ARLINGTON — It had been a quiet season through four weeks for Arkansas defensive end Landon Jackson, but the senior had a coming out party in the Razorbacks' 21-17 loss to the Texas A&M Aggies on Saturday at AT&T Stadium.
The fifth-year senior led both teams in tackles with eight (six solo), along with two sacks and three tackles for loss. For an Arkansas defense that has struggled to put pressure on opposing quarterbacks, Jackson looks like he's starting to put together the same thing that made him successful in 2023.
"Oh man, yeah that was good," Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman said of Jackson's performance. "I think it probably felt good for him because the guy blocking him was a good player as well. So I was proud of him, happy for him and it helped the team."
The Texarkana, Texas, native's first sack of the game — and the season, for that matter — came in the waning seconds of the first half. The Aggies were on the move and had just crossed midfield with 32 seconds left before the break, and Jackson split a double team to take down Aggies quarterback Marcel Reed.
The sack made Texas A&M think twice about pushing for a score before halftime, and the Aggies opted to return to the locker room with the game tied at 14-14.
"I mean, it felt great," Jackson said postgame. "I’d much rather have not as good of a game and come out with a win. I’d much rather have a game like Auburn where I think I had, like, two tackles, but we won the football game. I’m not in it (for stats). It’s not a me thing. I don’t give a damn if I had zero stats at the end of the season.
"My goal is to win football games. I didn’t come back to get 15 sacks if I’m going to win two games. I’m not worried about stats. My biggest thing is doing all I can to give my team the opportunity to win ballgames, and I didn’t do that today. So it was frustrating."
Named a preseason All-SEC First Team defensive end, Jackson was credited with his second sack with four minutes left in the third quarter. The Arkansas defensive line collapsed the pocket around Reed, and Jackson pressured him into an intentional grounding penalty.
RELATED: What Sam Pittman said about another one-score loss
Jackson is in his fifth season of college football, and Saturday's game was his third in a Razorback uniform. He's 1-2 against the Aggies in his Arkansas career, with the lone win coming in 2021, a game Arkansas won 20-10. As a Texas native, Jackson said he's enjoyed playing at AT&T Stadium, but he's not happy about the results.
"The atmosphere is great, it's like a home game for both (teams)," Jackson said. "So I really enjoy it. I don't enjoy that we've lost them. I wish we could have pulled for sure this year off. I wish we could pull all of them off, though. But I mean, I really enjoy it. It's a fun game."
The blame for the loss, for the most part, doesn't fall on the Arkansas defense. The Aggies only produced 297 yards of offense and punted nine times, and the Razorbacks sacked Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed three times and recorded seven tackles for loss.
Still, it's another loss in the record books, and it's one of now 15 one-score losses the Razorbacks have suffered in the Sam Pittman era.
The season is not yet over, though, and Arkansas will return home next week to host the No. 5 Tennessee Volunteers — who are coming off a bye week — under the lights of Razorback Stadium.
"We’ve been I think four out of five on the road, it’ll be nice to get back home," Pittman said. "We’ve got to continue to work on how to win these games. I expect our team to be ready to play and our fans to be ready to support us and help us with crowd noise and all that, but it’ll be nice to get back home."
Kickoff for next weekend's game against the Volunteers is set for 6:30 p.m. CST and it will air on ABC.
