Player Or Coach? DJ Williams Breaks Down Arkansas' Missed Chances At Auburn

Arkansas moved the ball in stretches on the road at Auburn and still walked out of the building with a stack of plays it left on the grass. DJ Williams spent his solo film room trying to figure out which ones were coaching and which ones were execution.

He did not land on an answer. That was the point.

Midway through the breakdown, Williams put the question straight to the chat: player execution or coaching. Then he kept stacking evidence on both sides of the ledger.

"It's going to be the theme of this whole show," Williams said.

The Read Option That Keeps Asking The Same Question

Williams started where Arkansas started, with the run game, and said the Hogs set an early tone by getting downhill. What he could not reconcile was the read option attached to it.

The entire purpose of leaving a defender unblocked, he explained, is to gain a man in the blocking scheme. On multiple snaps, Arkansas left an edge defender unblocked for the read and then sent a blocker at that same defender anyway.

"Once again, overly redundant," Williams said of the scheme, adding that he would rather see the blocker climb to the second level.

He also flagged the reads themselves. On a first drive snap, Williams said the unblocked defender crashed hard at the back and KJ Jackson still handed it off.

"That should be a pull all day," he said.

His broader worry: when the defender gets to play both the back and the quarterback, the concept stops creating an advantage at all.

"If you can't run this well enough to make him wrong, then there's no point of running the RPO at all," Williams said.

Watch: the full 4th & Five breakdown.

Information Gathered Early, Not Used Late

The sharpest coaching argument Williams made had nothing to do with a missed block. It was about note taking.

On an early motion snap, he showed Auburn rotating its safeties to account for the man going in motion, which left the edge defender free to attack with no hesitation. Williams said that is the kind of indicator somebody in the box has to log and feed back down.

Then he jumped to a third quarter third and five, same motion, same free edge defender, and a sack.

"It's actually a good play design. I give it that. Just awful execution," Williams said.

He pointed to how quickly a staff turns a first drive into adjustments as the real tell.

The Tight End Tape, And Where The Coaching Has To Meet It

Williams has asked for weeks to see the Arkansas tight ends take over the middle of the field. He said this game plan tried to do exactly that, which is why the misses stung.

On the third and five sack, tight end Jaden Platt was the designed answer, leaking to the back side as the only read on the play. Williams said Platt ran straight into traffic instead of hugging the line of scrimmage or slipping behind the linebackers.

"Jaden, what are we doing, man?" Williams said.

He stacked three more. On a third and 10 with man coverage and a built in rub, Williams said Platt allowed the defender to get hands on him in the slot with the middle of the field wide open and Jackson looking right at him. On a dig route, he said Platt rounded the break and gained roughly four yards upfield after the cut, which let the safety ride his hip and get into the pass breakup. On the goal line, detached from the formation on a corner route, Williams said Platt invited contact off the line and erased a back pylon throw.

Crucially, Williams kept turning each one back toward the meeting room. He repeatedly asked whether Platt had been coached to be physical and work through contact, and he said that is where the fix lives.

"I don't know, once again, if it's just coached up to be physical, use your body, then get that guy off of you, then try to go get the route," he said. "I'm not the biggest fan in this specific situation."

The ask from the former NFL tight end was simple.

Six On The Line When You Need Seven

The clearest coaching item on the tape, in Williams' read, was a positive swing pass wiped out by an illegal formation.

He said the motion man never got on the line of scrimmage and actually signaled to the official that he wanted to be off the ball. Then he showed the slot receiver and Chris Marshall having a live conversation before the snap about who was supposed to be covered up.

"Math ain't mathing," Williams said.

By his count, three players on one snap were unsure of the assignment, and he put that squarely on the staff.

"You can't put guys out there that have no idea what's happening," he said.

The Play He Says Arkansas Ran Twice And Never Fixed

This was the segment Williams built the whole breakdown toward.

On a second and 12, Arkansas dialed a gadget look with Ty Lockwood selling a block before leaking out, the goal being to bait his defender into the run. The defender did not bite. Williams said the reason was obvious on the screen: the offensive line was already four to five yards off the line of scrimmage, giving away pass.

Then he pulled up the same concept, by his account, from an earlier road trip to Utah. Same formation, same defensive look, same defender, same result.

Williams put the two clips side by side.

His frustration was not with the call. He said he likes the play. It was that the correction, sell it harder play side, keep the line closer to the line of scrimmage, is a practice field fix that never showed up.

Pocket Drift, Bad Looks And Blocks In Space

Williams returned to something Grant Cook raised in his own breakdown a week earlier: Jackson's launch point drifting too far back out of shotgun.

On the interception, Williams said Jackson took his three step drop and then kept retreating, which widened the angle for the rush and forced a throw off the back foot. Step up, he said, and the lane was there.

"Tackles hate this. You got to step up into the pocket, KJ," Williams said.

He also kept circling back to pre snap. On one toss concept that worked early, Kavion Broussard had a linebacker tucked near the line of scrimmage, a block Williams said he can live with. Later, the same call asked Broussard to climb eight yards and cut off a faster body in space.

"I don't like running into bad plays and I feel like we do it all the time," Williams said.

Same theme on a fourth and one, where he said Kash Courtney was asked to reach a defensive tackle with no double team help while the guard pulled away from him. Arkansas converted, but Williams said the block never got made and credited a blocker accidentally caroming off Courtney into the tackle.

What Actually Worked

The positive stretch, in Williams' view, was the simplest stuff on the call sheet.

• Straight handoffs with no hesitation
• Linemen coming off the ball and getting push
• Jackson taking it up the middle without the delay

"It's called don't fix what ain't broke," he said, pointing to Arkansas drifting back to delayed draws and slow developing read options after the downhill run game had been working.

He had praise, too. He called Marshall's return a gift and said the receiver bailed out multiple contested throws. He was more measured about the big gain down the sideline, where strong blocking and a poor angle by the Auburn defender opened the field.

"I want us to execute it so well and we just don't have to wait for the defense to mess up," Williams said.

What To Watch

Williams closed where he started, without a verdict and without much patience for repeats.

The standard he set for the next few days was not a new wrinkle. It was evidence that an old one got cleaned up, that a concept Arkansas has already run and already watched fail comes back looking different.

"I would like to see much more progress moving forward," Williams said. Matt Harris handles the defensive side of this one Thursday.