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To have a chance to knock off a legitimate College Football Playoff contender on the road, Arkansas likely needed to play a clean game Saturday afternoon.
Nothing about the No. 8 Razorbacks’ performance could be considered “clean,” though, as flags were flying all day at Sanford Stadium. They were officially charged with 13 penalties totaling 100 yards in their 37-0 blowout loss to No. 2 Georgia.
That number doesn’t include six other flags that were either offset or declined by the Bulldogs. Even without those penalties, it was a worse-than-normal showing by one of the most penalized teams in the country.
Coming into the week, Arkansas was averaging nine penalties per game, which was the eighth-most in the FBS and third-most among Power Five teams - behind only Ole Miss (11.7) and Arizona State (10.8).
Head coach Sam Pittman was baffled by the struggles during his postgame press conference, pointing out that they have officials at practice and work on it every day.
“We're going to have to emphasize it a little more, I guess,” Pittman said. “We'll have to do something instead of just bringing them out on the practice field, do something different, because obviously if we knew how to stop it, we would have already been doing it."
It started almost immediately. On the first drive of the game, Arkansas seemingly forced an incomplete pass that would have set up a third-and-long situation, but Montaric Brown was called for pass interference. A few plays later, Georgia scored a touchdown and was off to the races.
The issues were even more severe when the Razorbacks got the ball. Before ever getting a snap off, they committed back-to-back false starts - one on right tackle Dalton Wagner and one on left guard Brady Latham - to put themselves in a first-and-20.
“We worked on the stem and the movement and all of that, but evidently not enough because we had several jump offsides,” Pittman said. “It's hard to get 10 (yards) against Georgia, let alone 15, and on the first one it was 20.”
Those were the first of four offsides penalties on Arkansas’ offensive line. Center Ricky Stromberg was also whistled for an illegal snap.
“I have no idea why they jumped offsides,” Pittman said. “I mean, I'm not a mind reader. Hell, I don't know. We practiced it, we practiced it with noise, we stemmed them, we moved them, and they jumped offsides. I don't have any damn idea why they jumped offsides. I wish I did, we'd fix it."
Despite Pittman indicating earlier in the week that he didn’t think crowd noise would bother them too much because they had practiced it and also experienced it some in the Texas A&M game at AT&T Stadium, Wagner said it played a big factor in the first half.
Playing in front of a screaming, sold-out crowd of 92,746, Wagner committed three of the false start penalties. In addition to doing it on the first offensive play of the game, he also did it on the first play of the second half.
“We made too many mistakes,” Wagner said. “There is no excuse for it — no noise, no nothing. We made mistakes that shouldn’t have happened. It’s on our backs to fix those mistakes and it’s time to bounce back from it, too. As an O-line, that’s not how we play. Those mistakes are not what we are, not who we are. We intend to never make that happen again.”
On the other side of the ball, there was actually one play on which Arkansas committed three different penalties. A third-down incompletion by Stetson Bennett was wiped out by another pass interference on Brown after the Bulldogs declined an offsides and holding penalty on the same play.
Pittman’s frustration with all the flags came through in his responses to the media during the postgame press conference.
“I don't know, guys,” Pittman said. “I mean, what's the answer? Don't jump offsides, don't hold a guy and don't pass interference a guy. Hell, I don't know. I wish I did, we wouldn't be doing it. We're trying to fix it.”
A similar situation unfolded later in the drive, as Bennett threw an incomplete pass on third down only for Arkansas to commit two penalties on the play. This time, Georgia declined the offsides and accepted a holding penalty on Hudson Clark.
“I talked to the head guy a couple times and he was saying there was one play he thought he could have called one more,” linebacker Grant Morgan said. “But I don’t get a scholarship check to say which refs or which penalties are what… That’s definitely something we have to work on if they’re all true to what they say.”
Last season, the Razorbacks were called for 6.4 penalties per game, which ranked 80th in the FBS and 13th in the SEC.
Saturday was actually the second time Arkansas has committed 13 penalties, as it also did it in the opener against Rice. Before then, it had been a decade since the Razorbacks had that many in one game. They responded by having only four against Texas, but have since been called for nine and 10 against Georgia Southern and Texas A&M, respectively.
Arkansas will have another opportunity to clean up those issues next week when it enters another hostile environment at No. 12 Ole Miss. Kickoff will be at either 11 a.m. CT on ESPN or 2:30 p.m. CT on CBS.
