In the early periods of Wednesday’s spring practice, something just didn’t look right with Arkansas’ offense.
Apparently that continued through the rest of the day, which was extremely windy, but nobody was blaming that.
“We just weren’t ready to go today,” offensive tackle Colton Jackson said later. “They just basically manhandled us.”
On the seventh day of practice, you normally could shrug it off as one of those days, but the belt the coaches hand out to the side of the ball that performs best that day hasn’t landed in the offense’s room yet.
The defense forced four fumbles on the day. Apparently the awarding of the belt wasn’t a tough decision.
“We didn’t get a lot going today,” running back Chase Hayden said.
Jackson said it wasn’t as much of a physical difference as what was happening above the shoulder pads.
“It was just guys making mental mistakes,” he said. “Not being where they were supposed to be. Not making the right reads. Not knowing which guys to block. It wasn’t physical at all, it was all mental mistakes.”
For Jackson’s it’s about accountability.
“It’s just something you have to take personal pride in,” he said. “After practice looking at what you messed up on, working on that, getting in the film room and seeing what you messed up on and be sure you don’t make them again.”
Part of it may be where the offense is on putting things in.
“We’re trying to install more each day,” Jackson said. “But we can’t do that until everybody gets what we’ve already installed. So, if you can’t do the basics you can’t install more.”
The other side knows what’s coming, too, and they aren’t playing it simple.
“Our defense is over there scheming up our plays and scheming up everything we have,” he said, “because we only have five plays in. If the guys get the basics of what we have in, we can move on and establish more of our offense. We can be more versatile out there and the defense wouldn’t be able to run the perfect blitzes on everything we’re doing.
“Guys gotta take it on themselves to get in the film room, do extra, study the playbook … just stuff like that.”
Chad Morris has said since the first spring practice this was about getting back to the basics. When that happens the defense is usually ahead of the offense early and that’s really exactly where this team is.
A former championship defensive coordinator broke it down pretty simple one time decades ago.
“You can talk about these schemes all you want,” he said. “But the bottom line on defense is when the ball is snapped, you see who’s got the ball and put him on the ground as fast as possible.”
John Chavis is making the offense’s life complicated with a heavy dose of different things with every practice.
“They sent a lot of blitzes we weren’t really prepared for,” running back Chase Hayden said.
The running back situation where injuries have hit an area that wasn’t incredibly deep after two of the top ones have been out.
First it was Rakeem Boyd, who was ruled out of all spring recovering from shoulder surgery. Then Devwah Whaley and converted cornerback Jordon Curtis have missed the last two practices.
The defense is also obviously stepping things up more than a notch or two.
“Chief’s whole emphasis is cranking the lawnmower,” defensive tackle T.J. Smith said Wednesday. “Getting the ball out, so that’s what guys have been doing.”
In other words, they’re cranking the mower and the offense has been the grass.
“We haven’t lost the belt,” Smith said with a big grin.
With eight practices left (and that includes the Red-White Game on April 6) there’s now a break on workouts until March 26.
Jackson said the offense knows what they have to do.
“We’ve got to come back after spring break and not let that happen again,” he said.
It’s probably too early to start worrying about the offense, but some concern might not necessarily be a bad thing for fans.
There are, as always, some explanations.
Turnovers in Saturday’s scrimmage were primarily by backups and the defense is obviously taking advantage of the learning curve with a lot of new faces on the offensive side of things.
But that’s all part of getting back to the basics.
At least that’s the hope, which isn’t always the best plan of action going forward.
For now, though, that may be as good as it’s going to get for at least a couple of weeks.
