Hogs’ 3-2 start has a different feel in 2014
FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas is gaining more respect than it is victories in SEC circles these days.
On the brink of its first victory over a top 10 team in nearly three seasons, the Razorbacks last week stumbled down the stretch in a 35-28 overtime loss to No. 6 Texas A&M. Arkansas held a 28-14 lead entering the fourth quarter — playing most of the game at its preferred grindit-out tempo — and a critical penalty prevented the Hogs from being in position to go up by three touchdowns early in the fourth quarter.
The Razorbacks took a 3-2 record into their first of two bye weeks. It’s the same record they had at this stage last year, but the winning vibe around the program has escalated in the last year.
“Unequivocally, we’re 100 percent better than we were last year,” second-year coach Bret Bielema said on the Sports Talk with Bo Mattingly radio show Thursday.
“It’s just right there on the edge,” junior safety Rohan Gaines said. “All we have to do is just get a little tap. Just tap it over the edge a little bit, and we’ll be great.”
National pollsters and other college analysts have taken notice of the improvements the Razorbacks have shown in the months since finishing 2013 with nine consecutive losses. Arkansas is No. 28 in this week’s ESPN.com power rankings and No. 36 in CBS Sports’ in-house rankings.
The Hogs rank as high as No. 12 by one of the 60 voters in The Associated Press poll and as high as No. 18 by one of the 13 voters in ESPN’s power rankings.
Their losses were on the road to Auburn and in Arlington, Texas, to Texas A&M, each team ranked No. 6 at the time. Arkansas was tied 17-17 at halftime against Auburn and missed on a couple of chances to salt away a victory against Texas A&M.
Bielema said he always receives a pile of messages on his phone from people in the industry, recruits and parents after victories, but after the near-miss against Texas A&M, he said he had as many as 70 messages from well-wishers.
“Most of them without a doubt were, ‘Stay the course, you’re doing the right thing,’ from the coaching profession, he said. “The people that aren’t in the football world necessarily – ‘Feel bad for you, the sun will come up tomorrow, stay positive,’ stuff like that.”
Bielema has spoken in the past couple of weeks about being one good recruiting class away from having the kind of depth he envisions for Arkansas to be in its prime.
For a team that went winless in the SEC last season and will carry a 14-game conference losing streak into its home game against Alabama next week, the Razorbacks seem on the brink of validating the style and philosophy Bielema brought with him from Wisconsin.
“It’s very hard to get people to believe in something that they haven’t seen,” Bielema said at his weekly news conference. “I think we’ve all learned that probably in life, whether it be your personal life or your professional life.
“It’s called faith. It’s called trust. … And when we hadn’t been able to do it [last year] against efficient competition, I think it gave a lot of people reason to doubt. But now I’ve seen it work for a number of years and I will see it work here, and it will work very, very well.
“And you’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what we’ll be.”
Bielema wants to win now and so do the Arkansas players. Still, how far the Razorbacks have come in a year seems, to borrow a Bielema expression, off the charts.
“We’re getting there,” offensive coordinator Jim Chaney said. “It’s a process, and we want to continue to work down that path of finding a way to get over the edge to win these football games.
“These close ones at the end is what we’ve got to get through. We feel like our kids are working hard. They’re doing everything we’ve asked them to do. We’ve just got to continue to play cleaner.”
Offensively, the Razorbacks have improved by 70 yards and 15 points per game over this point last season, and they’ve faced statistically tougher defenses this year.
On defense, the Razorbacks’ numbers are down through five games, such as allowing about 67 more yards and 3.6 more points per game. But Arkansas has faced four teams that rank in the top 34 nationally in total offense to somewhat skew the statistics.
Bielema has publicly praised new defensive coordinator Robb Smith, new assistants Clay Jennings and Rory Segrest, and holdover Randy Shannon for making dramatic improvements on that side of the ball.
“I thought our coaches had an excellent plan,” Bielema said of the Texas A&M game. “It’s a plan that’s not very complicated. I think on defense one of the things I’ve learned during my career was to play a very few number of things and to play them very, very well.
“Our players defensively have gained so much football IQ fundamentals.”
There are statistics that show the Razorbacks are better on defense, such as passes defended — interceptions and break-ups — where Arkansas is tied for second nationally. Also, in a metric called “havoc stats,” which adds sacks, tackles for loss, interceptions and pass breakups, and divides by the total number of plays defended, a statistic created by SBNation, the Razorbacks were 10th in the nation through three weeks, the last available update for the data.
“It’s one of the things we wanted to do from Day 1 is become more aggressive,” Smith said. “I think we’ve got the right mindset. I like the path we’re heading down right now. The thing we’ve got to do is we’ve got to sustain our focus for four quarters and we’ve got to eliminate big plays.”
Gary Danielson of CBS Sports, who provided color analysis of the Hogs’ loss to Texas A&M, called Arkansas’ muffed snap late in the game, after three runs netted 46 yards, a “critical self-inflicted wound” and added, “That’s how you blow a football game. They should have won the game, Arkansas.”
Danielson added further perspective.
“To be truthful, I think Arkansas really isn’t there yet,” he said. “They do not have an elite wide receiver. They do not throw the ball well enough to win in this league. They surely run it, but they have to be able to do a little bit of spreading people out and throwing the ball much more effectively than where they are right now. They’re, I think, a year away.”
Bielema said after the Texas A&M loss he couldn’t wait to see where his team is next year, but he still has plans for making waves in 2014.
“We’re not where we want to be, but we’re a lot closer to where we want to be than we’ve been,” he said. “We have a tremendously tough schedule in front of us, but … you’re going to wrap your arms around it.
“What we have to do is stick to our daily grind to get where we need to be, and it will get there.”