Conclusions from loss to LSU

By Jerry Meadows

FAYETTEVILLE — The Razorbacks came into their contest with LSU Saturday night with high expectations.

The biggest game for the program in years was about to play out. With a win over LSU, Arkansas would defeat back-to-back Top 10-rated teams for the first time in school history. The reward for such an accomplishment would surely put them in the Top 25 in the nation. It would also be the next step to get the Razorbacks into the first College Football Playoffs at the end of the season.

But the LSU Tigers were not allowing any such thing for the Razorback fans to dream about. From the opening kickoff, LSU dominated the line of scrimmage and the Razorbacks looked over-matched. In every facet of the game, LSU imposed their will. The first four drives for the Tigers led to scores. However, at halftime, LSU only led 16-7. 

If there were lessons to learn from this beatdown, Arkansas needed to learn them quickly, because the rest of the SEC was given a blueprint on how to shut down the Razorback offense – stop the run and force Arkansas to pass when they don’t want to.

LESSON #1 – Run the ball

Of their “*50*” offensive plays, Arkansas ran 19 for 38 yards for the entire game. This is almost a guaranteed loss every time you take the field in the SEC. In the first 4 games of the season, Ja’Quinden Jackson had rushed 69 times for 472 yards averaging 6.8 yards per carry. In the last 3 games, Jackson had 35 carries for 116 yards for an average of 3.3 yards per carry. Yeah, but LSU’s defense was good. So was Tennessee’s, #1 in the nation when the Razorbacks played them and Arkansas ran the ball for 134 yards on their #1 defense.

LESSON #2 – settling on FGs can get you beat in the SEC

On the first series, Arkansas ran the ball 4 times for 16 yards and passed the ball 3 times for 36 yards. Faced with a 4th and 3 on LSU’s 23-yard line, Arkansas, (16th ranked in the nation on 3rd-down conversions) opts to settle for a 42-yard attempt at a FG – missed it! If a team, being an underdog and down by 7 was ever to go for it, wouldn’t it be in the first quarter in their home stadium needing just 3 yards?

Like last year against LSU, Arkansas settled for FGs instead of TDs. After dominating the Tigers for most of the first half, Arkansas led 13-3 with 208 yards of offense with 48 seconds remaining in the first half. LSU had less than 150 yards of offense. All Arkansas had to do was get into the locker room with no less than a 13-6 lead. In three plays LSU went 75 yards in 18 seconds, 13-10. LSU gets the ball to begin the second half and scores another TD and all of a sudden Arkansas trails 17-13.

LESSON #3 – Disguise tight coverage on defense.

It became clear that the game plan was to get Garrett Nussmeier comfortable throwing the ball by taking advantage of where he could read where Arkansas had soft coverage. On LSU’s first drive, Nussmeier completed 4/5 pass attempts and the longest pass play was 14 yards. On the 2nd drive, Nussmeier was 5/10 with the longest pass completion being 18 yards. Their second drive stalled but a 33-yard FG made sense by LSU not being at home and giving them a 10-point lead. All this happened because Nussmeier was allowed to throw short, high-percentage pass plays. Arkansas’ pass coverage made it easy for Nussmeier to pick apart.

For the game, Nussmeier completed 21 passes that were 18 yards or less for the entire game. Nussmeier attempted 5 deep passes. One was complete for 19 yards and another for 29 yards. Two had pass interference penalties called against Arkansas and one was incomplete but Arkansas was offsides.

Penalties will get you beat

A pass interference and roughing the passer on LSU’s first drive enabled LSU to get their first TD.

An offsides penalty on Arkansas with a 3rd and 6 incompletion by LSU helped to continue LSU’s 4th drive. On the same drive, another illegal use of the hands led to LSU’s third FG.

In the 4th quarter, another pass interference led to 3 more points for LSU.

Conclusions:

Of the three losses this year, Arkansas had three had 3 turnovers in each game. Also, Arkansas had too many penalties that led to their opponents scoring. So, the hardest team for Arkansas to beat this year appears to be themselves. Only LSU has shown that they were truly a superior team to Arkansas.

It is on to Starkville where nightmares can happen. The game starts at 11:45 am on Saturday, Oct. 26.