By Otis Kirk
FAYETTEVILLE -- No. 7 LSU didn't have an easy time with Arkansas on Saturday, but did manage to escape Razorback Stadium with a 13-10 win before 73,750 fans.
Arkansas played without quarterback KJ Jefferson and right tackle Dalton Wagner. The offense struggled much of the day finishing with 249 yards including 116 in the air. Starting quarterback Malik Hornsby was eventually replaced by Cade Fortin, a reversal of what happened against Mississippi State when Jefferson didn't play in that game.
Fortin did provide a spark. He finished 8 of 13 passing for 92 yards and a touchdown. He also rushed for 17 yards on five attempts. Fortin did lead Arkansas on a 10-play, 94-yard drive that ended with him finding wide receiver Matt Landers for a 40-yard touchdown with 13:17 remaining in the game. Unfortunately, that ended the scoring for the day with Fortin and the Razorbacks unable to generate another score. Sam Pittman talked about deciding to go with Fortin over Hornsby in the third quarter.
"Obviously, with a quarterback, there's a lot of things that go into that," Pittman said. "Rushing the football and trying to take a little pressure off him, getting the ball out of his hand faster and things of that nature. There wasn't a whole lot of help out there. I don't think I decided to make the change to Fortin until I did. Obviously, I kept thinking we might just spit a big play or something of that nature, but it wasn't happening. So, we decided to go there. Again, we still didn't protect him well either. It's hard to do. We have to play better."
Hornsby was 4 of 9 passing for 24 yards. He also rushed 18 times for 37 yards against a fast and athletic LSU defense. Pittman talked about the decision leading up to holding Jefferson out of today's game after he struggled with a shoulder injury against Liberty.
"He felt better early in the week," Pittman said. "Threw a few balls on Monday. Tuesday none. Wednesday felt better. I just asked him to have a plan because he was in no-man's land. He's like out in a desert and nowhere to go. It hurt, it was sore and the bottom line is on Thursday morning ... Excuse me, yeah, Thursday morning I talked to him... Or Thursday afternoon, excuse me.
"That was it. He hadn't practiced in two weeks much, and we decided the best thing for him would be to rest. Hopefully, he'll be ready by Monday and he'll be ready for Ole Miss. It was either that and do the same thing and each week have the same result with a guy who can't practice, and we're trying to get him healed up. We told the team yesterday morning this was Hornsby's game. So, that's what happened."
While the offense struggled, Arkansas' defense was outstanding. They forced two turnovers and held LSU to 284 yards of total offense including only 86 passing. Safety Latavious Brini was involved with both turnovers. On LSU's first possession he picked off a Jayden Daniels pass at his own 43. But Arkansas was unable to generate any offense and had to punt.
The second turnover could have been huge. Defensive end Jordan Domineck hit Daniels forcing a fumble that Brini fell on at the LSU 10. On first down running back AJ Green ran for seven yards to the LSU 3. However, the offense stalled with Hornsby at that point and Pittman opted to go for it on fourth down instead of taking the field goal with Arkansas already up 3-0.
"I thought points were going to be hard to come by," Pittman said. "We didn't have KJ and things of that nature down there. Got the turnover on the 10. Got about eight yards. I thought we were going to score actually on the first run. Ran a little zone to the left. Two more plays of minus yardage.
"We got them down here. Let's score a touchdown because I thought we were going to have a struggle on offense. We already had them down there. We could go up 10-0, and we didn't make it. I thought the worst thing, you know, we've got them pinned back here. I know you're giving up three points at that point but I just thought the risk to reward was better going for the touchdown there."
The Arkansas defense had seven sacks in the game. Linebacker Pooh Paul had two of them. Drew Sanders, Eric Gregory, Jashaud Stewart and Terry Hampton each had one sack. Zach Williams and Landon Jackson combined for another sack.
"Well I think we had a really good game plan, No. 1," Pittman said. "And the kids played extremely hard and tackled really well. All week our whole thing was ‘We’re blitzing to get him on the ground.’ It wasn’t ‘Let’s get to this gap, this gap. Let’s be gap sound. Let make sure he doesn’t run.’ All that kind of stuff. It was just let’s get him on the ground. Let’s go get him. And we had really some nice designed blitzes and played extremely hard.
"And obviously, I told our kids I thought it was the best our defense played all year and not really even close. I didn’t elaborate on the frustration of not winning because they played well. We’ve played really well on offense since I’ve been here and not won too, so … But yeah, it’s frustrating not to win regardless of who plays well and who doesn’t."
Sanders led the Hogs with 12 tackles on the day. He had one tackle for loss as well. He talked about the seven sacks for Arkansas.
"We knew their quarterback was a great player," Sanders said. "Just watching him on film, he just kind of seemed like the key to their success. We knew getting after the quarterback would help everybody else on defense. We just did a great job attacking."
The Razorbacks had taken the lead on a 28-yard field goal from Cam Little with 4:48 remaining in the opening quarter.
LSU took a 6-3 lead into halftime on 38- and 29-yard field goals from Damian Ramos. In the third quarter, the Tigers stretched the lead to 13-3 when Arkansas failed to convert a fourth down giving LSU the ball at the Arkansas 40. The big play of the drive was a 25-yard pass from Daniels to wide receiver Kayshon Boutte to the Arkansas 1-yard line. on the next play Josh Williams scored from the one with 5:25 remaining in the third quarter.
Arkansas (5-5, 2-4) now will face Ole Miss Saturday night in Razorback Stadium. Following that the Hogs travel to Missouri on Nov. 25 to close out the regular season. Arkansas needs a win to qualify for a bowl game. The Liberty Bowl was present on Saturday to scout the Hogs. Pittman talked about how he feels heading into the final two games.
"Well, we’re going to bounce back," Pittman said. "We’re going to go get after Ole Miss next week. Hopefully KJ will be healthy. We’ve got to find some good. Our defense played extremely well. We’ll get a healthy KJ back — you talk about motivation, that’d motivate me. Your best player on your team can come back and play? That would motivate all of us.
"We got beat. We got beat by the [No. 7] team in the country, we want to win. I feel terrible, but I felt worse last week because we have some things we can… We can go win with a defense that plays like that. So there’s some things. Last week, there was no good anywhere. Had about one or two guys that played well on the whole team. At least we’re rallying around and played better. The result was the same, which is terrible, but I do think we’ll rally around, I think we’ll have a really good game plan and play well against Ole Miss and I think we’ll play well the week after that, too."
The kickoff time for Ole Miss will be either 6 p.m. or 6:30 p.m.