Sam Says - Monday Presser Edition

Sam Says – Weekly Presser Edition

“I’ll be damned if Georgia’s going to make us lose this Ole Miss game.” said Sam Pittman on Monday at his weekly presser with media members. The message comes across crystal clear as Arkansas desperately needs to flush Saturday’s 37-0 blowout loss away.

Arkansas was never in the game. Never. Georgia received the opening kickoff, drove down the field with ease, and scored a touchdown. That single opening drive summed up the following 3 hours.

Sanford Stadium reached 110 decibels on Saturday. I was surprised by that number. I thought the 11AM start would an advantage for Arkansas. I thought the crowd wouldn’t be into the game as much. I was clearly wrong.

Speaking on the road test in Athens, Pittman said, “It intimidated us and we didn’t play very well…part of it was because of the crowd.”

“We’ve all in one realm or another have gotten the heck kicked out of us in some way or another….You get up and you brush the dirt off…and you go back to work.”

“We just weren’t ready for the grand stage yet and that was all of us….There were a lot of kids(Arkansas players) that said it was the loudest crowd they ever played in front of.”

Ole Miss is a new animal for Arkansas. We saw how Georgia played big boy football. The Rebels will be a different story. Their high-powered, up-tempo offense will be different than anything Arkansas has seen this year and it all starts with Quarterback Matt Corral.

Pittman said this on Corral, “They are not running as many designed runs with him as I thought they might. I’m sure the reasoning is there are a lot of yards gained when he is passing the ball.”

“We are going to have to set the edge on him.” That’s an understatement. Georgia only attempted 11 passes on Saturday, but it didn’t matter because the Hogs were unable to set any kind of edge no matter the offensive play call. The DL must be better.

Pittman expects Corral to have a lot riding on this game. Last season, Corral threw an abysmal 6 interceptions against Arkansas. This will definitely be a revenge game for the Heisman hopeful.

Ole Miss led the SEC in rushing offense last season. Most people don’t know that. These Rebels can run the ball. One could argue it is because of the patented pass game. No matter the reason, this isn’t a drop back 8 and hope to blanket receivers every down type game.

“They’re fast…They are right around 250 (rushing) yards a game.” Pittman said.

“We’ve been underdogs in 14 of our 16 games(Pittman’s tenure) including Saturday. We’ve never been favored to win an SEC game. We’re doing things right. We’ve just got to do them better.”

Pittman is right. There’s no question the program is in a totally different place, but in order to make the next jump, Arkansas has to correct some things.

We’ll see if they can do that on Saturday.

As always, thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter @BenBrandonHoops