Coming off an open date, the Hogs needed a big SEC road win and got one on Saturday, knocking off Auburn 41-27 in a game that was not as close as the final score indicated.
After a rough start and end of the first half, the Hogs led 17-13 at the break before breaking the game open in third quarter. Jordan Domineck’s sack to spoil Auburn’s opening drive of the third proved to be the turning point, as the Hogs went on three straight touchdown drives to lead 38-13 early in the fourth after that. The Hogs gave reserves some reps after that, allowing Auburn to score a pair of garbage-time touchdowns.
Offensively, the Hogs used a similar gameplan to what we saw against BYU: come out throwing on early downs to set up the run game to take over in the second half. KJ Jefferson completed 16 of 24 passes for 234 yards (most of it in the first half: the Hogs threw for just 63 yards after halftime). He threw for one touchdown and ran for two more. Rocket Sanders finished with 16 carries for 171 yards, his second straight game over 10 yards per rush. The Hogs rolled up 286 yards on the ground, with 216 coming after halftime.
Defensively, the Hogs looked competent throughout the game, which is a far cry from what we’ve seen at times. Arkansas was able to mostly stop the run outside of a 34-yard scramble on a broken play and a 41-yard touchdown run. The Tigers finished with 468 yards, which isn’t great, but about 100 of that came on the backups late.
Takeaways
Another slow start, but a perfect third quarter. Arkansas has struggled on the first two drives of each half for basically all season. The first two drives of the game showed that again, as the Hogs trailed 3-0 midway through the first quarter. But the offense roared into gear with a 14-0 run to take a commanding lead. After a rough finish to the first half that saw Auburn get 10 points, the Razorbacks took over the game in the third quarter, scoring on three straight possessions.
Matt Landers is taking over. We were sold on Landers as a deep threat when he arrived in Fayetteville, but frequent drops and a lack of big plays marred his first few games. But for the second straight week, he was a downfield menace, finishing with four catches for 115 yards. Jefferson is obviously building fantastic rapport with him.
Auburn is a mess. Bryan Harsin might not make it to Monday. Auburn has a lot of talented players, but the Tigers just are not a good team. QB Robby Ashford struggled as a pocket passer, and the Tigers were never able to get star RB Tank Bigsby going: outside of his 41-yard run, he had 10 carries for 22 yards.
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