Coach’s Corner
Arkansas at Miss. St.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The SentinelRecord will follow up with a head football coach of a local high school after each regular season game this year for the Arkansas Razorbacks. This week’s installment features Caleb Carmikle, head coach of the Magnet Cove Panthers.
Arkansas suffered its worst defeat of the season on Saturday after two months of supposed improvements in various areas of the team.
Magnet Cove head football coach Caleb Carmikle described it as “hard to watch.” Mississippi State (7-4, 3-4 Southeastern Conference) marched 81 yards on the opening drive in 14 plays. The Bulldogs took 6:33 off of the clock to open with a 3-0 lead on Jace Christmann’s 19-yard field goal.
Arkansas (2-9, 1-6) struggled on offense throughout the game, finishing with just 219 yards of offense in the 52-6 defeat at Davis Wade Stadium in Starkville, Miss. The Bulldogs dominated the line of scrimmage, holding Arkansas to just two yards per rush and recording five sacks.
“They weren’t doing anything fancy,” Carmikle said. “They were just pinning their ears back and going. We call it ‘smoke and mirrors.’ They did a good job of moving people around. They stayed in that three-front. There’s three down linemen and they’ve got all of those linebackers moving around. It confused us early.
“I thought the tempo we played with toward the end of the first half got them out of that. That is a way to combat that if people are doing different things with blitzing. Defensive coordinators get shy about sending pressure when you are going fast because they are worried about communication.”
Mississippi State took 9:04 off of the clock in the second quarter with scoring drives of 53 and 72 yards to take a 17-0 lead with
5:20 remaining in the first half. Arkansas’ final drive stalled at the
19-yard live and Connor Limpert hit a 36-yard field goal to make it
17-3 by the half. “Football, especially at that level, is a game of inches and we’re not quite there,” Carmikle said. “You could tell there is obviously a talent gap. Mississippi State is pretty good, especially defensively.
“Their defensive line is the real deal. They couldn’t run into them and, early on, they couldn’t protect the quarterback. As the game went on, it kind of spiraled from there. I don’t want to say that they quit because you hope that never happens, but it obviously got pretty out of hand.”
Carmikle said the offense’s pace at the end of the first half more closely resembled what first-year Arkansas head coach Chad Morris and his staff want to run.
“That is the direction he is wanting to go with the ‘hammer down’ and all of that,” Carmikle said. “Obviously, we don’t have the talent right now to play with that tempo.
“It just puts so much stress on the defense. The more snaps they are on the field, it really brings out the lack of depth on both sides of the ball.”
The Razorbacks looked to have momentum on the first drive of the third quarter as Storey found Deon Stewart on a flat route for a touchdown. Carmikle said Stewart was one of the team’s bright spots with six receptions.
“I think there were some bright spots in the first half and really on into the second half, too,” Carmikle said. “I think that
first drive of the second half, they’re down, 21-3, driving in and it was a great play call.”
The touchdown was negated by a pass interference call on La’Michael Pettway. Storey completed a two-yard pass to running back Devwah Whaley on third-and-19 as Arkansas settled for another field goal by Limpert to make it 17-6.
“It was a good call by the officials, but everybody does it where you pick that outside linebacker and send the receiver out in the flat to score,” Carmikle said. “If that does not get called, now it’s 21-10 and they feel like they have some momentum.”
Mississippi State scored the final 35 points of the game with three touchdowns in the third quarter and two in the fourth. Senior quarterback Nick Fitzgerald was 9-for-14 passing for 127 yards and four touchdowns in his final game at Davis Wade. He also ran for 85 yards and a score on 14 carries.
“I think it is really showing the misevaluation of talent maybe the previous staff had these last couple of recruiting classes,” Carmikle said. “There is nothing you can do about that.
“It is so evident, especially at that level with the speed. It seems like everybody we are playing is faster than us. The game of football, especially now days, if you don’t have speed on the field, you are not going to be ale to compete.”
The Bulldogs amassed 475 yards of total offense with 188 passing yards and 287 on the ground. Arkansas ran for 69 yards on 35 carries against a defense that mainly featured three down linemen.
“When you can’t run into that, then you are really in trouble,” Carmikle said.
Carmikle said it was a good sign that junior running back Devwah Whaley returned from a leg injury after about a month instead of sitting for the rest of the season as the team will not play in a bowl game.
“He very easily could have just cashed it in and stayed healthy,” Carmikle said. “But for a guy like that to come back and play is a positive.”
Much of the remaining optimism in the fan base is focused on the team’s recruiting class for 2019. Morris has 24 players currently committed, adding two more this month. The class features five in-state prospects.
“In a state like Arkansas where there is not a plethora of Division I talent, you have to get the guys in your state that can play at that level,” Carmikle said. “He is doing a good job of that.”
Carmikle said Morris and his staff will likely need several years to transform the mentality within the program and develop new players.
“Of course, everybody wants to win, but you have to be patient or it is never going to turn around,” Carmikle said. “You don’t ever want to talk bad about coaches, obviously, when you are in the profession, but the program was in pretty rough shape when he took over.
“It takes a lot of time to get that back. It is going to take stacking
2-3 recruiting classes like this on top of each other to really see the turnaround. The sad part of it is even if we have a top 20-ranked class, there’s still seven teams in the SEC that are ahead of us.”
Much of the success of the class may be determined by the definitive quarterback signing. K.J. Jefferson’s Sardis North Panola team in Mississippi advanced to the Class 3A state semifinals with a 14-0 win on Friday.
Former Clemson quarterback Kelly Bryant will reportedly announce his next team on Dec. 4, which is also Morris’ birthday. Jefferson had
2,635 yards and 31 touchdowns to six interceptions going into last week’s game go with 880 rushing yards and seven more touchdowns. Bryant ran for 665 yards and 11 touchdowns as Clemson’s starter in 2017.
“That offense is so quarterback-driven that you’ve got to have a game-changer at that position and you can’t have a game manager,” Carmikle said. “Ty Storey, there is no doubt he is a competitor. He is as tough as nails and he has taken some shots this year, but he is not a game-changer.
“I don’t know that he is the answer in the future. You look at the offenses that coach Morris had at Clemson and the quarterbacks they had there. Other schools that run that style of offense like Auburn, they are at their best is when they have a dude back there at quarterback that can do it all. We really just don’t have that on campus right now.”