Most old schoolers know I hated Tom Herman, and from the moment we made the hire I proclaimed he would fail here. Now, while the verdict is still out on Sark let me tell you what happened on both sides of the ball. I have heard things like Sark rolled over. The playcalling was lazy. PK came in with the wrong scheme. Let's address it.
2nd play from scrimmage Arkansas has 7 in the box.
From the snap of the ball Angilua is soundly whipped blowing the play up immediately.
Not that it matters, but there are 4 hats on one defender. Meanwhile all of their second level defenders are completely clean.
4 linemen blocking one DE. One lineman got pushed into the ball carrier. 4 free defenders flowing unabated to the football.
Here is another winner! Angilau(circled) is going to run right past the defender(also circled) to block I am not sure who.
Not sure if Jones(#70 at LT) is being asked to reach that far against a slanting D-line, but that appears to be a tall task to ask.
Bijan being Bijan makes the impossible jump cut 3 yards behind the LOS vs 2 free defenders and still somehow makes it a 2 yard gain.
Bottom line, you can find this kind of ineptitude on just about every single play. It matters not what play you call or scheme you run when your O-line is constantly whiffing on blocks and not recognizing where defenders will be, or who they are responsible for. Sark's offensive scheme requires O-line competency, as just about any scheme does. None of the RPO's will work if you can disrupt the running game with a 3 man front. The RPO's only work if you can get them to start worrying about the running game.
Secondly, Arkansas was constantly dropping eight into coverage in long yardage situations. Card may not be the guy, but one thing is for sure, no guy is the guy that is throwing into the teeth of 8 pass defenders while still having to worry about the rush. Especially whenthat QB is a freshman.
Defensively, PK came in with a gameplan that was married to the offensive gameplan. Arkansas KNOWS they cannot throw into coverage, so they try to force you into coming out of coverage to get easy one on one throws for their QB. PK knows this and is deliberately being stubborn about dedicating numbers to the run game. Instead, he is playing bend but don't break while waiting for the offense to get it's head out of it's ass. If they can hold on, then Arkansas has to abandon their run game and turnovers will ensue. Where we can debate is how long he stuck with the plan. There are two schools of thought. Some coaches would load up against the running game and take their chances. Some coaches believe that it just makes things worse with explosive plays.
So where do we go from here? We HAVE TO get the O-line fixed. It's one thing to be physically outmatched, but another to not know what you are doing completely. We are the latter. If we can get some continuity our running game can be good enough that teams cannot do what Arkansas did to us this weekend, or better yet, we did to ourselves. That opens up what Sark wants to do. Comment away.