Arkansas Postmortem

I thought we'd take one last look back at this game, and then we'll move on to our upcoming game against Oklahoma State. We knew this season would be one of growth, and we hope to see improvement week to week. I think we've seen that this season so far, but I do think we took a step back against Arkansas, in that we know that our lines still aren't where they need to be.

I felt sorry for Stephen Barerra, because they kept highlighting him on television when he got beaten on the edge, which was too often. However, he is a true freshman who was still playing against high school kids at this time last year. He is going to take some lumps this year, but hopefully it will translate to better play down the line this season and in the future. He has a bright future ahead of him.

We only had two sacks of Ryan Mallett the whole game, one by Von Miller and another by Matt Featherston. Both took polace int eh first quarter, when we were in the process of building a 10-0 lead while sending their offense to three straight three-and-outs. After that, it didn't seem like we got all that much pressure on Mallett. I'd really like to see us use Featherston on the strongside and Miller on the weakside, so we can get two of our better pass rushers on the field at the same time, especially on third-and-long situations. I know Featherston is Miller's backup at the Jack position, but I think against the spread offenses we'll face this season, getting as much speed off the edge is imperative. I'll need to watch the DVD to break down what we did for our pass rush, but I was really hoping Joe Kines would show a mix of stunts, twists, and blitzes to get pressure on Mallett on every play. It is apparent that if we did mix it up, they were able to pick it up, because we didn't bring the heat often enough.

Offensively, I really thought we needed to go to our play-action game more often, especially after the fumble-return-for-a-TD appeared to shake Jerrod's confidence for a bit. A play-action fake off zone-read action to a wide receiver screen is a simple, high percentage play that would have allowed Jerrod to regain his compsure as he completed some more passes and got back into a rhythm. I also think we need to rollout Jerrod more often, and have the TB follow him outside. This gives him a run/pass/pitch option to threaten the edge of the defense, and would take some pressure off the offensive line. With Jerrod threatening the edge every play, the defense would have to send their LBs on outside contain, which means fewer people would be dedicated to the rush. It also means DEs wouldn't be able to pin their ears back and go upfield on every single snap.

Jerrod Johnson ended up 30-58 on the night, passing for 345 yards and two TDs. Statistically, that isn't a bad night, but many of those completions and one TD came after the disastrous first half, when we were down by three scores. Jerrod needs to learn to shake off a mistake, and keep playing. After the sack and fumble return for TD, Jerrod threw six straight incompletions, and while some of that was a result of playcalling (see above about calling short, safe passes to get easy completions) and Arkansas did bring some pressure, Jerrod was clearly flustered. We're going to need him to lead us this season, so he needs to get better at handling a setback. This isn't Austin, the coaches won't give him a PB&J sandwich, hold his hand, and excuse his poor play by saying he has the flu; he needs to step up.

Jerrod did spread the ball around to 8 different receivers, and the passing game netted 345 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions; that is a good night through the air. We ran the ball 35 times for 113 yds, an average of 3.2 yards per carry. three yards a carry is a poor performance any way you look at it. I also found some of Cromwell's decisions on when to run the ball inexplicable, like on 3rd and 26 in the first quarter. Really? I also didn't like the end-around call to Uzoma Nwachukwu; Arkansas had speed on the edge, we had run the play before, and they were obviously ready for it. It was a play that took too long to develop, and I tohught it was just a poor playcall, especially at that point in the game.

We left this game knowing out offense can move the ball; we just need to get better at moving it into the endzone. Now, we need to begin getting ready for an Oklahoma State team that had a bye week, so they'll have two weeks to get ready to play us.