No Adjustments, No Answers: What The Tape Showed In Arkansas' Loss At Texas A&M

Arkansas did not get run off the field at Texas A&M because the Razorbacks were short on bodies. They got beat on the margins that coaches control. That was the through line when the 4th & Five desk pulled the tape from the Aggies' 231-yard rushing afternoon in front of an announced crowd of 108,657, the fifth-largest in Texas A&M history.

DJ Williams set the terms before anyone said a word about the film.

"What we try to do here at 4th & Five is to focus on the tape and try to remove the emotion aside and just focus on the ball side of things," Williams said. "I don't want us to be in a situation where we're just going to sunshine pump a lot of positive things when it is not positive at all."

There were positives. There were also decisions that kept those positives from showing up on the scoreboard.

A Spy Who Was Never Right For That Matchup

Williams' biggest takeaway started with the stated plan. Stopping the run was the emphasis all week, by the staff's own postgame accounting. Then the Razorbacks watched Marcel Reed and KJ Edwards each pile up 66 yards on the ground, with Reed scoring once and Edwards twice.

The part that bothered Williams most was the quarterback spy. Arkansas kept a player in that role who, on tape, was not comfortable there and could not close the space when he did diagnose it.

"That's when a savvy coach, in my opinion, you put someone in a position maybe that they haven't played all week or all offseason just for this specific game, because this team is so one-dimensional," Williams said.

His fix was not complicated. Find the rangiest, fastest linebacker on the roster, tell him his job for one week is to chase a quarterback sideline to sideline, and live with the tradeoffs.

"No, it's this specific game," Williams said, framing how that conversation should go with the player coming off the field. "Not that you're not a good player."

One Man Out Of His Gap, One Long Touchdown

The long touchdown run down the left sideline was not a coverage bust or a missed call, according to Williams. Arkansas had bodies at the point of attack. One defender crashed inside, lost outside contain, and the back ran through the door he opened.

"We got a lot of hero guys out there that feel like they have to make the tackle in order to have a good play," Williams said. "That's not the case all the time. You having nothing to do with the tackle as far as physically is sometimes the best thing that you can do, because you're going to let somebody else make the tackle."

Whether that point is landing in practice is the open question. Williams said the upcoming defensive breakdown will put several of those reps side by side.

Watch: the full 4th & Five breakdown.

The Must-Have-It Downs Still Have No Go-To Call

The second thing that stood out to Williams was situational. Every staff keeps a call sheet with a red box for the snaps that decide games, he said, and those are the plays a team reps until the players stop thinking.

"It's a play that has built-in options, so you don't necessarily have to make checks," Williams said. "And it just seems like we have no idea what to do in those must-have-it situations."

The goal line sequence was his exhibit A. Arkansas went with a delayed handoff against a front that had already shifted and had brought a backside safety down to the line of scrimmage. Arkansas had a receiver isolated wide to the left in press coverage, and the Aggies had made their choice.

"They said, if we're going to give up a touchdown right here, it's going to be by KJ throwing it. We're okay with that," Williams said of Texas A&M's look against KJ Jackson.

His frustration was that nobody stopped the clock. Somebody, the head coach, the play caller, or the quarterback, should have recognized there was no blocker for the extra defender.

"We don't have somebody to block him," Williams said. "Time out. It really surprises me that that's not happening at this level, just because we've seen it done at this level before."

He floated the old standard as the comparison. A quarterback like Ryan Mallett, Williams suggested, would have burned the timeout and taken the earful from Bobby Petrino afterward.

Throne: The Run Game Worked, Then Arkansas Walked Away From It

Josh Throne's takeaway was the flip side of the same coin. Arkansas finished with 98 rushing yards on a season-high 4.6 yards per carry, matching the Aggies' efficiency on the ground while running it far less often. Texas A&M leaned on it all afternoon and got to 231.

"Somehow we weren't running the football like we should be running the football," Throne said.

Braylen Russell, the 6-1, 238-pound junior from Benton, was the back who popped on tape. Throne said the usage did not match the production.

"He showed that he should be playing more," Throne said.

The play calling was where Throne put the blame.

"I felt like the play calling was a huge issue, very obvious play calling at times, and passing the ball a lot more than what you needed to do when you just needed to establish a run and get the chains going, get some confidence in your offense," Throne said.

He pointed to the drive right after an interception, when Arkansas landed in third and eight and took a shot down the sideline instead of working the sticks. Williams called it a wasted snap with nothing built in behind it.

"When you throw it four yards out of bounds, you don't even give him a shot," Williams said.

Cook: Third Down Habits And A Recipe Arkansas Did Not Follow

Grant Cook, the offensive lineman of the group, had two standing complaints and both showed up in College Station.

"I get sometimes you throw the ball down the field, you're just trying to make a big play, but don't do that on third down," Cook said of the sideline fade on a manageable distance.

The other is the route depth. "I will never understand why people run routes one or two yards short of the sticks on third downs," Cook said. "Just run the route two yards longer, catch it, get hit, and get the first down. What are we doing?"

Cook did credit the ground game. "This is kind of the first week where we saw the run game that was somewhat productive," he said. "At least we showed some flashes that, okay, we can actually run it against a quality defense."

Texas A&M, he noted, is not short on talent up front or in the back seven. And then Arkansas stopped using the thing that was working.

"We abandoned the run game," Cook said.

Defensively, his takeaway was simpler. "The biggest takeaway for me was that we didn't make Marcel Reed beat us with his arm. We knew that coming in," Cook said. "They committed fully to the run and they were successful in it. Why did we not completely take that off the board and make the guy throw it?"

The result was Texas A&M's first league win of the season, moving the Aggies to 3-2 overall and 1-2 in the SEC.

A Path Toward A More Efficient Offense

Williams raised one structural idea for the weeks ahead, and he took heat for it online. His suggestion was that Arkansas could divvy up the play calling responsibilities, the way staffs across the sport split duties between a run game coordinator, a passing game coordinator, a coordinator, and a head coach.

Head coach Ryan Silverfield spent years on the offensive side at Memphis before taking the Arkansas job. Williams' point was that a title is not the same thing as a skill set.

"Just because somebody's named the offensive coordinator, there's at least 20 other people on that team that could call plays if they had to," Williams said. "Definitely a head coach could call plays if he had to, even if he's never had the title of an offensive coordinator."

Williams was not calling for a demotion. He was describing a lever the staff has available if the situational calls keep stalling.

What To Watch This Week

Cook thinks the Razorbacks get another crack at the same test, against another offense that would rather hand it off than throw it.

"It looks like we're going to have another opportunity this week potentially to try it again and really sell out and make them one-dimensional," Cook said. "We'll see if we do it."

The run game gave Arkansas something real to build on. Whether the staff builds on it, and whether the defensive plan matches the scouting report this time, is the whole ballgame Saturday.