 51-52 (1-4): Incredible shootout; Pittman calls for a 2-point conversion to win at the end, it fails.
- Miss State, 31-28 (2-4): KJ Jefferson leads a late game-winning drive.
- At LSU, 16-13 (3-4): Cam Little’s first big kick of his college career wins it in OT in Death Valley.
- At Alabama, 35-42 (3-5): Hogs heroic effort falls short.
2022
- Cincinnati, 31-24 (4-5): Razorbacks’ defense stands tall.
- Vs. Texas A&M, 21-23 (4-6): On the way to a 21-0 lead, Jefferson tries to go Superman, fumbles, and Aggies race it back for a TD; Little misses the potential game-winner in the final 2 minutes.
- Liberty, 19-21(4-7): Jefferson comes up short on tying 2-point conversion in monumental upset.
- LSU, 10-13 (4-8): Jefferson misses the game, Hogs fight just to keep it within 3.
- At Missouri 27-29 (4-9) Jefferson is back, but Hogs never get a chance at late FG.
- Kansas (Liberty Bowl) 55-53 3OT (5-9) Pittman goes conservative and blows an 18-point lead; Jefferson saves him in the OTs.
2023
- BYU, 31-38 (5-10): Arkansas races out to a 14-0 lead, then gets outplayed.
- At LSU, 31-34 (5-11): Hogs show fight, but LSU gets the ball last and kicks the winning FG.
- At Ole Miss, 20-27 (5-12): Defense steps up, but Arkansas’ offense can’t get over the hump.
- At Alabama, 21-24 (5-13): Hogs futility is best described when a RB trips over his own feet in the open field in what potential was the winning TD score in the fourth quarter; Tide holds off Hogs.
- Miss State, 3-7 (5-14): The game where Pittman uttered the “I didn’t know what to do” in ultimately passing up a FG for a punt; didn’t matter, Hogs never threatened to score late.
- At Florida, 39-36 OT (6-14): With a midseason change at OC, Hogs shock the Gators with more Jefferson heroics.
2024
- At Oklahoma Stat, 31-39 2OT (6-15): Hogs blow a 14-point first half lead with a barrage of second-half miscues and kicking failures.
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