Scheme Or Execution? Breaking Down Arkansas' Offense Snap By Snap Against Texas A&M

Every Arkansas fan is asking the same question after Texas A&M, and it is not a complicated one. Is the offense failing because of what is being called, or because of what is being executed? DJ Williams went snap by snap through the tape to find out, and his answer is uncomfortable for both sides of the argument.

The short version: there is plenty of bad coaching tape in this game. There is more bad execution tape.

"It's set up to do well, just get the job done," Williams said after watching the same technique error wreck two different runs.

Three Minutes On A Five-Yard Gain

Williams opened with the first play of the game, a five-yard run that most people watching live filed away as a fine start.

He gave it three minutes.

Arkansas came off the ball with real vertical push, which Williams said has been missing for a while. The track for Sutton Smith was correct. Then Smith cut back into a defender Williams had already flagged as unblocked.

After the game, Williams questioned whether Smith was an SEC-caliber back. On the tape, he pulled that back.

"I'm really starting to try to figure out getting Sutton Smith's head," Williams said. "I'm trying my best, Sutton, to maybe get into what you are seeing out there because it's a lot easier from where we're sitting."

What Smith saw, according to Williams, was Kobe Branham losing the interior. Smith poked his head playside, found the hole closed, and bailed. The read was not the problem. The leverage in front of him was.

That is the argument for watching the film before you plant a flag, and Williams admitted the show is not immune to letting the emotion of a Saturday night do the talking.

Pad Level Is The Whole Story Up Front

Branham took the brunt of the breakdown, and Williams was clear about why.

On the opener and again later in the first half, Branham was part of a double team on the A&M defensive tackle with help right next to him. Both times, Williams said, his helmet landed on the wrong side of the defender and his pads came up.

"What did Grant Cook say?" Williams said. "If your hat is above the other guy's hat, bad news."

The result was a defensive tackle who could move an Arkansas guard wherever he wanted, then shed and get in on the tackle. Williams charted two runs that were schemed clean and finished at three yards.

He saw the same thing from Malachi Breeland on a first-down run that should have been dead in the backfield, saved only by a missed tackle.

"I'd rather our guys come off the ball and everything that we earn was because of us, not because somebody just missed the tackle," Williams said.

That, in his view, is a real reason a staff gets gun shy about leaning on the run game. If the successful runs are successful because the defense made a mistake, a coordinator stops trusting them.

The contrast came on a Braylen Russell carry. Low pads, no false steps, downhill from the snap, and a defensive lineman driven four yards off the ball even though the blocker missed his aiming point.

Watch: the full 4th & Five breakdown.

KJ Jackson's Eyes Are Giving It Away

The first-drive interception was not a pressure throw. Williams made a point of that.

Arkansas had clean protection. Chris Marshall was running a deep post, and Jackson believed the safety would carry him. Instead the safety sat, eyes locked on the quarterback the entire time.

"That's bad news when your eyes give it away from 40 yards away," Williams said. "KJ just gave it away."

Williams counted three defenders deeper than any Arkansas receiver on the play. The home run was never there.

The pattern repeated. On a third and four, Marshall won a one-on-one for a first down and Jackson delivered a strike while taking a shot to the chin. Good play, Williams said. He also pointed out that A&M blitzed both potential coverage defenders on the back and left the checkdown completely uncovered, and Jackson never saw it because he had decided pre-snap.

Later, with pressure building, Williams saw the habit Jackson had been working out of come back: throwing off the back leg while fading away. One of those should have been a second interception.

"You know what's better than an interception? A punt on fourth down," Williams said.

The Play Nobody At The Show Can Explain

Here is where the scheme side of the ledger gets its turn.

On the Jackson-to-Marshall touchdown, Williams was studying protection when he noticed Caden Kitler set, release, and run downfield to block. Smith released and went downfield to block too. That is what a draw looks like.

It was a touchdown pass.

And it was not the first time. Williams and Grant Cook had already stumbled onto the same picture a week earlier while breaking down a sack.

"If this is true pass pro, it looks like Cam Settles is what we would call like a scan protection," Cook explained on that clip. "So offensive line's going to go big on big, meaning we're going to take the biggest players in the blitz scheme and we're going to leave the smaller players for the back to pick up."

Cook's read was that Arkansas simply let a free rusher through. Then the center took off downfield and the back never turned to look for the ball.

"Cam Settles is not looking for the ball. He's not in a route," Cook said. "Normally if a back releases like that, he's going to go about where he is right now, turn around and sit down."

Williams' read is that Arkansas is running some kind of built-in option where Jackson can hold a downfield shot and tuck it as a draw if it is not there. He is not sold.

"We got sacked on a draw play that technically wasn't a draw play," Williams said. "It was like an option pass draw. Never seen it before."

His objection is practical. How long is a quarterback supposed to sell the throw before he runs, and what happens to protection while he decides?

A Snap Tendency Found In The Chair

One of the sharper finds of the week did not come from a host. It came from the show's producer, David, the guy in the chair and a former defensive lineman.

His note: watch Kitler's rhythm.

Williams rolled clip after clip. Head down, head up, one beat, snap. Not on every play, because Kitler sometimes keeps his head up and goes. But every time the head went down and came back up, Williams said, the timing looked like clockwork.

That matters on the road on a silent count, with an A&M edge rusher who had an elite get-off all night.

"I think this is what happens when you self scout," Williams said. "They should see this on tape and say, hey Caden, we got to switch that up a little bit."

Williams also flagged several low snaps that forced Jackson to bend and track the ball, costing him the half second he needed to read the secondary.

Fourth Down, And Arkansas' Best Player On The Sideline

The moment Williams said made him close his tab was the fourth down inside the red zone.

Marshall had won a one-on-one on third and four. He had won a one-on-one for the touchdown. He had won a one-on-one again on the drive. On the biggest snap of the game, the personnel package Arkansas sent out did not include him. Antonio Jordan was on the field instead.

"I don't care who you are. I don't care the scheme," Williams said. "You can't in the biggest moment of the game not have your best playmaker on the field."

Then came the blitzer walking down to the edge of the line. Williams said Silverfield indicated in his press conference that a protection call between the tackle, tight end and guard never got made because of a miscommunication. The rusher came unblocked and the play was dead before it started.

Williams would have burned one of Arkansas' three timeouts right there. He also saw Kavion Broussard take a long stride at the goal line instead of the short, choppy steps linemen are taught from middle school on, and a fullback who passed up a free defender standing in the hole to go block Broussard's man from behind.

"When things fall apart, you still got to be a football player," Williams said.

So Which Is It?

Williams' answer is that both can be true, and that the fix starts in the same place either way.

He pointed to something Silverfield said about his defense, that players are supposed to be in the A gap and keep peeking into the B gap, and when asked why, they say they do not know.

"I think at this point by now, I don't know is no longer acceptable," Williams said. "It makes me feel like the consequence for saying I don't know is not harsh enough."

This is where Williams, who said twice he likes Silverfield personally, draws his line. Coaching is not only teaching the standard. It is enforcing it, and that means a real cost when a player keeps showing up on tape with his pads high or his helmet on the wrong side.

The scheme piece has a version of the same answer. Williams noted Silverfield's press-conference point about how many different formations Arkansas is using, and his contrast with Peyton Manning's Colts running a small menu of plays to perfection.

Williams would take the smaller menu. Find the things this group executes consistently in a live game, not once in practice, and live there.

And he believes the opportunity was real. Watching Marcel Reed's tape, Williams saw missed throws and open receivers all over the field.

"If we were going to beat A&M, this would have been the year," Williams said.

Tennessee gets this same film. What they will see is not a defense that was impossible to solve, it is an offense beating itself on fundamentals, and the first thing worth watching Saturday is whether the pads come down and the best player stays on the field.