Fayette Villains

It was not close… and then it was close… and then it wasn’t.

A brief Alabama meltdown combined with sudden life from the offense allowed Arkansas to close a once-28-0 gap to 28-23 by the end of the third quarter, but the Razorback defense fell apart at the worst possible time, spoiling a comeback bid.

From a national standpoint, the story of the game is the injury to Bryce Young. He was lighting the Hogs’ secondary up before leaving with a shoulder injury in the second quarter. Backup Jalen Milroe failed to test the Hogs downfield, but Alabama didn’t to, as they rushed for more than 220 yards in the fourth quarter alone to escape with the win.

Grading the Hogs

We assign grades based on how the team’s performance – adjusted for quality of opponent – compares to all other teams in all other games this season. The grades are 0-100 and can be thought of as percentile performances, so a grade of 65, for example, means your overall performance was better than 65% of all other performances this season.

Here are the team grades for Arkansas against Alabama:

Offense: 89
Defense: 13
Overall: 41

Bad news: since opening with a 70 against Cincinnati, the Hogs have gotten worse in each game since, bottoming out with a 41 on Saturday. The good news is that the offense had its highest-graded game of the season.

Good: Rocket Sanders and Ketron Jackson

We’ve got a closer look at each player’s advanced stats below, but these are your top two receivers. Yes, one is a running back and the other isn’t even a starter, but the stats love both, and so does the film study. Jackson is a nice outside threat, but the Hogs really need to be more creative in getting Sanders the ball in the open field. Again, more on them below.

Bad: the back end of the defense

Coverage, open-field tackling, you name it, the Hogs struggle. As we looked at in The Day After, even Bumper Pool is struggling, as he was the spy assigned to Alabama’s quarterback on that 77-yard scramble. The Hogs are in real trouble in every game if they can’t be better on the back end.

Bad: punting

Alabama’s big punt return was due entirely to a very blatant holding call, so I’m not holding anything against the Hogs for that one. That’s the kind of call you get when the SEC office is only a few miles from the opponent you’re facing.

But Max Fletcher is still rocky as the starting punter. He did have three boots of 45 yards or more, so that’s good, but he still had punts of 36, 34, and 32 that were not returned. Many of Fletcher’s punts are fine on air distance: a 34-yard punt in the air is acceptable if it rolls for six yards or so. But Fletcher’s punts are Australian-style, so they “die” or even bounce backwards from where they hit. That’s great if you’re trying to down a kick on the 1, but not if you need to get 40 yards net. I need to recheck the stats, but Fletcher only has a handful of punts all season that netted 40 yards or more. Not ideal. As we’ll see below, Arkansas badly lost field position (again), due in part to punting.

Ugly: coaching errors

Credit Sam Pittman for the onside kick, as that was a great call at a great time. But accepting a 15-yard penalty on Alabama instead of taking fourth down has to be one of the dumbest coaching decisions I’ve ever seen. The Tide were going to be happy with a field goal, and instead they got a touchdown. Pittman’s mismanagement (see here for last week’s discussion about that last-second field goal against Texas A&M) was cute when he was a brand new coach overachieving with a scrappy underdog. But now he’s trying to lead the Hogs to actually be a national power. Mistakes like that cost your team points in key moments.

Advanced Stats

Confused by any of the advanced stats you see here? Be sure to check out the glossary.

First for the Hogs’ offense: the topline numbers are poor, due largely to an awful start to the game. The Hogs failed to sustain any kind of drive until getting a touchdown on the final possession of the first half. For the game, the Hogs did some things well: 39% of available yards is almost double Alabama’s defense season average (22%). Averaging 5.7 plays per drive against the Tide and 4.3 points per scoring opportunity are also positives.

Unfortunately, gaining 39% of available yards didn’t translate into weaker field position for the Tide, due largely to the fact that Arkansas’ punting unit continues to be abysmal (see note above). Losing field position isn’t good for this offense.

For the defense, there’s not much good to say. The Hogs held Alabama to only moderate efficiency, but it didn’t matter due to repeated big plays. You can see that the Hogs allowed the Tide to take a snap inside their 40 on less than half of Alabama’s drives, but that becomes less impressive when you see that Alabama had three touchdowns scored from outside the 40, so those aren’t included in that figure.

Barry Odom is trying to transition Arkansas’ defense from bend-don’t-break into hyper-aggressive. Whether that decision was made this offseason or as a reaction to Jalen Catalon’s season-ending injury in the opener, I don’t know. So far, it’s not working, but there are at least a few positives here. The Hogs generated a decent amount of havoc (18%) and knocked the Tide off-schedule repeatedly (63% leverage rate). Those are promising signs! Of course, it didn’t end up mattering, since Alabama gained it all back on passing downs anyway. The Tide were +12% in marginal third downs and generated almost three-quarters of a point per snap on passing downs plays.

Offensively, the numbers here aren’t great, but at least they’re not abysmal. The Hogs (mostly) stayed on schedule and were fairly efficient on early downs. But outside of a couple good plays in the third quarter, the Hogs were mostly helpless when falling behind the chains. That’s been a trend all year and it’s not a good one.

The main problem is Jefferson’s lack of rapport with any single receiver. He had tremendous chemistry with Treylon Burks last year and hasn’t found a guy he trusts this season. In this game, it was Ketron Jackson, who is making a move to become his best target. Consider:

Matt Landers: 10 targets, 2 successful, -5 EPA
Jadon Haselwood: 8 targets, 3 successful, -4 EPA
Ketron Jackson: 6 targets, 4 successful, +5 EPA

I’m not quite sure why Jackson was forced to split snaps with freshman Jaedon Wilson, as he was clearly outperforming Arkansas’ other receivers with Warren Thompson out for an undisclosed injury.

Here are some all-season pass target numbers:

Haselwood: 24 of 29, 252 yards, +17 EPA
Landers: 18 of 27, 278 yards, +9 EPA
Thompson: 8 of 12, 122 yards, +8 EPA
Jackson: 7 of 10, 151 yards, +14 EPA

So Jackson leads the Hogs receivers in yards per target and EPA per target. I definitely think that’s worth monitoring.

The run game got off to a terrible start and that dragged the numbers down. The Hogs ended up running the ball pretty well, totaling nearly 200 yards for the day. Defensively, though, yikes… if the Hogs weren’t in the backfield (4% sack, 24% stuff), the Tide were probably getting big yards.

In a game where the Hogs found out that many of their guys (especially on defense) don’t belong on the same field as Alabama… Rocket Sanders absolutely belongs on that field. Despite a slow start, he ended up rocking a 45% success rate and +0.04 EPA/Rush against the 2nd-ranked run defense in the nation (by opponent-adjusted EPA/Rush). Rashod Dubinion’s fumble is the only reason Arkansas finished with negative EPA/Rush as a team. Again, that’s a really encouraging sign.

After the game, Pittman finally admitted what is obvious: Arkansas is too run-heavy on offense, which is why the Hogs struggle when forced off-schedule. Reducing Jefferson’s carries is a start (he’s averaging 13.4 non-sack rushes per game). He’ll always have at least five or six due to keepers on read plays, and then you expect anywhere from two to five scrambles per game, but that’s 11 carries at most.

Reducing Sanders’ carries is probably necessary, although you hate to take away touches from your best offensive player. The solution might be to throw Sanders the ball more. Actually, Sanders might be Arkansas’ best receiver (he played the position in high school):

I mean, how do you not want that in the open field more often? Jefferson when targeting Sanders this year: 10 of 11, 136 yards, +7 EPA. I think the Hogs should try and get Sanders about five targets a game from here on in.

Up Next

The Hogs head to Starkville to try and salvage the season against Mississippi State. This is an intriguing matchup: Arkansas’ secondary is obviously on high alert against the Air Raid, but the Hogs also need to figure things out against a tough-but-vulnerable Bulldog defense. A win, and still reaching 8-4 or better remains a possibility. A loss, especially a bad one, and you might end up fighting just to make a bowl.

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box score breakdown

Box Score Breakdown: Alabama 49, Arkansas 26

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