Everything Sam Pittman said after Arkansas’ season-ending loss to Missouri
Arkansas coach Sam Pittman may be returning in 2024 and ultimately the taste of the final game of the 2023 season won’t linger into September.
But, mercy, the Hogs’ result against Missouri – a 48-14 loss – was not ideal for Pittman, athletic director Hunter Yurachek or anyone associated with the Arkansas football team just six days after the announcement that Pittman would return to Fayetteville.
The Razorbacks were down 41-0 before two fourth-quarter touchdowns brought cheers – some sarcastic – from the maybe 5,000 Arkansas fans who stayed that late into the game.
After the game, Pittman did the same as always: he sat down and answered every question from the Arkansas media as honestly as he could.
To say that some fans were dissatisfied with his responses would be understatement.
Check out what exactly the coach had to say below.
Opening statement
We’ll just start out twofold: thanking the fans for continuing to come out and support us over the Thanksgiving holiday and congratulate Missouri. We knew they had a really good football team, a physical football team. They played a really good game today. Obviously we did not. Congratulations to them. They were a physical team. Running back is really good. We had a hard time, couldn’t stop him.
KJ Jefferson's injury
KJ hyperextended a knee. I don’t think it’s going to be bad, bad. As a matter of fact, he was trying to come and this, that and the other. We gave him until halftime. He was not going to be full speed and I didn’t want to put him back out there at that point. He said he wasn’t able to go, but he tried to go. Jacolby, he’s tough. I thought he played extremely hard. He just didn’t have any time to throw the football. None. Nor did KJ for that matter. We got beat up front. O-line. Gave up a sack by a running back on a hot, empty protection, Jacolby himself. He never had any time to throw the football so it’d be hard to judge his performance, but you could say he was tough and very gritty.
Experience for Jacolby help?
He’s a competitor. You saw. And he’s athletic and things of that nature. And tough. I thought he did a nice job of leading the team. Obviously in the fourth quarter he led us down to a couple of touchdowns. Threw a nice touchdown pass. But it’s really hard to judge him other than his character and his toughness to continue to get up and play.
How to generate offeseason momentum
I don’t know. Somebody else.
Isaiah Augustave only two first-half carries
I thought we would (get him more carries). The problem is when you have reads, when you have quarterback run to run and we called a lot of plays to him, but basically what they were doing, they were knifing the end and running the willy out, which is a normal thing for any defense. Jacolby was seeing that read taken away from him. And KJ. Was pulling the ball. We did have runs called for him, it’s just they were taking away the read.
CBS says offensive coordinator by next week?
I hope so because the portal comes open on Friday. Obviously with the kids that we have that committed, you want to be right. But you also want to be as fast as you possibly can. You would like to get some guys in here maybe Tuesday, Wednesday so they could talk to the kids before we need to go out on the road. I don’t know if that’s possible or not. Obviously we’ve been in conversations with several different people
Exit interviews soon
Yeah. We’re going to have Monday. We’re going to start with those. Obviously we have a team meeting at 4 o’clock on Monday. But we’re going to start talking about with the guys that plus-one that have some type of NFL ranking and we’ll go through there first with those guys.
Tough close for defense
We’ve made some mental errors. We cut the tight end loose twice. Third-and-nine. I don’t think we’ve added, but since, and Florida scored 36, I think, too. It was a tackling issue. I think more today, they were cracking with the wide receiver and our replace guy, we didn’t know whether it would be the corner or whether it would be the safety. We just weren’t getting there. They were getting right outside on the edge. We weren’t handling the edge at defensive end and they were cracking inside down on first force. Our corrners were going to have to make plays, or our safeties, and we never. We did in the second half. But more in the second half we were getting penetration. But we didn’t give our defense any chance then because we had two or three turnovers – bam, bam, bam – in a row. They came out and fought, but you can’t beat anybody with five turnovers. That’s what happened there.
The fight in second quarter
Just we’re not coming off the bench. That’s the main thing. If you keep the guys on the field, the officials can handle all that stuff. But coming off the sideline or having problems when they get on the sideline. Obviously the quarterback was hit late, out of bounds, and their offensive line came in to our bench and then we retaliated. We can’t have that. Then it went onto the field. I think we got it stopped fairly quick, both Eli and myself and our people. A rivalry, it escalated on our sideline. I think they had some problems over there on theirs, as well.
Thinking at halftime
We got the ball back, but we had to do something offensively. We had four first downs in the first half. One of them was a fumble after we got 20, 25 yards. We were thinking about moving the pocket. Continue to do our reads, but not necessarily same side. Maybe away read, running back to the other side. … That was maybe the major adjustment there and we were talking about trying to move the pocket. Then we moved the pocket and the guy came through and hit Jacolby and the ball went right up in the air and we were rolling about as simple as protection as we have.
Keep defensive staff
Those questions are hard to answer. Obivously I’d like to have a little bit more time to evaluate everybody. But those are hard to answer at this point. We just got our butt kicked. I need to take some time to figure out exactly what we need to do over the entire staff.
Lots of hits on quarterback
Well, I think we went into the game with over 40 sacks. So, we’ve got to shore up a lot of things. That’s our main thing we’ve got to get fixed. Very disappointing. We’re just not giving our wide receivers a chance to get open and catch the ball and we’re certainly not giving our quarterback those opportunities, either. We went to empty against Florida and it worked. It worked because I don’t think they’d ever seen it and weren’t ready for it. Then all these other teams have become ready for it. We’ve done a decent job last week against FIU, but certainly this week we did not.
What seeking in offensive coordinator
I think you have to find a fit, but you certainly want a guy that brings something special to the university, whether that be what KB did in the past. Whether that be a combination of what Kendall did and some pro-style stuff. I think we need a guy that really wants to be here and understands Arkansas. The No. 1 thing is we need somebody that understands how to run the football because we have to run the football, in my opinion, to win. Of all the problems that we’ve had this year, it all stemmed, a bunch of it, because we can’t run the football. That would be my No. 1 thing is sitting down and visiting with a man that knows how to run the football.
Kenny Guiton's future
I appreciate the question, I just haven’t had time to talk with Kenny. Obviously interviewed him for the offensive coordinator job. But I’m really pleased with what he did as offensive coordinator. Going and beating Florida then scoring 44 last week. I’m really grateful to him because he worked his butt off and did as good a job as he could possibly do. I’m thankful for him.
Offensive line
You’ve got to go in the portal. Look back at Auburn coming in here and I think four of their five were from the portal and I think seven of their top eight o-linemen were transfers. There’s an opportunity to do that and we’ve got to get better with the ones we have here as well. You don’t have to be a football coach to know we need help. So we’ve got to go address that. That will be our No. 1 place to address. Without that, you can’t really have a lot of success offensively. With that you can have a whole bunch of success. We’ve got to get it fixed. That’s nothing negative about the kids we have.
Future of Arkansas NIL
I can’t (expound). I wish I could. I do feel much better about it. I think we’re going to be very competitive there and I’m really excited about that. Hell, nobody wants to sit up here like this. Nobody does. But I’m the head coach, I’m supposed to sit up here good and bad. But I think there is a big chance for us to change where we’re at at 4-8 and I’m excited to have the opportunity to do it.
What provides momentum?
I think the first thing is you’ve got to go find an offensive coordinator, one that wants to be here. It’d be fun if a guy understood the state and understood the SEC. I will say this, Arkansas is very well-respected by some of the folks I’ve been able to talk to. I feel very, very good that we’ll get an offensive coordinator that wants to be here and wants to help lead our program to a lot of great things. We need get that pretty quick. … What you’ve got to do is get the right coordinator that is going to help us win and then we’ve got to start – if we started going ‘this guy committed’ just change instead of nobody commits, where’s our coordinator? That stuff is going to fester. But if we can get a coordinator that we believe we can score points and then go get some starting with shoring up the offensive line, I think we can get momentum back. We’ve been invited to three bowl games in the last four years. This one here is a disappointing year. Moreso that there was way, way higher optimism about this year than what it ended up being. We’ve got to change it. We’ve got to fix it. But there’s no doubt in my mind that I’m the guy that can change it.
Is KJ finished at Arkansas?
I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t know. We haven’t sat down and spoke about it. I never do until Monday with the guys. In all honesty, if he put that out there, that probably means he’s had all the college, or all the Arkansas that he wants. I just haven’t talked to him about it.
Jaheim Thomas
Jaheim’s done a nice job. Had some tackling problems. Not unlike anybody else. I think Grier just played a little bit better when he was in there and he played better in practice. Jaheim’s got a strong future here. It wasn’t injuries or anything like that. We just felt like Grier played al ittle bit better.
Bummer if KJ's last game
I imagine it’s disappointing. I’ve got 100 of them in there that are disappointed as well. But I imagine it’s disappointing. KJ’s had so many great moments here. If he dwells one second on a game here that he got hurt on, that’s not his legacy at all. I’m sure he’s disappointed that he wasn’t able to play the entire game and help his team out. He’s been so valuable to me and our program over the last four years, including the first year when he went up to Missouri and played a really nice game.
Confident in keeping recruiting class together
I’m very confident.
