Arkansas and the play which changed a season.
Matt Zemek, 16Powers.com
Human beings are very familiar with the “before and after” concept, an illustration of how different life is before and after a certain event. This concept comes across in commercials illustrating the effectiveness of a product. Before the product was discovered, life was miserable. Personal fitness and hygiene were terrible. After the product is used, everything about life improves. A person becomes happy and joyful and fit and clean and beautiful. It’s a 180-degree change compared to life before an amazing discovery.
Of course, the before and after concept can also work in the worst possible ways. After a woman meets this guy with a shady past; after a new owner took charge of a team which had previously been thriving; after a new set of controversial policies took effect within an office workplace, everything can collapse. Everything good which previously existed can be torn apart and wiped away.
This was the reality which happened to Arkansas football in 2022. One very clear and decisive “before and after” moment changed the course of the season. The Razorbacks and coach Sam Pittman need to make sure they build their program to the point where one moment doesn’t destroy a foundation.
The before and after moment for Arkansas is very clear to anyone who was paying attention to the Hogs on the gridiron this past fall. Arkansas got off to a hot start, beating Cincinnati and a Spencer Rattler South Carolina team which – though mediocre for much of the season – ended 2022 on the upswing and in possession of considerable optimism for its future. Few teams had as good a two-week start as Arkansas did, beating Cincy and South Carolina. Arkansas looked like a top-20 team which could win 10 games and go to a New Year’s Six bowl game.
Arkansas got off to a great start against Jimbo Fisher and a Texas A&M team which, as we all know, failed to make a bowl game in 2022. Arkansas built an early lead and was driving near the Aggies’ 10-yard line, hungry for more. The Hogs were eatin’ and were trying to load up their plate with added goodies.
Then it came: the before and after moment Arkansas could not recover from. Quarterback K.J. Jefferson stretched the ball to get a first down, but he was stripped in the process. Texas A&M got a fumble and ran it back nearly the length of the whole field for a touchdown. The game – and as it turned out, the season – flipped 180 degrees for Arkansas on that play. Texas A&M didn’t do a lot of winning in 2022, but it was able to win that game. Arkansas couldn’t pick itself off the mat. Yes, Jefferson was slowed by injuries as the season progressed, but much of what happened to the Hogs transcended their quarterback.
For one thing, a Liberty team which should never win the battle at the line of scrimmage against an SEC program was able to physically outwork and outmaneuver Arkansas up front. Arkansas’ offensive line was flatly outplayed by Liberty’s defensive line at home in Fayetteville. That should never happen when Arkansas is good or has visions of being a really good team. Sam Pittman was able to elevate Arkansas far above the misery of the Chad Morris years, but that loss to Liberty had a distinct Morris flavor to it.
When we consider how good Arkansas was in 2021, and when we then consider how much returning talent the Hogs had in 2022 – and how they handled the first few games of their season so well – it’s clear that this team allowed itself to be diminished by the A&M loss (and the fumble at the center of it). College athletes have allowed one game, one moment, to bleed into subsequent games and hijack a season. These are 19- and 20-year-old men, not world-wise 35-year-old professionals. It happens. Unfortunately for Arkansas, it happened in 2022.
Does Pittman need to recruit more depth and higher-quality linemen into the program? Yes he does. There are tangible things Pittman can do to improve the roster and lift this program to a higher standard of quality and performance. Yet, those tangible things aren’t the only items on Pittman’s to-do list. He has to make sure that the cultural improvements his program has attained in his time on the job are durable and strong, enough to withstand moments such as an in-game fumble which creates a 10- or 14-point swing on one play. Arkansas could not handle that swing against A&M. The team clearly wasn’t mentally tough enough to deal with that ill-timed thunderbolt. Pittman has to get his players to buck up and not lose faith. It’s a learning experience for him and the whole program.
Arkansas hit rock bottom under Chad Morris. It took only two years for Arkansas to go from that miserable place to a relatively lofty perch, winning a January bowl game against former SEC coach James Franklin and Penn State. If Pittman could do that in two seasons, he can rebuild this team’s mindset and attitude in one season. Recruitments and transfer portal additions are definitely part of the process of strengthening this program so that it can survive the negative plot twists and bad bounces that will occur at some point in a football season, but Pittman’s most central task has to be repairing the sense of fragility which emerges when a devastating event arrives.
Arkansas can’t be that vulnerable to another “before and after” moment again – not if it wants to win 10 games in a season and play in elite bowl games under Sam Pittman.
