FAYETTEVILLE — Sam Pittman is an old-school coach with an open-minded perspective on new-age college football realities.
Since the health of the University of Arkansas football team dictated no padded practices during the team’s open date last week, the Razorbacks got in three workouts Tuesday through Thursday and they were all walk-throughs, or “walks” as Pittman calls them.
The Razorbacks reconvene today for a regular week of work heading into Saturday’s 11 am game at wounded, but still dangerous, Auburn.
Arkansas is 4-3, the same record it held through seven games last season, with a 1-3 mark in conference play. The closing stretch features road games at Auburn and Missouri bookending a home slate of Liberty, LSU and Ole Miss.
Pittman and his staff harped last week on doing what was necessary to improve, even while the Razorbacks were not blocking, hitting or tackling.
“Our biggest concern is mentally getting prepared,” Pittman said. “We’re watching a lot of film on Auburn after we closed down the BYU game [Tuesday] and getting healthy. Those are our two biggest concerns. We think we can do that by Monday and get most, if not all, of our guys back.”
One key issue stressed during the bye week was ball security.
The Razorbacks rank 106th in the country with six lost fumbles, the same number they had in 13 games last season. Quarterback KJ Jefferson has lost three fumbles, tailback Raheim Sanders two and tailback Rashod Dubinion one.
“The only concerning part about our running is we’ve had more turnovers [fumbles] right now at this point in the year than we had the entire point last year,” Pittman said. “So we’ve got to do a better job of ball security. That’s not just the ones coming out, that’s how we’re carrying the ball. We’re going to make a big emphasis on that this next week.”
Pittman said the offensive line play and run game have been impressive otherwise.
Sanders ranks seventh in the country with 124.3 rushing yards per game. His raw total of 870 rushing yards is third in the nation behind Illinois’ Chase Brown (1,059) and Michigan’s Blake Corum (901).
Getting guys back looms big, particularly for the secondary.
Preseason All-America safety Jalen Catalon and cornerback LaDarrius Bishop are out for the season, while nickel back Myles Slusher has missed more games than he’s played due to two different injuries. Latavious Brini, Malik Chavis, Khari Johnson and Jayden Johnson all missed varying amounts of game time.
Third-team nickel Trent Gordon got plenty of playing time the past two weeks, while redshirt freshman cornerback Keaun Parker earned valuable playing time in the Hogs’ 52-35 win at BYU on Oct. 15 after Chavis went out, allowing versatile Hudson Clark to concentrate on safety.
“We’ll feel much better about putting guys in the game, or spelling guys, because of the reps that … Keaun and Trent have gotten,” Pittman said Wednesday. “I think that will help us down the road. Obviously we’re a little over halfway through the season, but I do think it will help us as we move forward.”
Clark took advantage of playing safety for most of the game against BYU to rack up 11 tackles, an interception and a fumble recovery that was forced by cornerback Dwight McGlothern. Clark, a junior from Dallas and a former walk-on, earned SEC defensive player of the week honors from the league office and was the Jim Thorpe Award national player of the week.
Pittman said he believes both the Johnsons and Slushers, who has been slowed by calf injuries that flared up in the home loss to Alabama, will be ready to return for the Auburn game.
Additionally, linebacker Bumper Pool, receiver Jadon Haselwood and reserve offensive linemen Ty’Kieast Crawford and Marcus Henderson, who have been dinged up, should be refreshed and healthier for the Auburn game.
Because of the widespread injury and fatigue issues, which included a sore throwing shoulder for Jefferson, the Razorbacks kept all the physicality out of their open week workouts. That meant taking helmets off as well.
The coaches dropped in some Auburn scheme preparation but not a full-scale dose.
“It’s all situational, team run, things like that … just to slow down pace,” Pittman said. “I remember three years ago, our walks, we were walking really fast.
“So we decided to take the helmets off of them last year during this time because if we didn’t, the walks would become what we didn’t want — the physicality part of it. You over-emphasize the communication before the snap. The reason I like that is because the kids know exactly where to go and how to go do it.”
Pittman said the coaches focused on footwork at every position.
“We want to make sure our communication pre-snap, that we know where we’re going,” he said. “We’re trying to really amp up our mental games this week and that includes extra film time for film on Auburn, as well.
“And I do think this, though … that if you start practicing for a team too early, there gets a lull in game week. So we certainly didn’t want that either. So there’s a fine line in what we’re doing, but the walks I think will benefit us much more than getting a lull because we’re not actually practicing physicality.”
Normally, the younger Razorbacks would have participated in scrimmage work at the ends of practice during the bye week, but even that was called off because of numbers.
“You’re trying to scrimmage your younger guys and things of that nature, which we did a year ago,” Pittman said. “We’ve had some fingers, hands, different things, concussions, things of that nature, where going into this bye week, if we did that, I’d be really concerned about not only our ones and our twos, but our scout team getting us prepared for the rest of the year.”
Pittman said players such as James Jointer, Landon Rogers, Quincey McAdoo, Sam Mbake, Nico Devallier and others could have benefited from scrimmage-type work, but the coaching staff couldn’t afford doing it.
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