Notebook: Offense breaks out, Treylon and Trelon rack up yards, more

Despite being without its starting quarterback, Arkansas moved the ball better than it has all year Saturday afternoon.

Even though it came in a heartbreaking 50-48 loss to Missouri, the Razorbacks racked up a season-high 566 total yards of offense. In fact, it was their highest total in a game in four years, when it had 663 yards against Mississippi State in 2016.

“For our offensive line, for our offense, that has to be a confidence builder,” head coach Sam Pittman said. “They have to do it the next time they go out there, but that has to give them some confidence.”

Arkansas did it with a mostly balanced attack, as it had at least 250 passing and rushing yards against an SEC team for just the fourth time since 2000.

KJ Jefferson threw for 274 yards and six different players combined for 292 yards on the ground. According to running back Trelon Smith, the goal was to nickel and dime the Tigers’ defense until popping a big play.

“The main focus was just keep the ball going forward,” Smith said. “Four yards here, five yards here and eventually we would get a 40-yard gain. That's what we were doing.”

The 292 rushing yards - which included 172 from Smith, 52 from T.J. Hammonds and 32 from Jefferson - were also a season high for Arkansas, surpassing the 222 it had at Texas A&M.

“You look at the line, there’s a lot of big holes in there,” Pittman said. “The backs were running hard. The offense wasn’t the problem.”

Instead, the problem that Pittman kept going back to during his postgame press conference was the Razorbacks’ defense, which gave up 27 points in the fourth quarter alone.

Tale of Two Tre(y)lons

Smith and Treylon Burks were workhorses for Arkansas on Saturday, accounting for 69.4 percent of that aforementioned yardage output.

The most impressive performance was courtesy of Burks, who had the fifth 200-yard receiving game in UA history. The star sophomore caught 10 passes for 206 yards and a touchdown, which was a step up in production after he averaged just five receptions over the last four games.

“He made some spectacular catches,” Pittman said. “We used him quite a bit more today and certainly we need to use him and continue to do that.”

It was the most receiving yards by an Arkansas player since Cobi Hamilton’s SEC-record 303 yards against Rutgers in 2012 and it ranks third in school history, behind Hamilton and Jarius Wright’s 282-yard effort against Texas A&M in 2011.

Burks also joined Anthony Eubanks (1997) and Mike Reppond (1971) as the only players in UA history with four 100-yard games against conference opponents in the same season.