FAYETTEVILLE -- Sam Pittman has seen his team make it through preseason camp as game week draws nearer.

Pittman talked to the media following Thursday's practice and was generally impressed with the camp.

"I like camp," Pittman said. "You know, we are beat up. You know, you guys come to practice, there are guys in green. There are guys not in there. I do not think today though, to be perfectly honest with you, that we’ll have anybody, I don’t think that we’ll have anybody miss a game except for obviously (wide receiver Sam) Mbake. We’re trying to be smart with them. Some of the guys today, we did scout team work with them but did not do good-on-good work with them. We had three different segments of good-on-good. We didn’t put them in live action.

"We do have some guys with some ankle injuries. Some things of that nature that we’ve got to get healed up between now and when we play next Saturday. It’s been a physical camp. It was a physical practice today. It was just a Tuesday practice for us, but you know, there’s three segments of good-on-good. A lot of physicality. We went goal-line. We went short-yardage. All those things that obviously we all know we needed to work on last year, and we’re trying to correct all those things. Really proud of where we’ve been. I wish we weren’t as banged up as we are right now, but I believe that by Monday, at least half, maybe more of the guys that we’re holding from the good-on-good section will be back."

The Friday practice will be a mock game which is nothing more than a walk through to help for game day.

"To be honest with you, our mock game has gone a little bit into taking the stress out of the kids is the main concern about game day," Pittman said. "So, we will do everything from pre-game meal... Now we're not going to do it four hours before the game, but we will do everything from pre-game meal and how we do that to the Hog Walk to running through the 'A' to where do we sit to a bunch of substitutions. We'll go through goal line and make sure we have the goal line out there.

"We used to put on shells and run kind of a game. Then we went to spiders. Now we use that for announcing our captains, and we use it for team photo and then we use it for just substitution. It's almost like a subscript. A little more physical than a subscript would be on a Friday afternoon. In other words, nobody will get taped and things like that tomorrow. It'll be more mental than it will physical and showing them from the beginning to the end to everything of what a game day is all about."

Cornerback Quincey McAdoo was injured in a car wreck earlier this year and will miss the season, but is around the team. McAdoo is from Clarendon.

"You never want to take a guy that’s you know, three months ahead of him," Pittman said. "But if I was sitting here, he needs some physical development. You know, I had a long talk with him yesterday. He’s 193. Did you know he came in at 170-something? He looked frail to me a little bit yesterday because he was 204 before he had his accident. But he is doing really well. We want him to… He’s coming every day now. We want him to coach, help us coach as a student-coach, until he gets his physicality back. And then we’ll figure out what happens after that."

Pittman was asked if he feels McAdoo has good spirit's mentally?

"I love him," Pittman said. "I think he’s doing really good. I do. I think… We had a long talk, he’ll have to tell you and I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to talk to you, but I think the start of camp crushed him. Because he wasn’t able to be out there with the team and all those things. I think he’s doing… Well, the conversations… I talked to him for 45 minutes yesterday and (based on) that conversation, I think he’s in good spirits. He’s a Christian young kid. He believes there’s a reason for everything and he’s going to make the best of his situation and we’ll get his strength back totally and see what happens."

One player who is being counted on to play is USF linebacker Antonio Grier Jr., but he has missed a lot of practice recently with an injury.

"Well, he had a quad pull," Grier said. "We expect him to start practicing on Monday. But he’s had a lengthy injury there. Even when he was practicing he wasn’t full speed, so we expect that our plan is to either get him in some indy on Saturday and then obviously Sunday we’re off. Monday will be a Tuesday practice for us, but at the latest we’d like to try to get him back on the field Monday, and we think we can."

Left tackle Devon Manuel was expected to be the starter, but he too has missed some action with injury. That has opened the way for former Maumelle standout Andrew Chamblee, a redshirt freshman, to make a move there. Pittman was asked if Chamblee will be the starter?

"I think that’s still yet to be seen," Pittman said. "Andrew Chamblee certainly deserved reps on Saturday. I think there will be an ongoing battle there, and then I think at some point you’ll go, ‘OK, are both of these guys in our top five?’ If they are then you’ve got to have another conversation on what’s our best five. Where can we put our best five? Lately, in the last few days, Ty’Kieast Crawford is entered into that conversation as well. But I couldn’t be any more proud than I am with Andrew Chamblee. He took an opportunity and proved he’s ready to play. We’re going to play him."

Arkansas opens the season on Saturday, Sept. 2, in Little Rock's War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.

Photos Courtesy of Craven Whitlow CW3 Action Sports