I was a lot higher than most on the hire of Sam Pittman at Arkansas, and I promise that I’m not just saying that because he’s done well through his first three weeks. He built a reputation for himself as a strong recruiter at Georgia, and his field of expertise in both recruiting and coaching is on the offensive line, which, for my money, is pretty easily the most important room on a college football team, especially in the SEC.
Then, during his first three weeks on the job, he went out and landed a smart defensive coordinator that knows the conference in Barry Odom, and an offensive coordinator that gives good defensive coordinators a whole lot of trouble in Kendal Briles. On top of that, he’s said repeatedly that the guys that he hired are the experts, not him, and that he won’t meddle in what his assistants are doing.
That approach is working. Arkansas is far from a complete program at this point, lacking both the talent and the scheme comfortability to be a real contender in 2020, but this is absolutely a team worth watching, right now and moving forward. It’s a team that’s very obviously headed in the right direction, led by a staff with a coherent ideology and a strong understanding of how to get where it wants to be. I love watching these guys play because they’re competent. It feels like getting in on the ground floor of something that’s going to be really cool in a couple of years, once Pittman and his staff have time to flesh out the talent pool and mold it around the schemes they want to run.
That’s true of both sides of the ball, as Odom is doing a lot of blitzing and disguised coverages that I like a whole lot, but it’s especially true with Pittman and Briles on the offensive side of the ball. Again, it’s not there yet, but the foundation of this offense is just so strong that I have to talk about it.
This is a zone blocking team. Everything is built out from there, which makes a whole lot of sense given the man in charge. I know that Arkansas tried the “Wisconsin of the South” thing with Bret Bielema and there are plenty of parallels between that and this, but I think that the primary difference here is that Pittman isn’t forcing this team to play dumb guy football. The line is the foundation, but it’s not the identity, it’s just the thing that the identity can be built upon. Bielema never grasped that you actually have to add things on top of the line, rather than just building the line. With Briles, there’s a whole lot that can happen all around that line and that can be facilitated by it.
Right now, most of the success is happening in the air, which is more a product of what Arkansas has, than a distinct ideological choice. I think that with better and bigger lineman, you’re probably going to see a much stronger zone rushing attack in the coming years. For right now, however, Arkansas lacks the elite line play to do that, so Briles is making due with what he has: a pretty good group of receivers and a capable, game managing quarterback in Feleipe Franks.
He’s doing that by keeping things as simple as possible, while manipulating defenses with motion and misdirection. It’s all straight from the “winning without a lot of talent” handbook that Briles and quite a few other offensive coordinators seem to have uncovered in recent years. There’s nothing exceeding groundbreaking here - but there’s still plenty of cool stuff that you’re going to see popping up all over college football as it takes hold at places like Arkansas, Ole Miss and elsewhere.
While the passing attack has been the more statistically significant piece of this offense so far, I actually only want to talk about the rushing game at Arkansas, because I think that’s where Briles is doing a lot of his best design work right now.
This is, as mentioned, primarily a zone running scheme, but Briles is working with Pittman to add gap concepts and some pulls, primarily because it works really well if you can teach it and Pittman is one of like five people in America that can teach it. The base look is still traditional inside and outside zone, but Arkansas did less and less of that against Auburn because of the size disadvantage up front. Zone is great when you have equal or greater talent, but gap blocking and lots of movement in pulls and motion can level the playing field against better opponents with a big or talented defensive line.
That’s where plays like this come in. This is a variation of the concept that served as Arkansas’ primary run look against the Tigers. With pre-play motion to the back side of the play, Arkansas is first looking to rework the make-up of this box. That motion moves the play side slot corner back closer to a safety spot, shifts the deep safety closer into the box, and moves the back side slot corner out of the box to respect the motion man in the case of a sweep or a screen.
It doesn’t change the numbers in the box, but it changes where those guys are. The play side slot corner is traveling further to set a hard edge on the outside, making him more likely to overplay this, which is exactly what he does. The back side slot corner is out of the box entirely and not a factor for about 10 yards, and that high safety is only window dressing for the defense, which the offense knows, because Aubusn is showing either cover 2 or man pre=play, both of which require that safety to back the hell up once the play starts.
That means that even though the box looks like it’s actually gained defenders, Arkansas has eliminated three defenders that the offensive line would have had to deal with were it not for the motion, leaving six in the box to actually worry about, which is a whole lot more manageable.
Once the play starts, there’s not a whole lot of complexity to talk about. The tight end takes a hard step outside to freeze the linebackers before popping inside for a wham block on the play side linebacker, who was hoping to get outside of the pulling guard and did so all the way into an easy block for the tight end (smart offensive design).
Meanwhile, the backside pulling guard is creating a seal on the outside by sliding over and taking on the unblocked play side end, who’s left unaccounted for at the start of the play so that the play side tackle can move to the second level immediately and take on the back side linebacker, creating security on the inside of the gap to go with the tight end and guard setting the outside seal. Everyone else is just gap blocking (and doing a great job of it) to clean up the three remaining linemen.
By the time the halfback actually has the ball, all of this is already well underway, and he just has to hit the B gap with enough speed to clear the blocks before they break, which he does. Great play. Doesn’t work very well against the blitz, but that’s not the point of it, so it doesn’t matter.
Same basic idea here, again with some variations. The tight end does the job of the motion man here because the defense is only showing a six-man box at the start of the play, so there are fewer defenders for the offense to worry about picking off before the play actually starts. A route into the flat does the job perfectly fine, dragging away a deep safety and forcing a wide edge from the back side linebacker, taking both players out of the play.
That leaves five defenders, and one of them (the back side end) is being isolated with a quarterback keeper fake, so the line has five on four with three linemen and a linebacker who’s way the hell out there away from where this run is actually going, which is into the weak side C gap.
The play side trio are blocking down on those two defensive tackles and leaving the play side end unblocked, while the left tackle slips again into the second-level for that linebacker. The back side guard and tackle are pulling to help out the play side of the line and to block that isolated play side end, which falls to the guard, while the tackle cleans up a mess with one of the defensive linemen.
Honestly, with better blocking (and maybe a faster running back?), this is six points. Auburn fucked this one up pretty badly and Arkansas should’ve been able to do more with it. If the blocks on the linebacker and the tackle that gets through are better, Arkansas has a clean seal on the inside and a completely free pulling tackle running into open space and picking up that deep safety. Nonetheless, the design is again well-done and the results are positive. This kind of play will get better with time, I promise.
The last run that I want to mention is this one, which is probably my favorite play from this entire game, and one of my favorites of the season. I would diagram it for you all, but I no longer have an iPad, so we’re going to just have to make due. Apologies.
I’ll start from the beginning, because there’s SO MUCH happening here and it’s only going to make sense if we do this as slowly as possible. Firstly, there’s that jet motion ploy again, which pulls that back side slot corner’s attention, drops the play side slot corner into more of a safety role and moves the true safety back a step or two. Again, this is just an easy way to clean out that defensive box a little bit, though you do have to actually throw to that motion man eventually if you’re going to do this (Arkansas does).
Up front, it’s regular, gap blocking across the board save for from the back side guard. The left tackle is blocking down to wash away the 3-tech, the left guard helps out the center with the nose tackle and the right tackle handles the back side defensive end. Basic stuff. That leaves the pulling right guard, tight end and eventually the left guard, once he’s done with the nose tackle, to handle an isolated defensive end and two linebackers.
How do you do that? Well, the guard is already moving pretty quickly off of that pull, and he’s the biggest of the bunch, so he kicks out that isolated end to minimize footwork requirements or reads and allow him to just run right into the guy at full speed.
The left guard is picking up the back side linebacker, who Arkansas has completely tricked with the final action, a wham fake from the tight end, who cuts back into the hole in front of the halfback to lock up that last linebacker. That’s the key to everything. Without that tight end fake, the linebackers would have been able to get a free read on the pulling guard and attack the gap, which wouldn’t have provided enough time for that left guard to get into the second-level and take on the back side linebacker. That linebacker has to have something to fall for, and the tight end fake does the job beautifully.
It also holds that play side linebacker in place and flat-foots him, making that block a whole lot easier on the tight end. Again, the execution isn’t flawless (the pulling guard stumbles and the left tackle is too eager to block down the field instead of down the line to create a true inside seal), but it’s really damn good, and it’s a fantastic design.
That’s how I feel about this whole offense right now. The running game stands out more because of its design, but everything here is very smart, well-designed and built to mesh well with the other parts of the offense. The talent isn’t there yet, but Arkansas is going to be able to win some games in spite of that this season because it has a really damn good coordinator and a great offensive line coach. If you want to win in the SEC without five-star talent, you either do it as Ole Miss is doing it, with hilarious passing designs, or like this, with a power running game that would make Urban Meyer blush. The latter fits this program perfectly.
Up next: A new way of doing game previews, because the old way stresses me out