What Sam Pittman Said Following Upset Victory Over Tennessee

Arkansas earned its best win in Sam Pittman’s tenure of head coach on Saturday night as the Razorbacks upset No. 4 Tennessee 19-14 in Fayetteville.

Following the win, Pittman discussed the defensive game plan, responding to the poor start to the second half and more. Here’s what Pittman said.

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Opening statement

“Tennessee had a very physical team. And they came into the game, No. 1 in offense, No. 1 in defense. Very good football team. Our kids, our coaches did a wonderful job of preparing our guys and making them believe that we can go win tonight. These guys are happy, they’re not surprised. If we have the same amount of turnovers, we can play with anybody. And the two games that we’ve lost at this point, we had more turnovers than what we got. But our coaches did a great job of making them believe that we had a really good football team. We can compete if we take care of the football and we try to tackle well and play smart. We did.

“We didn’t score points there in the first half in the red zone. And then we scored touchdowns in the second half. So really good job by our coaches, once again, and our players. You get into coaching for moments like what just happened. And it’s to see the kids and the smiles on their face and the hard work that they do. Because there’s a lot of teams that can’t get to that feeling. And we did tonight. And, if y’all care, it was a one-score game, might want to write about that, too.

“But Go Hogs. The fans won the game for us. There was four offsides. They started, I think it was the sixth-largest crowd in the history of University of Arkansas. And our fans got us four false starts and it helped us tremendously. And our atmosphere, and our coming in today, was like any of the elite university football programs. Nobody had nothing on us today. And that was the fans in the facilities and everything like that. This was a big, big, big-time atmosphere for college football and the fans made it happen for us and we appreciate them.”

On the status of Taylen Green and the play of backup QB Malachi Singleton

“Yeah, I think Talen, we’ll see. Obviously it wasn’t as bad as for us not to ask him how he felt. Our diagnosis for him was to, if he wanted to get back in the game, he could. Then he got tackled again and then we just said, okay, that’s enough. Let’s put Malachi in. Malachi, when he came in we didn’t have great field position so Bobby was trying to take care of that along with the field position.

So if Bobby just calls what he wants to call an offense there, we’re usually pretty good. I think part of that was making sure Malachi, we got a little confidence there and I never bad to punt. And then the last two drives, he was phenomenal. He ran it very, very well. And scored the touchdown there to go ahead. And he’d been here a long time and hadn’t got to play. And to go in there and score the winning touchdown with the help of 10 other guys has to be really fulfilling for him. I’m really happy for him.”

On what the Arkansas defense did to get Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava off schedule

“The game plan, came in Sunday night, T-Will (defensive coordinator Travis Williams) talked about what he thought he wanted to do. And we started practicing it on Monday. There was some tweaks and all that. But I think we ran something that they had not seen us run, first of all. Second of all, we ran it real well. We weren’t going let them get behind us if we could help. And we were really worried about stopping the run, but we always had the edge covered because we were bringing corners off a read run. And we were bringing the field linebacker off a read run. And we mixed it up, so we had a little bit of the odd front and then a little bit of the four man and mixed it up. We brought total-zero blitz heat. I just thought Travis did a wonderful job of calling the defensive game. And more important, getting the kids to believe in what we were going to try to do to stop this very, very, very high-powered offense.”

On his emotions as Arkansas got the final stop and time expired

“Well obviously they (Tennessee) think their kids deserve to win. They put in the time and I’m just going, man, we got two more plays, don’t (let them) score. Because I know our kids. We need to win that one. And so I was just thinking let’s get them on the ground, get them on the ground. Honestly I was thinking, hey, no penalties in the end zone, to be honest with you. But then whenever (Nico Iamleava) got flushed and he couldn’t find anybody, Nico finally tucked the ball to run and I was looking to see if he got the first down and he did. But the clock ran out. So I was just thinking all that stuff and all those things. And when it was over, I was thinking about how proud that the state of Arkansas is for their football team and that’s the only damn reason, well it’s not the reason I took the job, but that’s one of the top reasons that I came here, I wanted to try to make state proud of the team.”

On the Arkansas offensive line slowing down Tennessee’s pass rush

“Man, I was so proud of our offensive line in that aspect. We go through the first half and we had a little empty protection once, (Tennessee) came. They brought two off the edge on us and Talen had to scramble out of there. But I just kept saying on the headsets, man, we’re really protecting him well. And then they had to bring some extra heat. They went zero a time or two too. But that is our best game, protecting the quarterback and we’ve got to get better. But that’s our best game against a really good defensive line. So they’ve done some things. Bobby and Eric got together and decided how we can protect, but some of them were the same protections, some of them. I really liked what Bobby did when moving. It had some screens out there, we had a little tunnel screen, we had two flare screens. And it slows outside guys down. And I thought those guys had a really conscious effort of helping those tackles.”

On the offensive game plan for Arkansas, Bobby Petrino mixing things up

“To be honest with you, we didn’t have Luke and didn’t have Tyrus for almost the whole week. They got a little bit of reps on Wednesday, a little bit on Thursday, so they had to be, game-planning wise, was a little tough now. So I thought it was really, really good. (Tennessee has) a good defense. We scored 19 on them and we (would have taken) 15. But we scored 19 and won the game and were tough and resilient. But I thought Bobby (Petrino) and and his side and his staff did a wonderful job of getting guys ready with limited tight ends available.”

On Tennessee getting the momentum in the third quarter, Arkansas responding and if that kind of win can be a turning point

“I don’t know. Sure feels good right now. But you know, it takes two teams out there and they’re probably over there talking about something that I’m thinking we did pretty good, you know what I mean? So it’s very, very fulfilling to be up here and win for the kids and for the coaching staff. Here’s what I do know, our team believes we can beat people and so that solidifies that we can.”

On what the conversation was on the Arkansas sideline after Tennessee went up 14-3

“Coaching the whole time. But specifically (do) I think it changed the outcome of the game? Probably not. We just didn’t want to panic. And we had to fix some things. So we did. And we had to get the ball rolling a little bit better on offense and we did. But you know, whenever you come off the field, you try to correct what went wrong and then you try to continue to find out what we can do. And we went back to a little bit of a flare screen and some things. But probably the thing I was probably, at any point in time, disappointed about tonight was we had two penalties. We kind of gave, we didn’t give it, (Tennessee) still earned it, but we had two penalties on the second touchdown (drive) and that was a little bit disappointing. But other than that — I talked to both those kids, they didn’t mean to do it — then they played a hell of a game anyway. So that was probably the only disappointing thing. We had a couple penalties to give them that drive a little bit.”

On Arkansas giving Tennessee a 3-2-6 look defensively, why the Razorbacks went that way

“(Tennessee) could throw it and their wide outs can run. So we watched Oklahoma and they had somewhat success, they held them to 25. And so with all that, did it fit our schematics? But that’s where it started with, was the tape on Oklahoma. Because they’re the only ones that really had done any good at all. The rest of them were in the fifties, sixties, seventies. So we implemented some of that because of that.”

On what the win over Tennessee can do for Arkansas the rest of the season

“I’m not for sure that this win will do a bunch. That locker room, they believe we’re pretty good. They work hard, they’re together. I think it’s going do more for the state, who was veering over here, ‘Hey, they going to fire the coach, you’re going to do this, you’re going to do that. When the hell are we’re getting this guy out of here?’ All that stuff. I think maybe it’ll unite the state a little bit. And saying, ‘Hey, these are our guys, let’s go back them.’ Like they did tonight. And I’ll be honest with you, most the state has been doing that anyhow. But I think it’s more for the state to do that than our team. Because our team believes that we can beat anybody in the country if we just have the same amount of times that we have the ball. And so I do think it’s a big deal, though, and the kids will really have a good time tonight and we’re off next week. It was a wonderful time to go beat the No. 4 team in the country.”