Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman joined the weekly SEC Teleconference on Wednesday to give updates regarding his football team as they are in the midst of their second bye week of the season following a 63-31 loss to Ole Miss last weekend.
Below are links to more content for the Razorbacks, plus everything Pittman said on the coaches teleconference...
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(Opening statement)
"We’re trying to get healthy," Pittman said. "We’re trying to prepare for Texas. Excited about the opportunity coming up in a few days there. I’ll just answer questions."
(Did you do an internal review on whether or not you were giving something away on defense?)
After the blowout loss to Ole Miss on Saturday, Pittman made an interesting comment saying the team would have to look during the bye week this week to see if they are showing their hand with something on defense after they gave up nearly 700 yards of offense and 63 points against the Rebels.
"Because obviously Lane and them had something today," Pittman said Saturday. "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 (Travis Williams) 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."
Pittman was asked if they learned anything from reviewing that this week.
"Well I think that we found a couple of things," Pittman said. "Yes we did. There was a lot of checks, not as much fastball as what we thought we might get from Ole Miss. We certainly did find a few things that we need to correct and went back and did an extensive study there and found a couple of things that we need to get fixed."
(Can you compare and contrast what has happened in your good performances and what is not happening in the bad ones?)
This question was likely referring to the fact that Arkansas has played so well in games such as the 19-14 upset win over Tennessee, the blowout 58-25 win at Mississippi and the win at Auburn to open SEC play, but the Hogs have also had bad losses to LSU and the recent embarrassment against Ole Miss.
"There’s two common themes in the bad games," Pittman said. "One of them is that we’re turning the football over. We can’t win doing that. I don’t know that anybody can. We certainly cannot. The other thing is that we haven’t matched up well in the back end with their quarterback and their receivers. Those are two commons themes. We should be able to control the turnovers. We did not in those games.
"The other thing is that we did try several different coverages. Several. Into the double-digits. Several different things in blitzing, in coverage, in quarters, in halves, in half, in cover 6, cover 3, cover 8. It just didn’t work last week. We’ve got to figure out what we can do like we did against Tennessee. We had a game plan where we weren’t going to get beat deep and we could handle the run.
"We just didn’t feel like that particular game plan would work against LSU and Ole Miss. So we’ve got to find out how we can stop the run and the pass, but we can’t let people behind us deep and have big plays. That’s what we have to eliminate, so we’re going to work big time. But those are the two common threads that happened in the LSU and the Ole Miss game."
(Health update on Ja'Quinden Jackson and Taylen Green?)
Arkansas has been without starting running back Ja'Quinden Jackson for two straight games, plus he only had five carries in the LSU game before that. Quarterback Taylen Green missed the entire second half of the Ole Miss game with a knee injury.
RELATED: Latest injury news for key Razorbacks
"I still think we’re a few days away from both those guys, determining what their ability to play against Texas would be," Pittman said. "I can tell you this, I don’t know if either one of them would be able to play if we were playing Saturday. Without avoiding the questions, just giving you a true answer, I think we still have to wait until probably a Monday of next week to see exactly where we’re at with those two guys.
"Taylen’s got a sprained knee, and certainly JJ’s got that ankle. They were out in the walkthrough yesterday, but I don’t know that they’ll be available really for practice today."
(Any chance of Selman Bridges playing given the struggles in the secondary?)
Bridges is a four-star cornerback recruit out of Temple, Texas, and he's logged just 10 defensive snaps this season, all of which came in the opener against UAPB. Bridges has appeared in six games on special teams, which means he isn't eligible to redshirt anymore.
"Well, there’s certainly a chance of that, yes," Pittman said regarding Bridges getting some action. "I think we have to look at all things. How we’re coaching it. The coverages that we’re playing. The people that we’re asking to play those coverages, and we certainly have given that a good look and have made some changes there to see if we can get better. Selman’s certainly one of the guys in that thought process, as well. He’s done really a good job out there, and we’ll see what happens there, but he certainly has improved greatly this camp."
