Ask Mike: Pushback on Historic Blowout, Nolan Speaks to Cal’s Players & Remembering Billy Moore

Q. Our first question this week comes from Popular Porkster who wants to know: Does the blowout of overmatched UAPB mean that we are much improved from last season? I say yes but a lot of fans are saying it means nothing.

A. I agree with you. I means something. It’s the 5th most lopsided win in the 130 year history of Hog football. You have to go back 96 years to find a bigger blowout. So 95 Razorback teams since 1928 did not do what this one did. Is the 2024 UAPB team the worst team Arkansas has played in those 96 seasons? I seriously doubt it.

Here’s what I saw. An improved offensive line. Arkansas had 9 rushing TDs last season. They had 8 in that game. Ja’Quinden Jackson ran for 101 yards, Scored twice. Averaged over 12 yards per carry.

A quarterback wearing a Hog uniform for the first time was a little shaky in the first quarter but he did what you want if you’re Bobby Petrino. He got better and better. Taylen Green ended up with a QB rating of 92.2. Completed 70% of his passes. Threw 2 TD passes. Ran for 2 TDs.

Arkansas ended up with 687 yards total offense and was 9-0 on 3rd down conversions and scored a touchdown on every offensive possession. That’s never happened before. Some Hog fans may not be impressed but the SEC was. In a week where 10 SEC teams scored a ton of points, Arkansas tackle Fernando Carmona was named the SEC offensive linemen of the week.

Because Arkansas’s offense was so explosive the defense was on the field for almost 28 minutes and still pitched a shutout and held UAPB to 3.4 yards a snap. They allowed only one 3rd down conversion in 10 tries.

All of that and nobody got hurt.

Q. Bloodredhog wants to know: Other than getting the first game jitters out of the way what does this win really tell us about the team? I was impressed with the D-line but UAPB was clearly outmanned.

A. If you were here with us I would ask you this question. What if UAPB was outmanned because Arkansas was that good? Everybody seems to be eliminating that possibility. Until we see UAPB play more games all we really know about them right now is that Arkansas completely dominated them. We don’t know if it was because, as some have put it, that they were a high school team playing in a college game, or because Arkansas is better than those fans think.

Q. Hotdogger says: Seeing the offense play so much better gives me hope. Malachi Singleton is really a stand out quarterback. Our team is in good hands if Green needs help.

A. That’s a really good point. One of the issues over the previous two seasons was the lack of a backup QB who doesn’t cause Arkansas to get beat. KJ Jefferson missed three games in 2022 and Arkansas lost all of them. He also played in a game where he did not work out the previous week because he was injured. He was not prepared and they lost that game.

I go back to when Bobby Petrino was here as head coach. He had Ryan Mallett as his starting QB but he developed Tyler Wilson as an effective backup. That’s what he was doing in the second half of the UABP game. Getting Malachi Singleton some game experience and he did the same thing with K.J. Jackson. Arkansas fans who get this have to feel good about having an offensive coordinator who has spent last spring and this fall not just developing Taylen Green but two other QBs as well.

Q. B. Price says: If QB1 doesn’t get more accurate throwing the ball we got some long days ahead.

A. Seriously? He completed 70% of his passes and threw for two touchdowns. His scoring pass to Ty Washington was a good as it gets. He was rolling left, throwing against his body, and placed the ball right into Washington’s outstretched hands on the dead run. A friend of mine who covers Oklahoma State pointed out that UAPB did not blitz Green. They pressured him very little. He thinks Oklahoma State will go after Green and try to rattle him. So we will see how he performs against a good defense. But to criticize him for what he did in the season opener? Give me a break.

Q. that’llduepig says: I have never seen a game where all three strings of players scored. Is there another time when this happened?

A. It’s not just that played and scored but that they scored on every possession just like the starters and on the defensive side they shut UAPB out just like the starters so no, that’s never happened before. Pretty amazing and yes, it speaks to the depth of this team, which the coaches kept taking about during camp while some fans thought they were just hyping things up. No, they weren’t. The depth on this team is real.

Q. mousetown says: What good does it do to play a team like this? UAPB is so bad Arkansas would have been better off having a team scrimmage last Saturday. Now they’re going to Stillwater overconfident.

A. I don’t agree that blowing UAPB is going to make these guys overconfident. They know who the opponent is this week and they understand how difficult it is to beat Oklahoma State in Stillwater. But it will give them confidence which they will need.

I trust you were being sarcastic when you suggested that Arkansas would have been better off scrimmaging itself because that’s nutty. The players need to get in front of a real crowd. Taylen Green needed to be exposed to live tackling. I actually think it was a perfect opponent to have. They got to run a lot of their offense. Play a lot of second teamers in the second half. The coaches got broken in on using I-Pads on the sidelines and using the on-field communication system. Again, they won big and nobody got hurt.

Q. Husker71 says: I hope we never play a team that bad again.

A. Did you happen to catch the Oklahoma-Temple game. Tennessee-Chattanooga? Ole Miss-Furman? Alabama-Western Kentucky? There were a lot of mismatches in SEC games last weekend. Some of those teams will end up better than others but it’s a new season and it will take a few games until we see if they are really as bad as they looked and that includes UAPB.

You’ve heard the term writing a check with somebody else’s money? That’s what some Hog fans do. They want Arkansas to play a tough non conference schedule and then get mad if they lose one of those games. If they play a team like UAPB, instead of being happy that Arkansas won big, the reaction is, don’t ever play a team like that again.

Do you really believe Arkansas or other SEC teams have never played a low ranked FCS team before? Is the answer to play a Power 4 team in every non conference game? Also most games are scheduled more than year in advance. There’s no way to know how good or bad an opponent is going to be by the time you play them.

Q. R. Crabtree says: We really didn’t play anybody but we sure had fun scoring TDs!!

A. I like that attitude. None of us really know much about the opponent but even if they turn out to be terrible this season there’s no reason not to enjoy this win. Arkansas covered the spread by 20 points. How many times has that happened over the last several years?

Q. Carrol Fred says: So Arkansas blew out a bad FCS team under Sam Pittman. Maybe he should have rode their bus back to Pine Bluff. I think he’d be good coaching at that level.

A. Understand what’s at work here. Here we have an Arkansas fan who takes a dig at the head coach after the biggest blowout win in 96 years. Clearly he wants Pittman gone. A lot of the anti Pittman faction never wanted him hired in the first place and they wait for any sign of an issue so they can go after him on the Internet. When Arkansas went 9-4 in season two under Pitt they went into hiding waiting for a chance to go after him again. Last year was that chance. If Arkansas bounces back they will wait for another chance. They won’t stop until he retires. This is not new. I saw that growing up in my hometown. Fans would get down on the head football coach and they would complain until he didn’t have the job any more. The same is true of college coaches and NFL coaches.

The relevant question here is, who wins out? Will Sam Pittman retire on his own timetable and accomplish his goal when he was hired? A goal to build this football program back from the bottom of the SEC and leave it a lot better off than he found it.

Or will he leave under pressure with that goal unrealized? This season is all about answering those questions.

Q. pigsfeat says: Noticed quite a bit of complaining about Arkansas running up the score on UAPB. I have always thought that you should not humiliate your opponent. Playing 2nd and 3rd team players is a need. What is your stance?

A. Pittman did play 2nd and 3rd team players. He also cut 10 minutes out of the 2nd half. The issue is, Arkansas continued to throw the ball even in the 4th quarterback because Bobby Petrino wants to develop back up QB’s. You can’t do that by having the the offense run the ball up the middle every play.

I saw a lot of blowouts over the weekend. They didn’t happen because those teams shut things down when they got up four or five touchdowns.

Q. RazorAlex88 wants to know: How are we feeling about OSU game with week 1 under our belts? Ok. St. didn’t exactly light things up till later on in the game but SD St. is definitely one of the best of the best in FCS.

A. South Dakota State is good. You could see that at times. But they did not have Oklahoma State’s size, speed and number of players who can make big plays. OSU returns all 5 O-line starters plus they brought in two more out of the portal and played 7 in that game. Sam Pittman says that Arkansas won’t win this game with D-line schemes. Arkansas’ guys will have to line up and win physical battles with those OSU linemen.

The Hogs are big underdogs against the Cowboys. T. Boone Pickens Stadium is one of the toughest places to play in the country. I read where over the last four years Oklahoma State is top 5 nationally in home stadium wins.

Q. Armon Abbe asks: Which SEC team impressed you the most in week one? I’ll go with Vandy just because they were they only conference team to pull off an upset.

A. Like you I really enjoy upsets. I thought Vanderbilt had blown it when their kicker missed a chip shot field goal near the end of regulation play but the ‘Dores came back to win it in OT. They weren’t going to be denied. So that was fun to watch.

However there were so many impressive wins by SEC teams it’s hard to pick one. There were six blowout shutouts and four other blowouts where the opponent scored 7 points or less. Ole Miss and Tennessee really stood out to me but I’ll go with Ole Miss. They looked scary good.

Q: WVHogfan says: I have two options for still playing games in LR.

Continue playing A-St. or UAPB but with them being the home team.

Do home and home with other mid majors and pay them to move their their home game to LR.

A. Arkansas wants as many home games in Fayetteville as it can get. That’s why the Jerryworld game is going away and that’s why the War Memorial game is probably going away. Plus with all the issues they seem to have staging a game at War Memorial I think most central Arkansas fans are realizing that it’s better to play that game in Fayetteville. Obviously you want to help with your plan but there’s a good chance after 77 years, 2025 will be the last Arkansas game in War Memorial.

Q. Marty Byrde’s Proxy wants to know: When were the freshmen games discontinued? Did they go away simultaneously when Freshmen became eligible for varsity play?

A. I called Grant Hall for the answer to that question. He’s covered the Razorbacks since 1969. That’s 55 years. Longer than anybody in the media. He says freshman games ended in 1972, the year that freshmen became eligible to play in varsity games. With that change there was no longer a need for freshmen games. But you can see why they played those games. Who wants QBs like Bill Montgomery and Joe Ferguson or a defensive player like Lloyd Phillips sitting on the bench for a whole season? Play them in games against other freshmen. Get them some experience. That’s what they did.

Q. KYHogfan asks: What did you think about Cal bringing Nolan Richardson to practice and have him address the team? I thought it was a smart thing to do.

A. It was. Cal’s philosophy on getting players ready to compete is the same as Nolan’s. They use different words but the meaning is the same. Nolan says, Our practices are 40 minutes of hell so when you get in a game the game is easy compared to out practices. Cal says, I want you to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Bringing in a national championship, hall of fame coach at the school you are about to play for gives those players some perspective on where they are and what the expectations are.

Q. s-giles asks: Could you tell us about Billy Moore? I read where he passed away last week. I know he was a QB at Arkansas but that was before my time.

A. Billy Moore is still the only 1st team All American QB ever at Arkansas. He did that his senior year. He lettered in 1960, 61 & 62. Arkansas won the SWC in 60, tied for 1st in ’61 and finished 2nd in ’62. He was mostly a running QB. In those days players had to play both sides of the ball so he was a safety on defense and a good one. He held the school record for the longest run in school history of 90 yards for around 40 years. Talent ran in his family. He was the younger brother of Henry Moore who had a huge game against Texas in 1954. Arkansas won the SWC that year. That team was known as the 25 Little Pigs.