Can Hogs ruin Texas’ season?

By Jerry Meadows

FAYETTEVILLE — This year Razorback football has been a tale of two cities.

When Arkansas does not turn the ball over, they win. When they do, they lose. It is as simple as that. Yet QBs and RBs, on occasion continue to carry the ball in one hand while being tackled. Wide receivers at times fail to protect the ball while defensive players try to punch the ball out of their hands. 

The offensive line last year was atrocious. At the beginning of this year, the O-line opened holes for the RBs to run through in helping the offense remain multi-dimensional. But as the season has progressed the O-line has under-performed as it has consistently broken down in pass protection and has failed to give the RBs a chance to run the ball.

In their five games against ranked teams, the Razorbacks have rushed for 631 yards. But 232 of those yards were against Oklahoma State which hasn’t won a game since at Tulsa. That leaves 399 yards rushing against 4 ranked SEC teams. In their 5 wins, they have rushed for 1,221 yards. If Arkansas expects to beat Texas, they must be able to run the ball. If they can’t, they will surely lose.

The QB position has become a Jekyll and Hyde experience for most of the year. When the QBs are good, they are very effective, but when they get pressured the odds of something bad happening go up substantially. Four times this year there has been either a pick-six, fumbles inside the 10-yard line, or fumbling in the end zone resulting in points from turnovers. Just avoiding two of those turnovers would have turned defeat into victory in two of their four losses. Arkansas has proven so far that they are not capable of overcoming major mistakes against quality teams.

Nevertheless, they are now headed toward the end of the regular season and, in spite of some horrendous mishaps, both offensively and defensively, the Razorbacks have three games remaining with the possibility of finishing 8-4. Is this too much to expect? Not if they don’t turn the ball over. The fact is; Texas is beatable. But if Travis Williams’ defense cannot pressure the Texas QBs as has been the case the entire year for Arkansas, fans will have to watch another version of either the LSU or Ole Miss game. (Quinn) Ewers and (Arch) Manning both have shown that they make mistakes when they are under pressure. So, put the pressure on them or …!

The Razorbacks are at the point in the season where instead of constantly trying to figure out how to fix things, they should be fine-tuning a well-oiled machine, so they can finish strong. Yet this is not what we hear.

Coach Sam Pittman: “We’ve got to figure out what we can do like we did against Tennessee. We had a game plan where we weren’t going to get beat deep and we could handle the run. We just didn’t feel like that particular game plan would work against LSU and Ole Miss. So we’ve got to find out how we can stop the run and the pass, but we can’t let people behind us deep and have big plays. That’s what we have to eliminate, so we’re going to work big time. But those are the two common threads that happened in the LSU and the Ole Miss game.”

In the two losses to LSU and Ole Miss, the inability of Arkansas being able to cover receivers put the Razorbacks in the dreadful position of playing catch-up. With LSU, (Garrett) Nussmeier just bunted and stole bases (using baseball terminology) to move the ball down the field at will. Disguising tight coverage on the outside could have stopped some of what LSU was doing, but Arkansas did not do that. With Ole Miss, it was home runs and triples that allowed Ole Miss to run away and never look back. These two losses came at the hands of veteran QBs. One nickeled and dimed the Arkansas CBs to death. The other just flat-out embarrassed them. Ewers will be the fourth veteran QB Arkansas will face. So far, Arkansas has not won a game this year against a veteran QB.

There is no doubt Texas comes to Fayetteville this week with memories of how the Razorbacks have beaten them in the last three times they met. Will the Longhorns come to Arkansas intent on making a statement? Count on it. Texas’ entire season now rests on them beating the Razorbacks. The Hogs will have the opportunity to ruin the Longhorn season. The question is, will the Razorbacks be prepared to take care of business? 

Arkansas takes on Texas at 11 am this Saturday at Razorback Stadium on ABC/ESPN+.