Saturday's Scrimmage Was Strictly to Get Clues on Answers

After dust settles, Razorbacks' Sam Pittman was just trying to narrow down options

Author:
Andy Hodges
Updated:
Aug 14, 2023 3:08 AM EDT
Original:
Aug 13, 2023

In this story:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Nobody knows the questions Arkansas is facing this year better than coach Sam Pittman. Fans and the media want answers right now but not even Pittman appears to know the answers to their most pressing questions.

Saturday's scrimmage was probably closed because it was just another in the string of practices so he and the coaches could look at the film and analyze what they want to try.

The bottom line is they don't have any answers right now. With the large number of new faces on the team, they really weren't expected. Nobody will really know much of anything for certain until about the end of September. That's certainly when we will have a better idea of what questions to be asking.

"It’ll be all about really evaluating ourself," Pittman said after Saturday's scrimmage. "You might have (asked) about the corners. We’ve got to figure out who they are. Can we leave Snaxx there? Are we okay here? And we’ve still get another week to do that. You know, you can beat somebody out during the season, but it’s hard. So, we’re still evaluating all that. During the season, you very rarely beat a guy out. He loses his job. You know what I mean? In pre-camp, you can still beat a man out.

"So, we’re going to scrimmage again next week, and then after that probably go another three days, and then we’ll start working on Western Carolina. But this week right here is about cleaning up this scrimmage, cleaning up mistakes that we had, finding out our best 11, and then more importantly probably even after that is finding out our best 15 on both sides of the ball."

If anybody wants to really admit it that opener is going to be about evaluating too. It's a chance for the coaches to get an extended look of how their guesses have gone in fall camp. They even had coaches in the press box Saturday to get a feel for doing that, too. It was a trial run to grade how that works, too.

On the defensive side, which is totally rebuilding, they are trying to nail down who they can put in what position. It's why Pittman mandated each player would work only at one position and there wouldn't be any trials that day at multiple positions.

"Today was about finding the corners to see if we could leave [Lorando] "Snaxx" [Johnson] at Hog to be perfectly honest," Pittman said. "At least for a long time in the scrimmage, I was like, yeah we’ve found them because there wasn’t a whole lot happening offensively —that’s including run and pass. Third down was a little bit different story.

"We’ve got some big, physical receivers that can shove around and move around some guys as well. [Isaac TeSlaa] and [Andrew Armstrong] are that way and [Tyrone Broden] is a big guy so they had a little bit more success on third down at that point. But yeah, I think it probably is a good thing."

He's running out of time to start guessing because they'll squeeze in another scrimmage next weekend and then start the process getting ready for what should be a cakewalk against Western Carolina in Little Rock on Sept. 2. That game will kick off at 3 p.m. and only be available on ESPN+.