All offseason I’ve said we won’t have any answers about Arkansas until the TCU game.
Well, the time has arrived.
The biggest question in my mind has been depth. It’s been a huge reason the Razorbacks have struggled at times in the SEC for 25 years and it’s gotten worse with the advent of offenses playing Nolan Richardson-style basketball on the football field.
The Hogs’ starting 11 on defense can probably out-play the Horned Frogs. The problem with that is the way TCU plays offense you better have at least 25 players on defense where the level of play doesn’t drop off much.
Teams playing with a lot of tempo have given Arkansas fits over the last five years. Toledo, Texas Tech and Rutgers are teams that surprised the Hogs in the last few years. All were moving with a fast pace and trying to run as many offensive plays as possible.
The only team Arkansas has had any level of consistent success over the last five seasons against that plays an up-tempo offense is Ole Miss. The Hogs they caught them totally uninspired (2014), simply out-scored and out-lucked them with the Henry Heave (2015) and had to outscore a Rebels team going through the motions (2016).
Arkansas hasn’t beaten Texas A&M in five years, is 1-4 against Mississippi State and Auburn and 1-2 against Missouri.
They did beat TCU last year, mainly because Dan Skipper managed to add a six-inch vertical leap to his 6-10 frame and got about 11 feet in the air to block a field goal.
Leave that out and you wonder how the Hogs did it.
“We were dead tired last year,” defensive tackle Sosa Agim said after practice Tuesday. “They would snap the ball when we weren’t ready.”
The Hogs blew a 13-0 halftime lead as the Horned Frogs came roaring back into what ended up being a 41-38 double overtime win for the Hogs. That may have been an omen.
A tired and worn-out bunch of Hogs.
“At the end of the first half I saw it and told Robb as soon as we got into the locker room, ‘We’re tired,'” defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads said Monday. “We did not play nearly as well the second half as we did the first half because we started to get gassed there at the end.”
That is where quality depth comes into play. Especially in the defensive line and linebacker spots.
Which is what the new-look 3-4 defense hopefully provides.
“That’s going to help us for TCU on Saturday to keep guys fresh,” defensive line coach John Scott, Jr., said Tuesday.
At least that’s the hope.
What nobody will say is fresh doesn’t always mean better. It depends on the talent drop-off between first and second team players.
That’s the biggest question we’ve had all summer long.
We may know the answer by nightfall Saturday.
