all year and tonight shows why. They played pretty close to thier capabilities and acted like they cared. When I see that, I wonder where it has been the past month and a half.
I want to see them win and enjoy that, but I a at least OK when I see effort like tonight and they don’t win. We could be proud of that team even if they had lost. That was the way I want to see the Razorbacks play. When they do, I can live with the results.
Now, they need to carry that same effort to Auburn while eliminating some of the mistakes. Auburn seems to have got their ship righted. Be another very tough game. Of course in the SEC, they all are.
It was a good win. And a great effort. Ole Miss is just not as good as the two teams we lost to. Close though. I really think we have played the 3 best teams on our schedule.
What I saw tonight was total team effort, both offense and defense. Which I thought was missing during our pair of losses. I don’t like losing, but as long as the Hogs exert 100% effort I can live with it. But what eats me up is when we lose due to lack of effort and focus (coaches and players). Tonight was enjoyable, not just because we won but we fought for every yard. We were physical and every player and coach gave maximum effort.
As for pre-season expectations. For whatever reason(s), DW and the rest of the defensive line and defense has not lived up to the preseason hype. Don’t know if he is injured or the hype was unfair for him. My personal expectations were perhaps too high of our defense, especially our defensive line. WRT our offense, I thought (mistakenly perhaps) in CBB’s fourth year we would have adequate OL talent and depth. I was wrong. Others like Matt Jones were right.
As for the coaching staff. I expect our team to be prepared. That includes being prepared for our opponents attacking our weakness’. Prior to the season, I knew our weakness on offense (as stated in earlier post this year) would be protecting against the blitz. Good teams (like Bama) can easily find and attack our weakness’. Bama has FIVE former head coaches. They are the best coached team in the SEC and perhaps in the USA. They WILL find a team’s weak spot(s) and exploit. Defensively, our weakness’ were LB speed and timid DBs. Bama knew it and took advantage of it.
We failed against Bama to properly adjust. We kept trying to throw on first down and kept getting sacked with Bama’s LB blitz’s. We kept calling bootlegs and Bama kept to their lanes and were never fooled. We failed to adjust. Either bad calling, failing to adjust or just didn’t have a Plan B. That’s a coaching mistake.
Tonight, I was proud of our team’s effort. The W is sweet, but the effort was even sweeter…by both the coaching staff and players. It was good enough to overcome biased officiating and OM.
AR’s first two games came against two of the best in SEC and the Country. At the same time, AR was not put together in Offensive line, Defense as a whole, could not run, only pass. Those two games help AR to mature in a hurry. They displayed their improvement against OL. Miss game. They are beginning to look more like the team at the end of last year. Once we build on our depth chart, we’ll come out of the gate better each year.
Not a matter of effort. Amusing how fans act as if they are more disappointed, hurt or frustrated with losses then players and coaches.
There’s a difference between effort and execution.
Arkansas has two losses against two teams who are among the best in the country. They lost those games because they were outplayed or made too many mistakes. It had nothing to do with how hard they tried.
UA is a very good team that continues to improve. While I will still shake my head over lost opportunities against A&M, I think Alabama demonstrated clearly yesterday just how good that team is and how truly remarkable it would have been for us to have beaten them.
Agreed, Loud. Effort and execution should never be confused. I cannot imagine any team–Arkansas, Georgia or Auburn or anybody–that would not give great effort against Alabama, and that includes the coaching staff. Alabama is the top dog and everybody wants to knock off the Tide. Execution, on the other hand, can be lacking, and good teams like Alabama and A&M will find those weaknesses and exploit them. Arkansas executed much better against Ole Miss, but to me the passion has been there all along.