The air has come out of the Razorback tires. All that hype has now vanished following an inexcusable 38-31 home loss to BYU. Arkansas is now 2-1 but will be heavy underdogs in four straight games away from home, making them likely 2-5 next time they take the field in Fayetteville.
What can we say? Arkansas outgained BYU 424-281 and had a special teams touchdown and still lost. The Cougars got a perfect combination of finishing drives, winning turnovers, and benefitting from controversial penalties, while the Hogs got some embarrassing coaching decisions that cost them dearly.
Here are some final thoughts. First, a positive note.
Positive: this game feels like that Toledo game
I keep comparing this season to the 2015 one because there are a ton of similarities: Sam Pittman and Dan Enos on the sideline together, Enos in his first season as OC, and a veteran QB in his final season. Just like in 2015, the Hogs couldn’t run the ball at all in their first two games.
Now we have another similarity: a bungled home non-conference loss that was truly given away. Arkansas outgained Toledo 515-318 but a combination of penalties, losing the turnover battle, a missed field goal, and critical drive-finishing issues sealed the deal in that loss.
So what’s the positive? Well, that team managed to recover and go 8-5, including 5-3 in the SEC, the only winning SEC record for the Hogs since Petrino was fired. And that was against a tougher SEC.
It’s entirely possible that the Hogs recover from this loss and have an acceptable season, just as they did in 2015. I could see Arkansas losing a competitive game in Baton Rouge next week, then upsetting Texas A&M in Arlington. They’ll be 3-4 after seven games, but the schedule is set up to go 5-0 or 4-1 over the final five games to get to 7-5 or 8-4. Is that the most likely scenario? Of course not. But it would not be stunning if that’s what happened.
Negative: how can the offensive line be this bad?
The story of the loss was Arkansas’ offensive line woes. We all wondered why the Hogs were not throwing more downfield routes early in the game, and we found out later: the line cannot protect long enough to throw the long-developing routes that the Enos offense likes. That’s a problem!
There are a few potential explanations, some of them unsavory. For example, after Pittman left as o-line coach following the 2015 season, he left behind several young recruits who struggled under his replacement, Kurt Anderson. Jalen Merrick, Colton Jackson, and Zach Rogers were the big three four-stars of Pittman’s final full class. And Brian Wallace was the highest-rated player on the entire team in the 2014 class. Jackson and Wallace were multi-year starters, but they were not nearly as good during their careers as their predecessors had been, namely Brey Cook and Travis Swanson (Petrino recruits), Denver Kirkland, Dan Skipper, Frank Ragnow, and Sebastian Tretola.
How is it that Pittman had a perfect hit rate on the guys he coached directly, and yet all of his recruits were relative disappointments when he wasn’t directly coaching them? At the time, for Hog fans, the answer seemed obvious: Kurt Anderson was a terrible coach. There’s probably at least some truth to that, but if Pittman recruits need to be directly coached by him to reach their potential, that’s a problem, because Arkansas hired him as the head coach, not the offensive line coach. So some of the blame has to fall on Cody Kennedy, who actually coaches the line.
The point here is simple: “we hired a good offensive line coach as our head coach, so we should have a good offensive line” is not sound logic. It oversimplifies how complicated it is to recruit, develop, and coach linemen, and to hire good assistant coaches to do all of those things. Pittman may be a great offensive line coach and a poor identifier of good offensive line coaches.
Again, it’s possible that this unit improves as the season goes on. But if it doesn’t, this might be a disastrous year.
Negative: Arkansas might should’ve just given Kendal Briles his money
To this point, I’ve been very neutral on judging the Enos hire. The official position of the Fayette Villains blog has been this:
- Kendal Briles was a good offensive coordinator. The claims that his offense was uniquely bad in the red zone are not supported by the data. The Hogs’ scheme was modern and well-suited to its talent.
- Briles’ offense was not perfect, as it did not set the defense up to succeed due to boom-or-bust nature.
- Briles’ last name carried baggage that made him unlikeable, and his constant flirtations with other jobs created a distraction that may not have been worth it. I had no problem with the Hogs letting him walk because of this.
- Dan Enos did a very good job in his first stint as offensive coordinator. Arkansas’ 2015 offense was one of the best in school history, and the offense was strong in 2016 and 2017 as well.
- Enos has largely been a bad – or mediocre at best – offensive coordinator in his stints at Miami and Maryland since leaving Fayetteville. He’s struggled to incorporate modern trends like RPOs into his offense, making him a bit of a dinosaur.
- I was very concerned that going from Briles to Enos could fail, because the Hogs are moving away from what it is innovative and modern (and thus advantageous) and into something more conservative, and thus more dependent on out-talenting the opponent. I wasn’t sure the Hogs were totally there yet. To do this during KJ Jefferson’s final season seemed incredibly risky. This offense does not well-suit Jefferson and Rocket Sanders’ skillsets.
Again, there’s still time, but that #6 is not looking good. Enos’s offense is requiring Jefferson to throw more short and medium routes, and his accuracy on those has been a problem for his entire career. Briles shielded him with constant short, easy RPO throws or deep balls, where he’s much more accurate. Enos is asking him to be more complete, pro-style passer.
Briles also shielded Arkansas’ tackles, who were bad last year as well. RPOs allowed the Hogs to leave opposing edge rushers unblocked, but Enos calls more true passes, where the pocket has to hold up. Enos also prefers more long-developing pass concepts, so the line has to hold up longer. Everywhere that Enos has been, his offense works when the line is good, but the results are disastrous if the protection is poor. And it’s poor right now.
So it’s early, but maybe just paying Briles his money to have him for one more year would have been the best move. It seems that Pittman and Briles had a tumultuous professional relationship, and I wonder if Pittman’s arrogance drove him to let go of some of the humility he had when he was hired by Arkansas and promised not to run the Bielema-era offense and instead turn the offense and defense over to qualified coordinators with total control.
Negative: this might be the watershed
The window for when it’s time for a program to “arrive” under a good coach has changed over time. It used to be that a coach needed three or four full years before they could be judged at all. But this transfer-heavy era has moved that back. Awful losses may be acceptable in Year 1, and maybe in Year 2 in some circumstances, but losing to Liberty in Year 3 and BYU in Year 4? A large part of me says that’s a sign that the Pittman era is going nowhere fast. You simply cannot lose those games this far into your tenure.
So unless there’s a recovery to 6-6 or better, Pittman may see the writing on the wall. He won’t want to go out fired; he would retire and stay in the good graces of Razorback Nation.
Other Scores
Mizzou 30, Kansas State 27. An unfortunate contrast to what Arkansas is doing is what Mizzou is doing. Eli Drinkwitz has been unimpressive as Mizzou’s head coach, but he has a clear plan and has been slowly building towards it. He runs a modern spread-zone offense and swapped out defensive coordinators until he found a competent one. He’ll always have his drawbacks – he’s a below-average in-game manager and a bit of a goober in press conferences – but he didn’t run off a good offensive coordinator ahead of a star quarterback’s senior year. Instead, the investment he’s been making finally showed the first signs of paying off as Mizzou pulled off the best win of the Drink era. Yes, it came in spite of Drink’s in-game coaching – the delay of game before Harrison Mevis’s field goal was completely incompetent – but Mizzou might be good enough to have a good season, if only because their program is much more stable than most of the SEC right now.
Alabama 17, South Florida 3. This was Nick Saban’s “fine, have it your way” game to OC Tommy Rees. Rees clearly dislikes Jalen Milroe at quarterback, so the Tide used Notre Dame transfer Tyler Buchner (5 of 14 for 34 yards) and freshman Ty Simpson (5 of 9 for 73 yards) in an ugly win. They may have to go back to Milroe and just live with the results.
Georgia 24, South Carolina 14. The Gamecocks made it difficult, but Georgia’s defense is still really good. I’m not sold on Carson Beck but Georgia is probably going to be fine.
Florida 29, Tennessee 16. Tennessee has looked shaky on offense, and it finally fell apart on them in the Swamp. Josh Heupel has an interesting season ahead of him: his first two UCF teams were excellent before a sudden fall-off in Year 3, and now Tennessee looks headed for the exact same result. There are some similarities to Pittman – winning with Chad Morris’s recruits, losing with his own – and that’s actually pretty common across college football.
UNLV 40, Vanderbilt 37. Okay, so here’s an interesting one if this does end up being Pittman’s final season: Barry Odom. Yes, his credentials as a head coach are unimpressive, but I’ve been following UNLV this season because of my interest in Odom’s innovative offensive coordinator, Brennan Marion. Marion’s offense is a unique combination of Gus Malzahn’s spread-to-run offense (Marion played for Malzahn at Tulsa) the spread-zone type of offenses that are currently dominant in both the NFL and college. Its base two-back look is pretty unique, and it’s a blast to watch. If he’s successful – and the Rebels just put up 400 yards on Vanderbilt – then Odom won’t be able to keep him in Vegas for long.
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