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Before we get into the nitty gritty of it all, let’s sit here and celebrate 7 straight wins over an SEC foe. 7 straight wins. We’ve now beaten Arkansas with 2 different head coaches, 5 different offensive coordinators, 3 different defensive coordinators, and 5 different starting QBs. That’s pretty phenomenal.
Ok, moving away from that this game was terrible. We played really poorly in damn near every facet of the game, except for maybe special teams. We shot ourselves in the foot over and over and over again, and are tremendously lucky to walk way with a win against a team that’s only a couple weeks past getting their asses handed to them by North Texas. There’s no spinning this one: this was a bad performance with a fortunate good outcome. Couple of quick thoughts:
KELLEN
Kellen finished 17/26 for 201 yards with 2 horrible interceptions. Rushed 11 times for 14 yards. Credit John Chavis, because Kellen was lost damn near all game long. I guess he was due a bad game, given that he’s a young QB, and I dont think this is a put Starkel in kind of moment, but Kellen did not perform the way we needed him to today.
OFFENSE
Statistically we dominated them. 24 first downs to only 11 for Arkansas. 176 rushing yards. Yet we couldn’t convert when it counted. Penalties, bad play, I dont know what it was, but it was frustrating to watch.
DEFENSE
Donovan Wilson saved our ass, but we still have massive issues in the secondary. Our run defense is fine, Arkansas finished with 26 rush attempts for 55 yards, but they were able to throw for almost 200 yards. 200 might not seem like a lot but Arkansas is not a good offensive team. The secondary has issues, and teams more talented than Arkansas are going to take advantage of our issue with TEs running down the seam. We gotta fix that secondary man. We have to.
SPECIAL TEAMS
Seth Small came back down to earth a little bit, but that’s ok. Let’s talk about Jashaun Corbin and that 100 yard TD kick off return to open the game. Turned out to be a giant tease as to how the game would go, but man that was fun. Braden Mann punted 4 times and averaged close to 50 yards a punt. Good game for them.
This was not a good game and we were playing a team that we should have beaten by 2+ TDs. We’ve got a lot to clean up with a dangerous Wildcat team coming to town next weekend.
BTHO kentucky