Arkansas Outgains Auburn, Still Doesn’t Cover 30 Point Spread

I don’t know man.

If you look at the box score, it really doesn’t look like Arkansas got beat 34-3. But they did. They had 290 yards compared to Auburn’s 225 and still lost by 31. Your first thought would be, oh another six interceptions? No there were only two, and the defense managed to only allow three points off those. A huge improvement last week.

No this week special teams decided to completely implode and had the game to the opposition. Auburn started five drives already in Arkansas territory. And shockingly the defense held up surprisingly well. They only gave up 20 points on those five possessions. Auburn’s scoring drives were 27, 1, 9, 72, and -10 yards. Yes that’s a total of 89 yards for five scoring drives.

There was also a kickoff return for a touchdown and 84 punt return yards. The Tigers averaged 45 yards per return, whether it was punt or kickoff.

Outside of horrendous special teams, things weren’t that bad. Like previously mentioned the defense looked very improved. They even put a fair amount of pressure on Jared Stidham and got four sacks on him. They limited Auburn to just 134 yards and 2.5 yards per rush. They also only allowed auburn to get one play over 20 yards. All very good numbers, that under normal circumstances would put the offense in a reasonable position to win.

The offense looked anemic but wasn’t catastrophic, which I guess is an improvement. Ty Storey went the whole game and was a pedestrian 13-31 for 141 yards and an interception, but he did some nice things, showed some good mobility as well, finishing with 44 rushing yards. The brightest spot on the offense was Rakeem Boyd, who pulled off a 45 yard run and a 33 yard reception en route to 105 all purpose yards.

This felt like such an odd game because it was possibly a stronger performance from their last two games, yet was still a huge mess in many ways. There was never any drama in this one, no doubt that Auburn didn’t have this game in hand despite how even most of the stats were.

The game just happened. And now it’s over.

I don’t know man.