FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas football held its second closed scrimmage of fall camp Saturday and for the second straight week, the defense won the day.
While plenty of things went right for the offense and the special teams even had a solid day highlighted by a 100-yard kickoff return from Isaiah Sategna, the defense played the best, according to head coach Sam Pittman.
"I thought it was a good, physical battle," Pittman said Saturday. "We had a couple big plays taken back by holding penalties on offense. I think you have to understand, too, the format.
"If I'm understanding, you want to know who played well and if there's a winner and a loser. If that was the case and we called it, I'd probably say the defense got the better of the offense. But that's if we're looking at ones, twos and threes."
During the first scrimmage of fall camp, the offensive line struggled with pass protection against the front seven that defensive coordinator Travis Williams assembled. It seems like it was much of the same for the Arkansas pass rushers, who were highlighted by Missouri transfer defensive end Trajan Jeffcoat.
"I thought our pass protection was better," Pittman said. "It's hard when you've got (Jeffcoat) coming off the edge. That's a bad man back there...Here's the other thing with him, we're not going into the scrimmage saying we're going to slide to him, we're going to chip him or we're going to do all those things.
"We're trying to see if we have somebody that can block him. I did think the protection, even though we've still got a long way to go, I thought it was better this week than it was last week."
Pittman said if there was anything that disappointed him from the scrimmage it would be the number of times his team was called for holding on the edges. What is a negative for the offensive line is a positive for the defensive line, which seems to be one of the deeper positions on the team.
"We’ve got good pass rushers on every level," Pittman said. "Ones, twos, threes. The best thing that’s happening, really for like a (Patrick) Kutas, is he’s going against (Jeffcoat). There might be a better d-end out there, but we’re not trading ours."
The issues on the edges came on all levels of the offense, though it was much better than a week ago, according to Pittman. Per a team spokesperson, there were five different pass rushers who recorded a sack Saturday and defensive tackle Keivie Rose had two on the second team defense.
Offensive coordinator Dan Enos said Thursday that scrimmages are often pass-heavy, which creates more opportunity for pass protection to be an issue.
"I don’t think that’s unusual that you have protection issues in fall camp," Enos said. "But I know this, one thing we do is we don’t get conservative. We keep going, because we’ve got to get better and we’ve got to practice.
"And I just think the other thing is, we have a very, very talented defense. In particular, in the front seven as far as rushing the passer. We want to challenge our guys and this is the best way to figure out what we can do and what we can’t do."
If there's one thing you can be certain about, it's that both sides of the ball are benefiting from the challenges they are facing in fall camp. Saturday's scrimmage even saw tempers flaring on a hot day in Fayetteville.
"The heat was a little bit of a problem with emotions today, that we’ve got to get under control," Pittman said. "We will. We’ve got a good culture. I think our kids like each other, I think they love each other and they play hard. And you’re going to win a lot of games being able to do that. We’ve got a tough football team. Proud of them."
Quarterback KJ Jefferson was of the opinion that the heated moments can bring out the best in each other.
"It’s iron sharpening iron, so we know heated situations are going to happen," Jefferson said. "It’s football. It’s just not getting too carried away in those moments to where it hurts the team and effects the team and also hurt yourself by if you do something that puts you out of the game or a half or something like that. But it’s competing."
Saturday's scrimmage was the second and final scrimmage of fall camp, which is now technically over. There are two weeks left until the season opener on Saturday, Sept. 2 against Western Carolina at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.
