College Students, get a year of HawgBeat coverage for just $11.95. Request details via email from your school account (.edu) to nchavanelle@yahoo.com.
Not a subscriber? Subscribe for free for 30 days w/code HAWGS30 NEW USERS | RETURNING USERS
FAYETTEVILLE — Day 1 of Sam Pittman’s first fall camp as the head coach at Arkansas is officially in the books.
The Razorbacks, along with the rest of the SEC, took the field for the first time Monday and worked for about 2.5 hours on their two outdoor practice fields in temperatures that got into the upper 80s.
“It was a little hotter out there than I thought it would be,” Pittman said. “I was really pleased with the effort. I’ll look at the tape and see what we need to improve on.”
Even though it was a helmets-only practice as the team goes through a required five-day acclimation period, the first-year head coach said he was pleased with the lack of missed assignments.
He was also happy about how the offensive players took care of the football, as there weren’t any fumbles, and how the defense ran to the ball.
Specific details on what happened in the practice were pretty sparse, but Pittman said they ended practice with a two-minute drill. The first- and second-team units went in the defense’s favor, but the third-team offense managed to score a touchdown.
Linebacker Bumper Pool told reporters that the secondary had a good day. Joe Foucha came down with an interception during practice and Jerry Jacobs notched a big pass breakup during the two-minute drill.
More than anything, though, Pittman said it was a successful first practice because of how the players responded to the adversity he and his staff put on them.
“There was a lot of running going on out there and I thought our wideouts and DBs fought through that real well,” Pittman said. “I was real pleased with that. We’re trying to be a tough football team, so we had to put them in tough situations, and we did today and they did a really good job.”
First Practice as Head Coach
Not only was it the Razorbacks’ first practice with Pittman as their head coach, but it was also his first practice as a head coach since leading Hutchinson C.C. in the early 1990s.
For the first time in nearly three decades, Pittman was in charge of leading an entire team rather than focusing solely on the offensive line.
“The practice goes a lot longer than it does as an assistant because you're watching so many different things, you're so ingrained in what you're doing, that the practice seems to go a lot faster than it did today,” Pittman said. “It was only two-and-a-half hours from start to finish. It shouldn't have been that long, but it seemed like it was a long time.”
Pittman said he managed to make it by every individual drill throughout the practice and wrote down notes about things he’d like to change.
Most of those were logistical issues, such as changing inside run from six- to four-play sets at a time.
“I have to learn as a head coach of how to run a practice exactly how I want,” Pittman said. “I thought it went well today, but there's some things that I wrote down that I'd like to change.”
