Offensive line performing better this season

FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas’ offensive line is performing much better this season than it did last year.

Sam Pittman credited Eric Mateos, the new offensive line coach, for much of the improvement on Monday. In addition, the playcalling of Bobby Petrino is undoubtedly also helping.

“I think a lot of it is Coach Mateos and the new guys in,” Pittman said. “That’s a lot of it. E’Marion Harris is playing well without (Patrick) Kutas in there. A lot of it has to do schematically with what we’re doing. We’re pulling, we’re down-blocking, we’re doing more with those guys, which we can because they’re a little more athletic.

“A lot of it has to do with the running backs. They’re running extremely hard. I would like for us to be a little bit better in pass protection. We’re good when we get on the right guys. Our empty protection has been an Achilles heel a little bit for us this year. Certainly we’re working on it, but inside the 25, on just a simple slide that we should have slid to the corner coming off the edge, and we didn’t and it was sack.”

Pittman said that he and Petrino have talked about possibly running the football a little bit more.

“We just have to get clued in better assignment-wise on empty protection,” Pittman said. “We probably need to run the ball more. Bobby and I talked about it. He said, ‘Yeah.’ We’re averaging a bunch, over 6 a carry, and have some good backs. Really pleased because I think you can end up winning close games when you can run the football. So I’m really pleased with that part of it. But Eric’s done a good job with them and we hit on the transfer portal.”

Arkansas added left tackle Fernando Carmona, right tackle Keyshawn Blackstock, center Addison Nichols and utility player Joe More for the offensive line from the transfer portal. Carmona came from San Jose State and was the SEC Offensive Lineman of the Week against UAPB.

“He plays extremely hard,” Pittman said. “He’s a good run blocker. He’s a good pass protector. He’s just got to be consistent with his hands, but he’s certainly a leader. One of the leaders up there on the o-line. He plays extremely hard. He’s physical. He’s got to be more consistent with his hands, not necessarily his pass set, but with his hands in pass protection.”

When Nichols left the UAB game after three plays due to an ankle injury he was replaced by Amaury Wiggins.

“I think for his first game, he was fine,” Pittman said of Wiggins. “He made some mistakes. We’re going to look at others as well to see if we can, you know, have competition there, where we push guys. Certainly, we’d like to have Nichols back, but we need a competition for the two-center, as well, and that’s what we’ll do this week.”

Pittman also was asked who else is there to work at center if Nichols is out longer than expected?

“Maybe Joe More,” Pittman said. “Maybe Josh Street. But Joe is a veteran who played all of spring ball, I believe it was all of spring ball at Syracuse, at center, so he’d be another guy we’d certainly look at there.”

Arkansas and Auburn will kickoff at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday at Auburn and televised on ESPN. It was announced on Monday night that Arkansas and Texas A&M will kickoff at either 2:30 or 3:15 on Saturday, Sept. 28, on either ABC, ESPN or the SEC Network.