FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas tried a few things to slow down Ole Miss on Saturday. Nothing worked.
Outside of a goal line stand and a couple of punts, the Razorbacks pretty much let the No. 19 Rebels do whatever they wanted in a 63-31 loss at Razorback Stadium.
Jaxson Dart slung it all over the field for a school-record 515 yards and three of Jordan Watkins’ SEC record-tying five touchdown catches were bombs of 60-plus yards.
The result was 63 points for Ole Miss. It’s tied for the third-most the Razorbacks have allowed in an SEC game and tied for the second-most they’ve allowed to any opponent in Fayetteville.
“I felt like we had some matchup problems, but I thought we had some answers with it,” Arkansas football coach Sam Pittman said. “We were in 3-deep and they ran by us. We were in man, but we were in 3-deep and they ran by us, too.”
Even without All-America candidate Tre Harris, who missed his second straight game with an injury, it was clear from the beginning that the Rebels were going to test Arkansas’ secondary. Two of their first three plays were deep shots, with the first going for 24 yards and the second drawing a pass interference penalty, and they continued pushing the ball down the field even when the game was out of hand.
It was a stark contrast to how Garrett Nussmeier nickel-and-dimed LSU’s offense up and down the field with short passes two weeks ago. While the Tigers had just one pass play of at least 20 yards, Ole Miss racked up nine — not to mention three more of 15-plus yards.
Despite ranking second nationally in those kinds of plays, the Rebels had mostly been contained in SEC play with only 20 in four conference games. They nearly doubled their per-game average against the Razorbacks.
“They were having success with it,” Pittman said. “So no, it didn’t surprise us. We’d been working go balls all week, but we felt like they would do it, run the hitch, hitch-and-go…we felt like they would try to attack us like LSU did in their own way of offense, and they did.”
Arkansas Tipping its Plays?
It was such a dominant performance by Ole Miss that Sam Pittman wondered postgame if Lane Kiffin had picked up on something the defense was doing.
The Rebels didn’t implement their tempo as much as usual, instead relying on a lot of checks at the line of scrimmage.
“We probably have to go back and look at that in the off week and go, ‘Okay, are we showing our hand? What are we doing here?’” Pittman said. “Because obviously Lane and them had something today. I don’t know if it was the alignment of the D-linemen, but he didn’t play a whole lot of fastball.
“It was ‘see what we’re giving, check.’ Him and T-Will were having a check-to-check (battle), and obviously they won.”
Pittman isn’t insinuating anything nefarious or a Connor Stalions-like sign-stealing scandal, but rather a natural part of the game.
It was a different sport, but something similar happened about a year ago when TCU lit up ace Hagen Smith in the 2023 Fayetteville Regional. Dave Van Horn indicated afterward that he believed Smith was tipping his pitches. It’s worked the other way, too, as Florida ace Brady Singer tipped his pitches and Arkansas picked up on it.
There’s no guarantee something like that happened Saturday, but defensive end Landon Jackson wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.
“Ole Miss, as an offense, they’re normally a really high-tempo team,” Jackson said. “They didn’t tempo as much against us today, so part of me could think they were doing that. I’m not 100% sure. Those coaches definitely now much more than me on that, but it’s definitely a big possibility.”
Another Possibility
Of course, another scenario is one that’s much tougher to admit: the Razorbacks just got smacked by a dangerous offense.
They may have tipped off the Rebels, but Arkansas defensive coordinator Travis Williams also mixed things up in an effort to stop the pass — to no avail. Including the 47 yards by backup quarterback Austin Simmons, Ole Miss threw for 562 yards. That’s the most Arkansas has ever allowed in a game, surpassing the 559 by Alabama in 2021 (all by Bryce Young).
“I told T-Will, ‘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,’” Pittman said. “That’s when he went back into soft coverage and unfortunately they ran by us in that today, too.”
Even when the Rebels didn’t connect on their passes down the field, they benefited from flags. Four of Arkansas’ 10 penalties were pass interference, which may have also impacted the way its defensive backs defended Ole Miss.
“I think we’re a little fragile there,” Pittman said. “We don’t have as much confidence there as we need to have. But at the same time, confidence builds with success, having success. So anytime that happens early, I think that would affect the way that you feel like you can cover because you go in there and different guys call it differently. Sometimes you can be ultra aggressive and get away with it and sometimes you can’t.”
Pittman was quick to point out that he wasn’t making excuses.
“But cutting people wide open had nothing to do with pass interference,” Pittman said. “We’ve got to figure that out.”
Jordan Watkins was the main threat. His eight receptions went for 254 yards and five touchdowns. Those two marks were not only school records for Ole Miss, but also the most Arkansas has ever allowed to an opposing player.
With that kind of production, the Rebels didn’t even miss Tre Harris, who entered the day leading the country by a wide margin with 141.0 receiving yards per game.
“We knew we were going to have to probably double cover Tre,” Pittman said. “We probably should’ve went that way with Watkins.”
That would have just made things easier for other Ole Miss pass catchers, though. After all, the Rebels nearly had a trio of 100-yard receivers, as Cayden Lee caught 5 passes for 127 yards and tight end Dae’Quan Wright reels in a team-high 9 receptions for 99 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
No matter what Arkansas did, the Rebels were likely going to move the ball and put up points. That’s what Mississippi State and LSU did, to varying extents, the previous two weeks, too.
The key now will be to make sure the disappointing defensive performances don’t snowball like they did at the end of 2023. That won’t be easy with games against No. 6 Texas and No. 25 Missouri sandwiched around Louisiana Tech.
“We definitely have to have a reality check as a team and really just come down to earth and figure out what we need to get better at and get better at it,” defensive end Landon Jackson said. “Just can’t let it happen again. Got to learn from our mistakes, and overall get better as a defense because past few games, we’ve allowed too many points.”
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In a segment before the game, Sam Pittman seemed to be joking around with the ESPN announcers when he said:
“We don’t have the money that a lot of the schools do. Now we’re getting ready to get it in revenue sharing. But we don’t have the money so we went Blue Light Special a little bit with our O-line and from what I understand they [Ole Miss] went Louis Vuitton over there.”
This riff on getting “Blue Light Special” players out of the portal was actually was something Pittman had joked about on his coach’s show Wednesday, only that time it was in reference to his offensive line. Regardless, his humor did not go over well with some Arkansas football fans given the outcome of the game.
We dive into all of that here:
and here:
More on Arkansas vs Ole Miss here:
Hear from head coach Sam Pittman after the Arkansas vs Ole Miss game:
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