FAYETTEVILLE -- Bobby Petrino knows the season is nearing and how his offense performs will be a key to the Arkansas season.

Petrino was hired following a 4-8 season in 2023 that saw Arkansas' offense struggle much of the time. The first game is eight days away. Petrino was asked how practice has gone in recent days?

"I think this was a really good week for us and the week actually started on Saturday just because of the way we’ve been doing the schedule with a Thursday night game," Petrino said. "We got into some game situation prep I guess you would say, some of the stuff you do in a game and it was fun to see our players react to it and learn it. Obviously we’ve still got another week to get ready for our game but this was really good for that and how you practice and how you prepare for it. So I was excited to see how we did there."

Petrino feels good about the installs for the offense to this point.

"So I feel good about the way we’ve installed our offense, the guys that learned it in the spring and how well they did with it and then what they did over the summer," Petrino said. "I feel like we have some knowledge of it, or a lot of knowledge of it coming into this fall. Then in the last week we’re in the phase of cutting it back and starting to refine and starting to refine and understand who we are and what we do well and kind of putting some parts aside for later and working on other things that, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get this down.’ We’ve got to just keep working on it and get it down. So we’re certainly not where we want to be right now, but we continue to improve and the players have great attitudes and are extremely hard working."

Petrino will be on the sideline during the games and not in the booth.

"I’m going to be on the sideline," Petrino said. "You’ve got the clicker now where you can talk to the quarterback in the ear piece and can’t do that from upstairs. I thought about it. I kind of liked it last year upstairs and calling the game and being away from all the elements down there, but I didn’t like not being able to see the quarterback’s eyes and how they were reacting and what was going on on the sideline. So I think it’s the right decision to be down."

Petrino does feel the offense is starting to get its identity something they didn't seem to have last year.

"We're still working on it," Petrino said. "We've got time to work on it, but I feel better about understanding what we do best in the run game. And, you know, I've always been a 'flip the line' guy. I know everyone knew that before when I was here. And I quit doing that a couple years ago. Mainly for my assistant coaches. So, when they went and interviewed, people didn't think they were crazy. Just no one in the country did it. I did it to try to help young men do what they do best, be at a position.

"But run right, run left. What do we do with the tight end? How do we get to certain things? We're still working on now those parts of the identity, but I think we understand what we're doing in the run game. Our protections have been pretty solid. Our communication has been pretty solid on that. And then it's just the aspects of the passing game that we like the best, and we're getting closer on it."

The Arkansas-UAPB game in War Memorial will kickoff at 6:30 p.m. and be televised on ESPNU.