Another gear
Offense gives defense tempo workouts
FAYETTEVILLE — There’s a new tempo in town.
For the first time in the past five years, the Arkansas Razorbacks can practice football at their desired speed all year round.
Coach Chad Morris has brought his Spread attack to the University of Arkansas, and the off-shoot of Gus Malzahn’s hurry-up approach is centered on its tempo.
Offensive coordinator Joe Craddock wants to get set at the line swiftly after each play and snap the ball at a rapid rate, or more slowly if the situation warrants. The key part of that being that the offense controls the pace and the defense cannot get used to one style.
In the past five years, the Arkansas defense has gotten practice looks against rapid-fire offenses, often with two offensive huddles rotating back and forth to keep up the pace.
But those were scout-team offenses.
The Razorbacks huddled almost all the time under Bret Bielema. So when they worked first offense against first defense, the pace of play was most often the favored clock-control approach.
Now the “good on good” work, as Morris calls it, features an uptempo attack testing a defensive unit that will see it a lot in the current evolution of the game, including in Saturday’s season opener against Eastern Illinois.
“They’re going to go fast,” Arkansas defensive coordinator John Chavis said. “That’s what they do. They want to snap the ball as quick as they possibly can. It’s our challenge, and we’ve had good work versus our own offense.
“Our challenge is to have our cleats in the ground, to understand our assignments and to play with great eye discipline. To read our keys and go where our keys take us. That’s football.”
Morris said the usefulness of playing fast on offense cuts both ways.
“I think it’s really beneficial,” Morris said. “Just from a tempo standpoint, these guys having to understand they have to get the calls in and get them in quickly, get the communication done, I think it’s done nothing but benefit us going back to last spring.”
Defensive veterans said they have noticed an uptick in the ability to play fast with fewer alignment and assignment errors.
“I would say right now people can play faster because the game is simpler,” senior safety Santos Ramirez said. “You hear your call and make it happen and don’t think too much about it.”
Said cornerback Ryan Pulley: “Yeah, way faster. We just had to get used to it. It’s easy for us now. We just have to go to our spots and get ready.”
Practicing almost all the time vs. fast tempo has prepared the Hogs, Pulley said.
“It helps us a lot,” he said. “Half the teams in the SEC probably go hurry-up now.”
Linebacker Dre Greenlaw said the daily practice against tempo in camp has made a difference.
“That hurry-up offense, a lot of teams try to do it,” he said. “They try to get you to
misalign and get you tired, out of your gap. But we’ve been doing this … hurry-up for a while, and I think Saturday when the boys and everybody is jacked up and ready to go, I think we’re going to be ready to play. We’ve been seeing it all spring and all fall, and we’re expecting it during Saturday’s game, so we’ll see how it goes from there.”
The Panthers have established skill players such as senior running back Isaiah Johnson and receivers Alexander Hollins and Aaron Gooch, but their two likely options at quarterback are both transfers.
The Razorbacks expect the quarterback starter to be Harry Woodbery, who passed for 2,131 yards and 12 touchdowns at Navarro (Texas) Junior College before heading, along with offensive coordinator Scott Parr, to the Panthers’ program led by former Razorback safety and receiver Kim Dameron.
Woodbery is a 6-2, 200-pound junior. Johnathan Brantley, a 6-1, 195-pound junior who transferred from
Tulane, is also going to play, Dameron said.
“The starting quarterback, watching his film going off juco tape and everything, I feel like he has a great arm on him,” Ramirez said. “He knows how to run the offense they run over there. I feel like he cuts off the field pretty fast, so it’s going to be a great opportunity to make plays.
“The second quarterback is a great runner. When he gets in, we have to be alert for the speed option. So one is more gunslinger and one is more of a running quarterback.”
Greenlaw said the defense is ready for whatever speed Eastern Illinois brings.
“The way we practice and the way spring ball has been constructed and fall camp, I think we’re more than ready to face any tempo offense that we play,” he said.
“The thing is it’s speeded up a little bit, which means the communication has to be speeded up a little bit,” Chavis said. “But that’s not new, either. We’ve been doing that all spring and all fall practice.”