Pittman isn’t looking to make big changes in how spring practice works

FAYETTEVILLE — Sam Pittman previewed the upcoming spring practices on Thursday and he made it clear it should have a familiar look to it.

The familiar look will even include a spring game on Saturday, April 19, while some schools are doing away with such events. This will be Pittman’s sixth season at Arkansas and he was asked if he will do anything different?

“I don’t think so,” Pittman said. “Just because somebody else does it doesn’t mean that that’s what you should do, unless that’s what you want to do, right? But you’ve got to look at everything. I just don’t know how you play football if you don’t play football. I don’t know how you get the fans excited about your football team if they can’t see it. A lot of times that would be spring game-wise to go do what the NFL is doing in the Pro Bowl. I don’t know if that’s going to excite anybody. I know last year we had a spring game and everybody was disappointed because we went 1s versus 2s. We had gone 1 on 1s in 14 practices, you know? We just didn’t there. Part of it is you want your 1 offense to be successful, you want your 1 defense to be successful.”

Pittman feels having a physical spring helps develop depth and also determine who should be with the 1s.

“But no, we haven’t changed a lot of things,” Pittman said. “You know, I’m an offensive line coach, so I believe that you have to do physical things in the spring. I don’t know how if a second team running back and you don’t get an opportunity to break tackles, I don’t know how you beat the guy ahead of you out. I don’t know if you’re a linebacker and you’re a 2 and in your mind ‘I’m better than this guy. I’m better than this guy’ and you have no chance to play full speed, how you beat the guy out.

“Competition becomes bigger when you’re playing the game. Now, we’re never going to tackle the quarterback, so I just talked out of both sides of my mouth there. But I do think that you can get better if your mind takes out of ‘well I’m worried about injuries.’ We go out here on a Saturday and never one time does my mind go ‘What happens if so and so gets hurt?’ Or ‘Man, I hope so and so doesn’t get hurt.’ Every scrimmage, every time we tackle in the spring that’s all I think about. And so I can’t allow that…”

Pittman went on to explain he knows the risks of physical practices and admitted he gets nervous at times.

“Let’s look at this, too,” Pittman said. “This is a long answer. Anybody else got any questions? I hope not. We went to a scrimmage and I’m petrified. Okay? It’s the spring. I’m petrified, oh we’ve got ‘this guy can’t,’ you know my mind’s working. Do you know you can scrimmage — you’re not going to tackle the quarterback — but you can scrimmage and you look at it… I can’t remember, I think it was our first scrimmage last year and we were like eight plays in and we’ve tackled two times because you had an incompletion, you had a guy run out of bounds, you know what I mean? I’m going, ‘What am I worried about two tackles in a game?’ The physicality of the offensive and defensive line, people will say they don’t do anything different — yeah they do. You play different if you know somebody is going to get tackled. 

“To answer the question, no we’re probably not going to change a whole lot. We’re going to continue to be physical and we’re going to have a spring game.”

The first practice will be Monday, March 10.