Open date just in time for reeling Razorbacks
For one night, Gus Malzahn returned to his Arkansas roots, borne back to Shiloh Christian or Springdale and his football team playing Gravette or Rogers.
Malzahn rarely lost on Friday nights when coaching Arkansas high schools. Auburn’s head coach wasn’t about to lose Saturday night to the underprepared team on the opposite sideline at Jordan-Hare Stadium.
Meet your Arkansas Razorbacks, 56-3 losers in a trainwreck of a performance by a team that left its good football somewhere between Fayetteville and Auburn, Ala.
Arkansas entered the game ranked four spots higher than Auburn (17 to 21) but a double-digit underdog on the road to a team coming off a bye week. Credit Las Vegas oddsmakers for evaluating the Razorbacks more astutely than many members of the media, myself included.
Arkansas has never looked worse under Bret Bielema. The Razorbacks suffered the worst defeat of any NCAA Division I team Saturday. Think about that for a minute, then apply some perspective.
John L. Smith, in his forgettable season (2012) as the team’s interim head coach, never lost a game at Arkansas by 53 points. Smith, by the way, remains the last Arkansas coach to beat Auburn at Jordan-Hare Stadium (24-7 after losing 58-10 to Texas A&M).
Alabama has won 10 in a row against Arkansas and, the way it’s going, soon may be applying for admission to the National Football League. Alabama has beaten Arkansas by 52 points twice (once each with Smith and Bielema coaching the Razorbacks) but never by 53.
Texas has won 56 of 78 games from Arkansas but only in their first meeting, 54-0 in 1894, have the Longhorns beaten the Razorbacks by more than 53 points, coming close again in 1916 (52-0).
Kansas is perhaps the worst team in college football from a major conference and might finish 1-11. But the Jayhawks’ most lopsided defeat this season is by 42 points.
Arkansas lost by 53 points (7017) to Southern California in 2005, but the Trojans were coming off a national championship and had an NFL-ready player at many positions and a future Super Bowl-winning coach (Pete Carroll).
A Razorback fan watched the carnage on ESPN Saturday night and commented that Auburn might be “the least good team to blow out Arkansas this big.”
Auburn had banked on its defense, quite unusual for a team with its third defensive coordinator in as many seasons, before its offense pulverized Arkansas. Auburn ran for 544 yards, the most in a regular-season Southeastern Conference game, and finished with 632.
“I told our guys that was one of the more complete games that I think we’ve played since I got here,” said Malzahn, in his fourth year as Auburn’s head coach after calling plays for the Tigers’ 2010 national-championship team in three years on predecessor Gene Chizik’s staff.
Malzahn credited offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee, his former Shiloh Christian quarterback, for “a good game plan (that) got the tempo going.” Averaging nine yards per rush, he said, was “really something. … We are a downhill running team and were able to do that tonight.”
Arkansas’ defense has been overwhelmed physically in losses to Texas A&M, Alabama and Auburn that the Razorbacks allowed a combined 150 points. Bielema and his staff, along with the rest of Razorback Nation, can only hope that the terrible performance by Arkansas’ offense Saturday night was an aberration or, as the head coach likes to say, “uncommon.”
Auburn held Rawleigh Williams III, the SEC’s leading rusher, to 22 yards and the Razorbacks to 25. What Malzahn called “a wow thing, really” is embarrassing for any offense but especially one that relies on the run like Arkansas previously under Bielema.
Malzahn looked like the presiding genius of college football after his 2013 team won the SEC and led Florida State late in the national-title game before losing. How quickly perceptions can change, Malzahn beginning 2016 under fire from Auburn fans with short memories and low tolerance for losing.
After rotating three quarterbacks in a close season opener against Clemson, Malzahn ceded offensive play-calling duties to Lashlee in September. The Tigers have responded with SEC wins over LSU at home (a miracle finish that cost losing coach Les Miles his job), Mississippi State on the road and Arkansas in the Loveliest Village on the Plain.
Who knows: Houston Nutt might still be head coach at Arkansas if he had given Malzahn free rein over the offense in Malzahn’s star-crossed season (2006) on the Razorback staff.
Enough about that. Nutt is long since out of coaching (though the man he succeeded at Ole Miss, Ed Orgeron, has resurfaced at LSU) and the important questions about the Razorbacks are being asked of an Iowa native who previously coached at Wisconsin.
Outplayed in every way at Auburn, Arkansas follows a hideous defeat with a needed bye week. Next up: Florida, which Arkansas has beaten only in a bowl game when a member of the Southwest Conference.
“Going eight straight weeks and three SEC games back to back, it is going to be good for us to try to get back up and get our minds right,” Razorback senior wide receiver Keon Hatcher said. “They put a spanking on us, and we have to come back … and get ready for Florida and put this behind us.”