Arkansas back home now, but schedule toughens

FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas has played five games with only one being at Razorback Stadium.

That changes now with five of the final seven games slated for Fayetteville. Sam Pittman and the Hogs are coming off a 21-17 loss to Texas A&M. As was the case in both losses, Arkansas had issues with turnovers.

“Well, there’s either … Let’s go with the fumble first,” Pittman said. “There’s two ways you can play it. You can charge it or you can stand on the line of scrimmage and read the mesh. They had two different ways to play it. I think we should’ve just gave the ball. And they had us on that particular one. Part of it was a little bit of a snap problem too. So it slowed down the timing of it. But we probably should have just given the ball and took our lumps on that one. Because I believe they were mesh charging Taylen (Green) and fumbled the football and obviously bad timing, bad place. All of it’s that. If we’d just hold on to the football we’d be a really good football team with all the problems that we’ve got to correct.

“The second one, I think we’ve had so many pressures that we’ve got a lot of problems. We’ve got a confidence problem. We have a quarterback that’s not confident. There’s times when he can stand in the pocket that there is one there. There’s times when he stays in the pocket and he gets hit. So probably in between. And we tried a lot of quick passing game as well. But I think that, moving the pocket and running the football, you know. The problem with that was early in the game, we lost a running back early in the game. 22 (Ja’Quinden Jackson) was in and out of the game. R-Dub (Rashod Dubinion) was suspended. He’s not anymore. But R-Dub was suspended.”

Arkansas lost tight end Luke Hasz during the game and didn’t have Andreas Paaske due to concussion protocol.

“Our tight ends, both of them didn’t practice a whole lot last week, so it takes a little bit of the running thought out of it,” Pittman said. “But I think to take pressure off of the offensive line and our quarterback, we have to run the ball a little bit more, quick game, get the ball out of his hands so we can build some trust between him and the offensive line. He’s got to get better, the offensive line’s gotta get better. I think (Isaac) TeSlaa was a big shot in the arm for us. I think he came in and made some plays. I believe that gives Taylen another option to go to.

“So there’s a lot of reasons behind that. If I was going to put it in a nutshell, I’d say we have to protect the front of the pocket better. I didn’t think our tackles… I thought they played better than they played the week before. But there’s no place for him, a lot of times there’s no place for him to step up, so the pocket’s getting collapsed on him, which makes you look worse at tackle. Even the last one that we fumbled the football on, I mean, (Fernando) Carmona had him 11 yards deep. You can’t ask a guy to do more than that. He flushed because the front of the pocket was coming at him and the guy got the strip fumble. But I thought our tackles were better. We’ve got to continue to get better, but the front of the pocket is certainly something we’re going to address this week, as well.”

The Hogs have experienced some offensive line issues particularly protecting the passer. At this time though changing the lineup isn’t on Pittman’s mind.

“Well, we’re trying,” Pittman said. “We’re trying to fix it. I don’t believe a personnel change right now is going to help us. I think the only way that we can get better is maybe take a little bit of the pressure off, like I said, and run the ball a little bit more and hopefully stay out of those third-down situations and move the ball a little bit more on the ground.”

Pittman was asked what can the offense do to help the offensive line when the defense is sending more than the line has blockers?

“We went to a lot of crossing routes,” Pittman said. “We did. I think our screen game in the second half, we threw a screen out there. When people are zeroing you, which we’ve had, which means that you have to be good with six and then a seventh one, the quarterback’s gotta have… You have to get the ball out of your hands and that means either quick slants, rolling the pocket, rolling away from the seventh guy, rolling away from the sixth guy if you’re empty.

“And the screen game, or maybe you try to bust a draw through there or something because there’s nobody in the middle of the field so you’re trying to get your receivers to the middle of the field and get the ball out of your hand as fast as you can. The wide receivers have to understand that, as well. They have to understand, ‘Hey look, there’s nobody in the middle of the field, they’re running total, we have to get to the middle of the field.’ So all that stuff has to get better for us, but to answer your question, yes.”

Arkansas (3-2, 1-1) and No. 4 Tennessee (4-0, 1-0) will kickoff at 6:30 p.m. on ABC.