Arkansas football heads down to Jerry World on Saturday for a game against Texas A&M. Head Coach Sam Pittman met with the media on Monday afternoon to preview the game.
Below is a collection of highlight quotes from that press conference. Why waste words on hearing from me, when you can just hear from Mr. Ol’ Col’ Beer himself?
Pittman spoke to the media on Monday afternoon to preview Arkansas football’s game against Texas A&M in Dallas.
On the physical tests facing Arkansas football Saturday: “They have a lot of speed–speed in the secondary. They’re big: big on the d-line, big at linebackers. They can really stretch the field at wideouts…They look like a big, physical SEC team.”
On the defense’s struggles: “I can put it in a nutshell for you: We didn’t tackle well as a team. We’re having a hard time covering opponents. We’ve had that the entire year.”
On Arkansas football simultaneously leading the country in sacks per game and passing yards allowed per game: “We have to get better at both of them really, but obviously there’s a little bit more urgency of covering people. We can live with guys getting good throws. We can’t live with guys wide open. If somebody’s gonna beat us, they need to beat us with us attempting to cover their guy. We’ve had obviously too many mistakes there.”
On potential schematic changes in the secondary: “I will say this. We’re doing exactly what we think is best for us to win. There have been conversations, you know, about going back and running what we ran last year, double cloud about 90 percent of the snaps, and it worked some games and didn’t some games, so I think we’ll get a mixture of that going forward.”
On Rocket Sanders’s character: “Things bother him. He’s a perfectionist. That’s probably what makes him good. He’s very talented, but his ‘want to’ is higher than his talent.”
On Malik Chavis and Hudson Clark alternating series against Missouri State: “Do we feel good enough about moving Chavis to a safety? With (Myles) Slusher coming back, we have some opportunities to have some movement.” Pittman added that it is about getting the five best guys on the field in the secondary.
On KJ Jefferson as a duel threat: “He can hurt you either way. Very confident throwing the football. We’ve gotta get him revved up early. We’ve gotta get him involved in the game early, whether that be running the football or whether that be throwing.”
On what it meant for Arkansas football to beat Texas A&M last year: “It felt good, I’ll say that…I felt like it would do something for us in the national appearance, and I knew it would help recruiting in Texas.”
On the neutral site atmosphere in Cowboy Stadium: “It’s electric. Those games are electric…You don’t normally walk into a stadium and it’s even Stephen fans…It’s really cool. Being in Mr. Jones’s stadium is really neat.”