ARLINGTON — For the second week in a row, Arkansas' offense was hogtied by self-inflicted wounds in a 21-17 loss to No. 24 Texas A&M at AT&T Stadium on Saturday.
After scraping by with a 10-point road victory at Auburn last Saturday despite three turnovers and three allowed sacks, offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino's unit failed to correct its mistakes, according to head coach Sam Pittman.
"It’s frustrating because I didn’t feel like it was any better than it was a week ago," Pittman said after the game. "Difference is we had 10 more (points) last week, four less this week. So, it certainly feels different."
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Pittman pointed to protection problems causing timing issues for Green and his receivers against the Tigers a week ago, and not much seems to have changed after multiple days of practice.
"As far as the result on the field, didn’t really look a whole lot different I didn’t think," Pittman said. "Again, if it’s something new, now you can correct it. But, there wasn’t a whole lot of new out there that we hadn’t seen."
Arkansas began the game with the second-fastest opening scoring drive in Southwest Classic History — a 1:11 minute sequence that resulted in a 75-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Isaac TeSlaa — which gave the impression that the Razorbacks had some fireworks in store for Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko's defense.
Throughout the remaining 58:49 minutes of game time, Arkansas accumulated 385 total yards of offense (well below its average of 524.0 per game) with two turnovers and a 5-for-15 (33.3%) mark on third-down plays.
The Aggies' vaunted defensive front seven recorded nine tackles for loss, broke up seven passes and generated eight quarterback hits and two sacks on Arkansas quarterback Taylen Green. Pittman put it simply following the loss: Arkansas wasn't winning its one-on-one blocking matchups.
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"Early in the game, we were getting — well, a bunch of the game — we were getting beat one-on-one," Pittman said. "And then what happens, you start getting that way — they really didn't do anything different. So it wasn't like we were turning them loose, it was just we were having a difficult time blocking them. Then what happens, especially when you start the game like that, your quarterback gets happy feet and sometimes validated and sometimes probably not, tries to get the ball out faster."
Green, a transfer from Boise State, ended his day 23-of-41 (56.1%) from the pocket with a touchdown and interception, and recorded a season-low six rushing yards on 13 carries. Green wasn't alone on the struggle bus, as SEC rushing leader Ja'Quinden Jackson was held to 37 yards on the ground with a score.
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"I think it just got away from us because we weren’t having great success on third down running the football," Pittman said. "We just weren’t having a lot of success on the ground. So, certainly the point of that is Taylen being able to run the football out of the pocket and some of those undesigned runs. But no, we came in, I thought Bobby had a really good plan and Eric and those guys, of running the football. We weren’t having very much success."
Up next, Arkansas will face No. 5 Tennessee at Razorback Stadium on Saturday. That game will kick off at either 6 or 6:30 p.m. CT and will be broadcast on either ABC or ESPN.
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