Arkansas won its fifth game of the year in blowout fashion, crushing Mississippi State 58-25 in Starkville. It’s the most points the Hogs have scored in an SEC game since also scoring 58 in Starkville in 2016.
The Chad Morris experience continues
In the preview, we discussed the erie similarities between Jeff Lebby’s first season in Starkville and Chad Morris’s first season in Fayetteville in 2018. The first three games of each season had identical circumstances and even ended in very similar final scores. Each had what appeared to be a turning point that came off a bye in October.
We then mapped out how the rest of State’s season would go if it continued to follow the same pattern:
Disappointing home loss to an unranked team because the defense falls apart (Arkansas 45-31 to Vanderbilt, MSU this week against Arkansas)
…
Surely there’s no way they complete this, right? If they’re going to, then the mirror game is Arkansas’ 45-31 loss to Vanderbilt. The Hogs allowed 442 yards of offense, including 172 rushing yards to Ke’Shawn Vaughn.
The “defense falling apart” would be quite a sight to see, as Mississippi State’s defense seems to have already fallen apart.
Oof. That ended up being prophetic. Mississippi State’s already-horrific defense had its worst outing of the year. Just for good measure, I noted that Vanderbilt’s Ke’Shawn Vaughn rushed for 172 yards in that game. Braylen Russell totaled 175 for the Hogs on Saturday.
For good measure, here’s the rest of the Bulldogs’ season mapped against the 2018 Hogs:
Ugly non-conference home win around Halloween against a very bad team (Arkansas 23-0 over Tulsa, MSU against UMass)
Week 11 close loss to a team ranked 7th in the AP poll (Arkansas 24-17 to LSU, MSU against Tennessee)
Week 12 blowout loss to a team ranked 21st in AP poll (Arkansas 52-6 against MSU, MSU against Missouri)
Week 13 blowout loss in big rivalry game (Arkansas 38-0 against Missouri, MSU against Ole Miss)
Even the AP rankings were perfect last week: 7th for 2018 LSU and 2024 Tennessee, and 21st for 2018 State and 2024 Missouri. But the new poll has changed things, so we’ll see if those teams can get back to those numbers.
Maybe Lebby won’t continue down the Chad Morris trail. After all, he’s already one step ahead because he has a good quarterback in Michael Van Buren. Morris ended up abandoning Ty Storey in favor of bringing in transfers, and then the Hogs started an FBS-record five different quarterbacks in 2019. I don’t see that happening for Lebby unless Van Buren gets hurt.
Advanced stats
Those five havoc plays allowed by Arkansas were the key. We talked in the preview about how State’s biggest weakness was its inability to produce negative plays. When the Hogs don’t go backward, they are very, very good.
Arkansas had 13 drives, and 11 of them got a first down inside the Bulldog 40. That’ll do. Even better, the Hogs scored 58 points on those 11 drives, good for 5.3 points per opportunity. They’ve been in the 2-3 range in SEC games all year, which is awful.
We said this was a big game for Bobby Petrino:
This game is going to give us a clue about whether Bobby Petrino was a good hire at offensive coordinator, because this is the type of game his unit is going to have to go win. Mississippi State’s defense is historic levels of awful, but if the Hogs can’t finish drives as they’ve struggled all year, State’s offense is good enough to beat them in a shootout. If Arkansas loses this game something like 28-24, then it will be clear that Petrino isn’t going to save his boss’s job.
There you go, State ended up with 25 points. Had Arkansas averaged 2.3 points per scoring opportunity like they have over the last couple games, they’d had ended up with 25 points as well, and you’d have a toss-up game.
Instead, the Razorback offense looked crisp in the scoring zone, so this one was never close.
Everything here looks great for the Hogs. They had been bad on early downs, but not in this game. In fact, Arkansas didn’t even convert a single third down. They were zero of seven. But it didn’t matter because State couldn’t even force many third downs.
The Bulldogs moved the ball just fine. Their EPA numbers took huge hits due to their five turnovers and two turnovers on downs. The rushing numbers in particular are impacted by a goal-line fumble, a goal-line stand, and another 4th-and-1 failure. The Bulldogs looked like Arkansas in the scoring zone in this game.
Still, State was pretty lucky just to be in position to score enough points to keep this game close. They posted a success rate of just 40% compared to 66% for the Razorbacks. Mississippi State fans may be upset about missed opportunities, but they didn’t give this game away: Arkansas was just much better.
Arkansas won the battle of the ground pretty convincingly. The Hogs ran it extremely well, posting their best line yards, success rate, and explosive play rate against an FBS opponent all season. Per Pro Football Focus, the Hogs rolled up 193 yards before contact, so the offensive line was providing plenty of holes. But everyone was breaking tackles, too: Arkansas averaged a season-high 4.5 yards per rush after contact, including a team-best 5.3 from Rashod Dubinion (who has always been a solid YAC back).
Everything the Hogs tried through the air worked. Taylen Green was not sacked and was pressured on just 24% of dropbacks, the lowest pressure rate he’s faced against an FBS opponent this year. When he was not pressured, he was 19 of 22 for 273 yards and three touchdowns.
The Hogs also used a lot more play action than normal. Green was 10 of 11 for 161 yards and three scores on play action passes, though his interception also came on play action. If the Hogs can protect it, we’ll probably see more play action passing.
Among skill players, give the MVP award to Luke Hasz, who led the team in win probability added (+23%) and EPA (+8.9). Green added +32% WPA as a passer and +16% WPA as a rusher for +48% WPA total.
Highlights
Up next
Ole Miss visits Fayetteville for an 11 am kickoff on Saturday. The Rebels are 6-2 and ranked 19th. They’ve been a bit disappointing on offense, but their defense is excellent. I’ve already got a preview up at Best of Arkansas Sports, and we’ll be previewing the data here later this week.
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