Despite missing its best pass catcher, No. 19 Ole Miss shredded through a porous Arkansas (5-4, 3-3 SEC) defense in a 63-31 loss for the Hogs on Saturday at Razorback Stadium.
Head coach Lane Kiffin's offense totaled 694 yards against the Razorbacks, which included 562 yards through the air. A huge chunk of those yards came from senior wide receiver Jordan Watkins, who caught eight passes for 254 yards and five touchdowns — both program records for the Rebels and both the most Arkansas has allowed by a pass-catcher in a single game in program history.
Watkins' performance was especially impressive considering Ole Miss was without the SEC's leading receiver in Tre Harris, who has caught 59 passes for 987 yards and six touchdowns this season.
Time and time again, Watkins (and others) managed to get behind Arkansas' secondary after what head coach Sam Pittman called a really good week of practice leading up to the Ole Miss game.
"As good (a week of practice ) as we've had," Pittman said after the game. "So, no, I felt like we had some matchup problems, but I thought we had some answers with it. We were in 3-deep and they ran by us. We were in man, but we were in 3-deep and they ran by us, too.
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"Couldn't get pressure on the quarterback, couldn't get there, either. When we were in man-to-man with some of their receivers they had, Watkins specifically, we were having a hard time guarding him."
Pittman said that Arkansas had been working on "go-balls" all week, but that apparently wasn't enough to prevent Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart from completing 25-of-31 throws for 515 yards and six scores, three of which were 60-plus yard touchdowns to Watkins.
Part of that could be because Arkansas has a fragile secondary lacking confidence, according to Pittman.
"We don't have as much confidence there as what, you know, we need to have," Pittman said. "But at the same time, confidence builds with success, you know, having success. So anytime that happens early, I think that would affect the way that you feel like you can cover because you go in there and different guys call it differently. You know, sometimes you can be ultra aggressive and get away with it and sometimes you can't."
Perhaps Arkansas' defensive struggles could be blamed on a lack of pressure from the defensive line, which only sacked Dart once and generated just three tackles for loss.
"We didn’t get pressure on either one of (the pocket passers we've faced this season), so they just sat back there," Pittman said. "Even when we tried to pressure, we didn’t get pressure on either one. So that’s going to build their confidence as well. Both of them have really good wide receivers and put us in a little bit of a jam at times matchup wise.
"I told (defensive coordinator Travis Williams), I said ‘I don’t care if they rush for 500 yards, we gotta quit getting them behind, we can’t let them get behind us and make him run the football.’ That’s when he went back into soft coverage and unfortunately they ran by us in that today too."
The answer to Arkansas' defensive instabilities likely sits somewhere in the middle for the Razorbacks, who have two weeks at the drawing board before facing a vaunted Texas Longhorns team. First up on the bye-week check-list, according to Pittman, is ensuring the team isn't tipping its plays to the opposition.
"We probably have to go back and look at that in the off week took and go ‘OK, are we showing our hand?' What are we doing here," Pittman said. "Because obviously Lane and them had something today. I don’t know if it was the alignment of the D-linemen. But he didn’t play a whole lot of fastball. It was see what we’re giving, check. And him and T-Will were having a check to check. And obviously they won.
"So I think we do have to go back to look at that, because if you look at even last week, we didn’t play … minus the turnovers we gave up about 500 yard last week too. I believe in our kids and I believe in our coaches. We’ll go look at it and see if we can’t get it fixed. I believe we can."
Up next, the Razorbacks have a bye week to rest before welcoming the No. 6 Texas Longhorns to Fayetteville on Nov. 16. That game will kick off at 11 a.m. CT and will be broadcast on ABC or ESPN.
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