Hogs Still Not Good Enough to Beat Team Trying to Lose

No matter how you cut it up, these Razorbacks still play up or down to opponent

Author:
Andy Hodges
Updated:
Oct 14, 2023 10:56 PM EDT
Original:
Oct 14, 2023

In this story:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Spin Arkansas' 24-21 loss to Alabama on Saturday however you want, but it's still a loss. When you already have four of them, nothing really matters except the final score. Don't make excuses for failure and when you don't win. That's exactly what it is.

This team isn't handled like the train wreck we watched for a couple of years fairly recently. This is more like the five years before that where we were reminded over and over how "close" the Razorbacks were and just needed to "strain" more. There isn't any give-up on this team – yet. I'm not predicting it, either.

Quite frankly, the Hogs seem to play up or down according to the level of their opponent. For some strange reason, the Crimson Tide seem to be playing that way, too, at least this year. It appears to be making Nick Saban possibly close to reverting back to the old image we grew accustomed to when he had about six full-blown meltdowns every game at somebody. Arkansas coach Sam Pittman won't do that, but it is clearly starting to wear on him.

"Five in a row is a lot in a row, you know?" Pittman said. "Going into this stretch starting with BYU, I wouldn't have dreamt or nobody else that we would be sitting here 2-5. Didn't want to be."

Nobody wanted that and Sam didn't plan back in August for this to be over halfway complete and be just close enough to keep hope alive. It's one of those years like most people will experience sooner or later at some level. Pittman's been on some staffs like that at times. He was on John Blake's staff at Oklahoma during that complete disaster and probably saw the writing on the wall with Bret Bielema and got out of town. Lately, Pittman's talking about "hope" too much.

"They're all learning experiences from it," Pittman said. "Hopefully, we'll be a better team when we get back home and get out of there. We still got to go to Florida, but four of the five are at home. I just hope that we learn from it as coaches. I hope it's made it stronger. I hope it's made us a better team. That's yet to be determined until we get out there and play Mississippi State."

That's coming up next Saturday morning at 11 a.m. and it will be interesting to see what kind of atmosphere that will be sitting on five losses, regardless whatever is announced as the tickets sold. We'll see how many people show up. Maybe the biggest problem for Pittman and the staff is keeping this team interesting, and he's probably not that far away from beginning to recruit the players already here he wants to come back for next year.

"There's a lot of things to learn from it," Pittman said. "How you address your team, how the team responds to you. Your main concern is how do you motivate the team and how do you get them better and are you going to lose them. We all kind of agree we haven't done that, but we've got to figure out a way to win."

The really uncomfortable part of that is this team is now within sight of completely blowing up. Two more losses and they will be slap out of any chance to go to a bowl game. Right now, going back to Memphis for another Liberty Bowl may be the ceiling. They can't afford to play down to the level of Mississippi State next weekend.

"We’ve backed ourselves into a corner, a wall, into a corner that we want to get bowl eligible," Pittman told Chuck Barrett on the radio broadcast. "We’ve got to take it one at a time, but obviously it’s a game we have to get."

As I said, this team has been inconsistent all year and playing up to (or down to) the level of competition they are facing. At this point, nothing should really be surprising.