What Sam Pittman said after Mississippi State loss: “It’s not acceptable for anybody”
Everyone associated with Arkansas football is frustrated.
That’s according to program head coach Sam Pittman, anyway, whose team dropped a sixth straight game Saturday, 7-3, against Mississippi State.
The loss means that Arkansas has to win each of its remaining four games just to get to .500 overall and have a chance at playing in a bowl game. But considering Mississippi State entered winless in the SEC and won in Fayetteville, the odds of achieveing four straight wins are long.
So Pittman is frustrated, yes. Mostly, he’s disappointed. The coach is shouldering the blame for Arkansas’ troubles, troubles that no one anticipated would be quite this bad back in August.
Now, with a bye week upcoming, Pittman has decisions to make. With players. With techniques. With coaches.
Here’s what he had to say following the Mississippi State game.
Note: remarks are paraphrased
Opening statement
They had a very aggressive defense. They played extremely well. They scored enough points, obviously, to win. I want to congratulate coach Arnett and his team.
No spark ever came.
We just didn’t play well, whether it was the first quarter or the fourth quarter offensively. I was mad being interviewed, but I don’t know if that was the case or not. I don’t know if we just didn’t get physically whipped.
Is KJ Jefferson hurt?
What I understand is he’s not injured at all. He wasn’t injured in the week. What I understand he’s healthy. I’ll have to wait and ask. I didn’t hear anything about him being injured during the game.
KJ was inaccurate a lot
Maybe just had a bad day. He had a good week of practice. I don’t believe there’s any type of injury there. I would have known about that. Maybe the weeks of getting hit in the pocket have rattled him a little bit. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s an injury.
Ever consider going to Criswell?
No. We never talked about it.
Field goal try with delay of game
I had decided, it was 4th-and-4 I think, right in Cam’s range and I didn’t know what to do, to be perfectly honest with you. I was probably about eight seconds on the 40-second clock, maybe 10 and I decided to kick a field goal. We didn’t get it off in time. That’s the truth. I did not want to call a timeout at that point because I wasn’t for sure I wanted to kick a field goal. We kicked it down to the 2 or whatever. But to be honest with you, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t make the decision fast enough. Once I got it in there, I thought we have plenty of time to kick it, but at that point I wasn’t going to burn a timeout.
Forced into tough situation now?
We’ve got a lot of decisions to make. We owe it to our team. We owe it to the fans. We’ll figure that part of it out. My biggest thing is the defense has continued to improve. My biggest concern is about the kids, the entire team. We asked them at half ‘hey, if you’ll hold them, if you’ll shut them out, I think we’ll win.’ We just weren’t able to do it. Defense is improving. We’ve got enough talent on offense we’ve got to be playing better than what we are. And that’s me. I’ve got to figure that out.
Red zone trouble
Last week I think we went 2 for 2 in the red area, touchdowns. Guys, when you can’t consistently run the football, you’ve got problems scoring in the red zone. We actually had some decent runs today. We’re so feast and famine. We’re four and minus-two and things of that nature. We just can’t be as consistent as what we need to be. All of those things you know. But it all falls back on me. Sitting here where we’re sitting, it’s not acceptable for anybody.
Dominique Johnson late
Protection. We had to him in there for protection. They were bringing their two inside backers and obviously we can’t cut a defensive end loose and tell the back he needs to block him. The beauty of what they do is they force you to go empty and throw it out there and cover the guy in space or they force you to have a back on a wide receiver. They threw some corners in there we didn’t see. The quarterback got hit a few times. That part of it was stritctly because I knew we were going to throw the football and we needed our best protection back there.
Not going for it big at end of half
You saw the first half before that, too, right? I’m trying to get out of it. What were, on the 15 or something like that? I’m trying not to give them the ball back, as well. We ran it on first down. … Where we were, seven and three and we haven’t really shown we were going to go 85 yards. But you never know. I just didn’t want to give up a sack, fumble, during that time. once we got down to 22 seconds, I said that’s enough, I don’t want to get a turnover and give them back the ball down here.
Bad snap play wiped out
They called it dead immediately because the wide receiver that was coming in motion, he never got set. So when they snapped it, it was a dead ball.
MSU's defense different?
No. They were…no. They really didn’t. They ran that twist game, which they’ve run previously. They probably had some more outside pressure than internal today than they have in the past. But other than that, no. It was still pressure to the bubble and we knew it. We were getting picked or couldn’t get open or holding the ball or backs not protecting. There’s a lot of reasons why.
Ditch passing game too early?
I don’t think so. We were just trying to call plays that we could get four or five yards and have some type of success. We missed one down the field that we called that was basically a screen-and-go. We had a guy open and just didn’t see it. Guys, we’re struggling so much on offense that you know and I know, it’s a little bit of grabbing over and grabbing over here and trying to find something that’s going to work. I don’t think we panicked, because we were 7-3 at half. I don’t think we panicked. We talked to the kids. It’s just a one-score game. Our coaches stayed in it. It was just frustarted that we couldn’t – what’d we have two, maybe three first downs in a row, then something would happen. … You had a very aggressive defense and we thought some type of screens. Some quarterback draws might be able to – crossing routes – might be able to help us. We couldn’t protect it long enough, we couldn’t hit them or couldn’t get open.
Describing the offense
Not very good. We’ve got good kids. We’ve got guys that try hard. But we’re just not very good right now. Got a lot of figuring out to do between now and Florida. A lot.
Offensive line issues
I don’t think it’s anything new. Chamblee got his back hurt late in the second quarter. Dev came in. No. Movement has given us problems all year. You saw it again today. I felt like we would have success against this team because we knew where the movement was coming from. I don’t think we got surprised with the movement. I think we got physically man-handled on some of the movement.
Five one-score losses
We’ve got a lot of figuring out to do. We’ve got to get better. I’ve got to do a better job. I’ve got to figure this out. The one-score losses and all that kind of stuff, each one of them are certainly different. They’re all different. Like today was different, a four-point loss and maybe a four-point loss at Alabama. It was three. They’re still the losses but they’re different. Each one of them has a title of how you got beat or how you stayed close with some team that’s really good. It’s disappointing because I’m the head coach at Arkansas and the state deserves better. That’s the biggest disappointment. We’ve got kids in there playing their heart out. We’ve just got to figure out a way to score some points.
Second-guessing field goal choices
(Consider kicking it from 56?) No. If I was having trouble thinking about 51 and where the ball was. My mind was thinking if we miss it there versus putting them inside the 10 if we can. All those things are ifs and ands and buts. I went for it on fourth down and we didn’t make it. We had a fumble on it. The defense bailed the decision to go for it out. Should I have kicked it there? I don’t know. We had had a couple of first downs put together so I thought maybe we could get some. Your mind, when you’re struggling that much offensively, it changes now. It just does. Maybe I should have punted that one, too.
Bye week plans
They’re going to be off tomorrow and Monday they’ll come in and we’ll clean up this tape. Nothing really physical with them until Thursday. They’ll have the weekend off and we’ll come back with a regular work week.
How to ensure holding the rope
I think we’ll be OK as long as we don’t separate in the locker room. We still have opportunity to get bowl-eligible. Obviously we’re going to have to play a lot better to do that. We’ve got good kids on the team. I think they’ll stay together. I told them it’s OK to be angry. It is. It’s OK to be upset. But what you can’t do is let it separate the team.
Coaching change consideration?
I don’t really want to answer that.
How did blocking get so bad?
I really don’t know how it got to today. Let’s keep it to that. Today. When kids play extremely hard, they believe in you. When you struggle a lot of times, it’s not going your way, you’ve got to have something that can bring a spark to them. We just haven’t found that. … When you get a four-yard run, I’m not positive that’s a celebration but it has become that way. You asking me how it’s become that way, I don’t not want to answer it, but I don’t know that I have the perfect answer for it, either.
Frustrating after solid Bama game
Very. You sit there and you look at our team and we had the ball, granted we were 90-something yards away. Then to come in here. Now, Mississippi State, I thought we could exploit them in the secondary, we just didn’t have time to do it. Very frustrating. Everything’s frustrated. Hell, you’re frustrated. You should be. Everybody’s frustrated. One head coach and I’ve got to figure out how to get it done. Obviously not doing a good enough job.
