FAYETTEVILLE — Hiring a designated special teams coordinator for the first time in school history didn’t have an immediate impact for Arkansas.
In fact, Scott Fountain’s unit struggled mightily in all areas during the Razorbacks’ 37-10 loss to No. 4 Georgia on Saturday.
“Going into the game, I felt like we could hold our own and possibly win that battle,” head coach Sam Pittman said. “But they had so many YAC yards on kickoff, on punt, they blocked a punt - so many big plays.
“You would think we would get the field flipped (and) they would get it back out to the 45 or 50 on us and again we played in a hole the entire first half.”
One of the few spots Arkansas didn’t fully settle in camp was at punter, so Pittman opted to rotate Sam Loy and George Caratan.
The incumbent starter, Loy, got the first attempt and angled a punt out of bounds for 40 yards. That ended up being one of the Razorbacks’ better plays on punt, though, because of poor coverage.
Caratan, the transfer from Michigan, made his collegiate debut and booted his first two punts 50 and 57 yards. The first one didn’t have much hang time and allowed Kearis Jackson to return it 15 yards to midfield.
His second attempt had much better air under it, but at 57 yards, it out-kicked his coverage. No Razorbacks were anywhere near Jackson when he caught the ball, allowing him to make a long return. It resulted in a 19-yard return, but would have been worse had the Bulldogs not lost some of the yardage because of a holding penalty.
Late in the fourth quarter, Jermaine Burton added a 23-yard punt return against Arkansas’ coverage unit. The Bulldogs averaged 19 yards on their three punt returns.
Just before halftime, Caratan also had a couple of chances to pin Georgia deep. Punting from the Bulldogs’ 42-yard line, he shanked a punt out of bounds and was bailed out when the officials threw a flag for running into the punter.
That play actually moved the Razorbacks just into field goal range, but they didn’t get the snap off before the clock expired. The delay of game penalty ended up erasing what would have been a missed 54-yard attempt by A.J. Reed, who had plenty of leg but pushed it wide left.
“There was no hesitation whether we were going to kick a field goal or not,” Pittman said of the clock mismanagement. “Once we got the yardage to get it into a 54(-yard attempt), I wanted to kick a field goal.”
Given another chance to pin the Bulldogs near their goal line with about a minute left in the half, Caratan put too much leg into it and punted the ball well into the end zone, not even giving his coverage team a chance to down it.
That put the ball at the 20 and set up what proved to be Georgia’s first scoring drive, as it went down the field and got into field goal range. Even that required some bad luck for the Razorbacks because Pittman tried icing first-time kicker Jack Podlesny with his final two timeouts.
After the second timeout, Podlesny - who was trying a 38-yarder for his first collegiate attempt - got a kick off and clanked it off the upright. Following the timeout, though, he kicked it through to make it 7-5 at halftime.
On the flip side, punter Jake Camarda - a preseason second-team All-SEC selection - was sensational for the Bulldogs. On four of his six punts in the first half, he pinned Arkansas inside the 10-yard line.
For the most part, true freshman Vito Calvaruso handled kickoff duties well. His first two true kickoffs went well into the end zone for touchbacks.
His lone mistake proved costly, though. Following a 25-yard field goal by Reed that gave Arkansas a 10-5 lead in the third quarter, the freshman had a line drive kickoff that Kenny McIntosh - who also had a 48-yard return on the free kick after the safety earlier in the game - fielded at the goal line and returned 43 yards. That set up the Bulldogs’ go-ahead touchdown drive.
The most critical special teams mistake was on the Razorbacks’ next possession.
De’Vion Warren returned a kickoff just 10 yards to the 16 on the ensuing kickoff and the Razorbacks went three-and-out on offense. Instead of flipping the field, Zamir White got through and got a hand on Caratan’s punt.
“The guy just ran right in the middle of our wedge and blocked the punt, from what I saw,” Pittman sad. “Now I may be wrong, but I think they had two guys running right in the A-gaps of the wedge and went through there and blocked a punt.
“I heard talking on the sideline that possibly a guy came off the edge, as well. But they really dented the integrity of the shield and that’s where the punt block came from.”
The punt went only 9 yards and gave Georgia the ball just outside of its red zone. The Bulldogs needed four plays to score their second touchdown and start pulling away.
It was a disappointing showing for a unit that had several embarrassing moments the last two years but came into the 2020 season with optimism for improvement under Fountain, who has a proven track record of success at Auburn and Georgia.
“We've got to do a better job - all of us, myself included - coaching that and we've got to do a better job executing it,” Pittman said. “Coach Fountain had a great game plan going into it. We've just got to coach better and execute better.”
With a road game against Mississippi State - which knocked off LSU in Death Valley on Saturday - looming next week, the Razorbacks are confident they’ll be much improved moving forward.
“They definitely got a lot more yards than what we wanted to give them on special teams, but I can tell you this, no one works harder than Coach Fountain,” linebacker Grant Morgan said. “It's a challenge for him and he's going to come back and get that right, and all of us who are on special teams, we take it as a challenge that we will come back and get that right, too."
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