The cynic in me wants to wave a red flag: We looked incredible on defense against Georgia...for a half. Their QB was rattled and confused. But then they brought in a different guy and changed the gameplan and ran over us. In our three wins, look who we had: 1. Mississippi State. We just did what everyone does to beat the air raid. Also Bo Pelini is a moron. 2. Auburn. We had pretty intimate knowledge of Chad's offense, and Gus has been doing the same thing for a decade so it's easy to prepare for that. 3. Ole Miss. Kendall and Lane coached together and basically traded notes, adding each other's plays to their own books. That helps prepping for route trees, etc. It's probably why, despite Ole Miss being the worst defense we've played so far (statistically), they looked better than they have all year and we had our worst offensive game since week one. All that is purely anecdotal and might not matter. It's still a bunch of midgets and scrubs being coached to play some of the best defense we've had here since the 90's. Still, if it did mean something it would be this: The way to beat Arkansas is to come up with a gameplan we haven't seen before, because if we have tape on you we're going to memorize it and know what you're going to do before you do it. It almost makes me nervous knowing that our next opponent has a bye week to prepare for us and come up with something new. On the other hand, it's Jimbo, so he's probably going to take a few days off, relax, etc, and just expect his same old offense that he's been running for ages past will be good enough. If that's the case, Barry Odom will have this team ready to eat them alive.
As me and my kid’s adopted team until Ohio State comes back we wish you well. I chose you because of Corliss Williamson he picked you because your logo.
2. Grant Morgan only needs one arm to whip your ass, by Spencer Any 2020 rankings should have a spot reserved for Bumper Pool, the Arkansas linebacker named after a popular British indoor recreational game. When healthy, he is capable of tallying 30 tackles in a game. Pool missed this week due to injury. So the Bumper Pool Spot for Manic Defensive Excellence goes to his teammate, the likewise injured Grant Morgan. Why, how could that be, you ask, being a savvy observer of football. Morgan has a left arm injury, and surely couldn’t play with one arm, especially at a position so dependent on sure tackling? Well: That’s Morgan effectively ending Ole Miss-Arkansas with a pick six off Matt Corral. There is indeed body armor encasing his barely functional left arm, an arm that would follow the rest of his body into the end zone. Morgan — playing with one arm, and without the support of Arkansas’s most productive defender next to him — had 19 tackles, a sack, and the pick six to scuttle the Lane Train’s bid to get to .500. The Hogs defense had a frenzied day, forcing seven turnovers off an Ole Miss offense fresh from bombarding Alabama into a ‘90s WAC game. Everyone at Arkansas is playing like their asses are ablaze. This makes little sense, as there was no reason to suspect their asses, blazing or otherwise, could be remotely competitive with the rest of the SEC, much less in the daunting SEC West. The only explanations are that Sam Pittman is a boxy genius, and that we’ve all been using exactly one too many arms to play linebacker all along.
We will get Bumper Pool, Dorian Gerald, and Montaric Brown back for aTm after the bye. That’s 3 of our top 4 defensive players we’ve been missing (our best DL, our best LB, and our best cover corner). Doing what we did against Ole Miss was fucking awesome and a testament to this staffs preparation and game planning. I think Catalon will go down as one of the all time great DB’s in our programs history and I think is already the best player on our defense as a RS Freshman. He’s always around the ball and making plays.
It didn’t look like Boyd was 100% this week and Coach Pittman said Burks wasn’t 100% either. This break couldn’t have come at a better time. I couldn’t agree more on Catalon. The kid is a ball hawk and loves to hit. They said it last week but we haven’t seen a safety like him since Ken Hamlin.
Burks was about 80%, and you could tell on that long gainer on the sideline. Fully healthy that’s an easy score and no one will get an angle on him. Boyd just doesn’t have that burst yet and isn’t seeing the holes, but our run blocking also has been pretty subpar. Im biased against Hamlin because he was just an absolute piece of shit when he was here and got his ass beat multiple times at parties for being an arrogant piece of shit. Finally caught up with him in Seattle when he almost got killed, and then had someone killed because he got his ass beat. My sister was at UA at this same time and dated a “star” player that was pretty close to Hamlin so I got to hear and see all sorts of shit when I went to visit her when I was in HS. Hamlin was a ferocious hitter and would take your head off, shit you just can’t get away with anymore. Catalon is an all around great player against the run and in coverage. If he was 6’2 scouts would be drooling all over him, but with the film he’s going to put out the next two years it’ll speak for itself.
That looks like fun. I would also sign up for 5am wake up calls during college for the opportunity to get shit on in practice 125x a year