Week 1 isn’t over yet, since there a couple more games on Sunday night, but our weekly The Day After post will recap Saturday’s action, starting with the Razorbacks. The Box Score Breakdown will look at the advanced stats of the game and will post sometime Sunday evening.
Key Takeaways from Arkansas 31, Cincinnati 24
The full Box Score Breakdown will dive deeper into the game, but here are three postgame reactions to the Hogs in Week 1.
The team that finished best won. The first key to the game from the preview was that the Hogs needed to take advantage of every scoring opportunity and cash those into points, as both defenses were very good last season at preventing points on drives that cross midfield. For the game, Cincinnati had nine drives earn at least one snap inside the Arkansas 40, but they cashed those into just 24 points. The Bearcats and three touchdowns and one field goal, but the other five drives came up empty. Cincinnati missed two field goals, threw a pick, and punted twice from just outside field goal range.
Transfers had a huge impact. One game isn’t a large sample size, but that’s one win the Hogs can thank this transfer class for. Jordan Domineck (Georgia Tech) had the play of the game, a strip-sack of Ben Bryant at midfield to set up a touchdown drive that gave the Hogs a 31-17 fourth-quarter lead. Dwight McGlothern (LSU), who didn’t seem to have clearly won a starting job, started and played the entire game at boundary corner and recorded an interception and 51-yard return on Cincinnati’s opening drive. Drew Sanders (Alabama) had a sack, while Landon Jackson (LSU) played several snaps and was in a couple tackles. After Jalen Catalon got hurt, Latavious Brini (Georgia) played most of the rest of the game at safety. On offense, both Matt Landers (Toledo) and Jadon Haselwood (Oklahoma) had three catches, with Haselwood scoring a touchdown.
The Hogs need a healthy Catalon and Slusher. Both Catalon and Myles Slusher left the game with serious-looking injuries early in the second half, right as Toledo was in the middle of three straight scoring drives to cut a 14-0 halftime into a 21-17 score. With no help over the middle, the Bearcats immediately attacked, using crossing routes in particular to slide the Razorback passing defense up. Bryant finished with more than 300 passing yards. As of now, the severity of their injuries isn’t clear.
Other Games of Note
Georgia 49, Oregon 3 and Florida 29, Utah 26. Once USC and UCLA are gone, the Pac-12 will be a mid-major conference. Neither Oregon (#11) nor Utah (#7) had any business being ranked nearly that high. Georgia still looks scary-good, while Florida got a good start for Billy Napier.
Ohio State 21, Notre Dame 10. This was the game of the day, and it went exactly as everyone expected. Notre Dame played hard, but the Irish aren’t good enough. Good news is they’ll make the 12-team playoff every year and mostly get blown out.
Texas A&M 31, Sam Houston 0 and Ole Miss 28, Troy 10. I grouped these shaky offensive debuts together. Haynes King has a lot of physical tools and does a lot of things well. But man, he throws a lot of bad passes. He’s played two career complete games — Kent State last year and then Saturday — and thrown five picks. Sam Houston defenders got their hands on a couple more but dropped them. Meanwhile in Oxford, Jaxson Dart’s debut was unimpressive (18 of 27, 154 yards, 1 TD, 1 Int), though the Rebels rolled up 266 rushing yards.
South Carolina 35, Georgia State 14. Next week’s opponent still has a lot of question marks. They blocked two punts for a touchdown because Beamer Ball, and Spencer Rattler is an upgrade over what they had at QB last year. But their run defense got gashed again and they struggled to run the ball themselves. Plus Rattler was erratic, throwing two picks.
Vanderbilt 42, Elon 31. It sure feels like Arkansas only draws Vanderbilt when the Commodores are good. Or at least decent. The Hogs lost to Vandy when they had Jay Cutler in 2005, and then barely been them when they made a bowl in 2006. Their 2011 team under James Franklin was pretty good and almost beat the Hogs in Nashville. Ugh. Vandy is not decent right now.
Liberty 29, Southern Miss 27 (4OT). This felt like a difficult game when the Hogs scheduled it, but I’m not so sure at this point. Few teams in the country lost more production than Liberty (who went 8-5 last year), and the Flames did not look like a scary team on Saturday. Southern Miss went 3-9 last year. Liberty QB Charlie Brewer got hurt, so it will be worth monitoring that situation as the Arkansas-Liberty date gets closer.
BYU 50, South Florida 21. This one, on the other hand, looks scarier by the day. The Cougars rolled up 575 yards of offense and led 28-0 after one quarter. The Bulls — led by offensive analyst Chad Morris and QB Gerry Bohanon, the Earle native who Morris failed to successfully recruit to Arkansas in 2018, making their rendezvous ironic — had no shot.