Photo by Nick Karvounis on Unsplash
A few years back, I took my wife to the north Georgia mountains for a little birthday getaway. Her birthday is in late March, so the grass was lush and green with animals out and about. We found a little hidden field deep in one of the state parks around the mountains and wandered around for a bit enjoying the sun.
It was then that we noticed about five black dots rummaging on the hill opposite us. The longer we looked, we started to see that these were baby wild hogs rooting around in the ground for something to eat. I was amazed by this scene, watching some wild animals in their natural habitat without a clue they were being observed from a distance.
My wife, on the other hand, was nervous.
To this day, I still cannot convince her to go back with me to that spot. I’ve been camping up there since then and enjoyed the peaceful isolation, but she flatly refuses to go back.
See, my wife grasped something that day that I mostly attempt to ignore.
Baby wild hogs grow up.
It is obvious to anyone who watches college football that the team we’re watching right now in Arkansas is not the same team full of baby hogs from last season. These boys are grown and hungry and ready for the fight.
Arkansas has always intrigued me as a football team. People forget that they are a “traditional power” with a pedigree closer to Texas and Alabama than Mississippi State and Vanderbilt. Obviously they haven’t won the championships of those other schools, but Arkansas has been to the SEC Championship game three times and as recently as 2011 they were number three in the country as late as November.
But Arkansas is also capable of doing something that no other traditional SEC power is capable of, and that’s being a bottom-feeder for an extended stretch of time. What makes Arkansas so befuddling is that they will be an annual threat for about five years, and then they’ll spend six or seven years without winning more than three conference games at a time. Whereas most SEC powers like Georgia or Florida or Tennessee can have bad years and then bounce right back (okay, maybe scratch Tennessee from that list), it usually takes Arkansas a little longer.
“Oh, yeah. We got this one for winning the…uh…Cupid Bowl? Yep. They don’t just give these babies away, y’know.” (Photo by Irena Carpaccio on Unsplash)
Since joining the SEC in 1991, Arkansas has had 13 losing seasons. As far as SEC play goes, the Hogs have had 16 years with a record below .500 in-conference and a staggering five seasons where they went 4-4. The most recent skid has probably been the worst, though. Ever since dare devil Bobby Petrino’s much-ballyhooed exit from the program after that marvelous 2011 season, when it looked like he might just get the Razorbacks rolling, Arkansas has had just one season with more than three conference wins.
They would have had more than three SEC wins last season if the officials they faced against Auburn actually knew how to officiate football, but we don’t have asterisks for bad officiating. As much as Georgia fans might want one or two.
Look. Nobody is surprised that Sam Pittman has Arkansas back on track. I don’t think anyone expected it to happen so quickly, but nobody is surprised that he is having success at that school. Pittman is a great coach and a better recruiter, and Arkansas does have a history of success, as I’ve pointed out. Even though it ain’t Tuscaloosa, having a bit of a trophy case to point to can indeed make a difference for Arkansas. It helps to say you’re getting back to successful football instead of just trying to find it in the first place.
The question that really matters, though, is whether or not the 2021 Wild Hawgs are the real deal.
When you look at Arkansas’ first four games, it should come as no surprise that the Texas Longhorns, a fierce former-and-future conference rival for Arkansas, has had the most offensive success against the Hogs. Hook’Em put up 21 points on Arkansas while allowing a whopping 40 points.
What does it tell us that Arkansas beat Texas like that? Eh…maybe not much. Texas is about as hard to pin down as Arkansas is. Here’s a question for you. Why hasn’t the waitress cleared that booth in the corner for the last couple years? Because it belongs to a Texas fan and he insists that he’s gonna be back.
People want to transitive property themselves into believing that Arkansas is for real because the Horns doubled up the Red Raiders of Texas Tech 70-35 this past Saturday. And those people might be right.
Like I said, it’s no surprise that Texas has had the most success against Arkansas so far. What’s shocking is that Rice has actually scored the second-most points against Arkansas this season, putting up 17 against the Hogs.
That same Rice team was then dunked on by Texas two weeks later, as the Horns took out their frustrations over losing to Arkansas with a 58-0 statement against the mighty Owls.
So what does it tell us that Arkansas beat Rice 38-17, then beat Texas 40-21 a week before Texas shut out Rice? Practically nothing, that’s what it tells us.
I think most of your college football analysts were waiting until this past week’s game against Texas A&M to really pass judgment on the Hogs, though, because the Aggies were supposed to be on top of the world this year. Never mind that they’ve looked sluggish early on this season, squeaking out a 10-7 win against a bad Colorado team. This was the year A&M was going to break through. Which, honestly, they still could.
So when Arkansas had a veritable chokehold on the Aggies Saturday, that’s when the college football world decided that it was okay to praise the Hogs. That’s when they were crowned the “Next Big Thing.”
I will readily admit that I didn’t get to watch any of that game, but I have a hard time looking at that win and really coronating Arkansas just yet. While they did have a 17-3 lead at one point, before winning by a final of 20-10, Arkansas had some meager offensive numbers.
Sort of.
The Texas A&M defense gave up a couple of long touchdown passes to “baby Cam Newton”, mobile Arkansas QB KJ Jefferson. His first, an 85-yarder to Treylon Burks, just got behind the Aggie defense. There are some reasonable concerns there as the Georgia defense appears to have just one possible weakness: the big play.
Admittedly, it is really kinda stupid to say that the Georgia defense is susceptible to “the big play” when you never notice all the potential big plays that fall apart because of pressure or coverage. You only notice the one or two times that the play connects. South Carolina hit a couple of big plays downfield against the Dawgs, which is where all of the concern comes from, but they also had numerous attempts fall flat.
The second Arkansas touchdown, which came before Jefferson’s early exit due to injury, featured an orchestra of bad tackling. One Texas A&M defender literally gave AJ Green (not that one) a speed boost with a push in the back on the 48-yarder. Georgia’s defense is much more disciplined in down-field tackling than Texas A&M was on that blunder of a play, so the underneath passing game isn’t likely to spring open any of these miracle chunk plays against Georgia. For Arkansas to hit it big, they’ll have to aim big.
“It says here that, if you take away all of his completions and just leave the incompletions, this guy is the worst quarterback ever! The data doesn’t lie.” (Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash)
I’m going to commit another “football analytics sin” and take away those two big plays. If we remove the two touchdown passes, Jefferson was just 5-of-13 with 133 yards passing. Mind you, that’s still a 26.6 yard-per-pass average and is cause for concern, but it isn’t something to freak out about. After all, that puts him at just slightly better than 38 percent. If you add back the two touchdowns, it’s a 46.67 percent completion rate. Which is better, but not much.
Can Arkansas really hope to defeat Georgia with just a handful of big completions? I just don’t think so. If your quarterback is only completing about 45 percent of his minimal pass attempts, they’d better all be touchdowns. Or you’d better have a run game that will just punish opponents.
Arkansas can’t hope to have a punishing run game against Georgia’s vaunted front seven, a unit people are already saying might be the greatest in UGA history. The Razorbacks will absolutely need to hit some deep balls and they will need to do it often. And while UGA’s defense might have some holes in the secondary, that incredible front seven can bring plenty of pressure to hasten a banged up Jefferson.
In my mind, this upcoming game against Arkansas feels a lot like the 2017 contest against Mississippi State. The Bizarro Dawgs had just completed a nationally televised beat down of LSU and were coming into Athens with all of the hype. And then Georgia put on a clinic, keeping Mullen’s vaunted offense out of the end zone for all 60 minutes.
Honestly? Maybe you can grow a little less. Yikes! (Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash)
I firmly believe that Arkansas has made strides towards being a very good football team. Unfortunately, we are still far too early in the season to really tell exactly how large those strides have been. Arkansas is certainly capable of coming into Athens and beating the Bulldogs on Saturday, but I don’t think they will.
When I think about my little camping spot up in the mountains, I always remember the time that those little wild hogs went rambling through in front of me. I’ve been back up there a couple of times since that day and I’ve never again seen any little wild hogs. Nor any big wild hogs, for that matter. But, in my mind, the reality that they’re somewhere around is always lurking. If I should happen to come across them again, I hope I’m ready.
Because baby hogs grow up. And Arkansas is a football team that has really grown up. But have they grown up enough?