FAYETTEVILLE -- Arkansas held its second scrimmage before the season opener in two weeks against Alabama A&M.
Following the scrimmage Sam Pittman talked about how it went.
"A few things about the scrimmage," Pittman said. "With the cut down roster with 105 – we still have more than 105 because of the grandfathered in designated players. But with everybody being down rosters a little bit, normally we have two full scrimmages good on good. This year we decided to go one vs. two, two vs. one. Our second scrimmage which was today, last week was more like 140 plays, today I know the one offense got 43, so the one defense obviously would have got the same amount. I'm guessing somewhere around 30-35, I'm guessing, two [offense] vs. one [defense]. So, you add that up there's 88-90 plays, and then we had 25 with the threes. So, somewhere around 115 plays today. Just a little bit shy of what we did (last week). We just played the game in the first half, punts came up, but we played it ones, twos, threes where we could a look at each punter. Every time we scored, we kicked three field goals in a row, and we kicked off just three times. I didn't kick off every single time there. I do like the format that we used.
The greatest thing is we came out very, very healthy. We saw some things that we've seen in the past, about the throw and the catch of Monte Harrison showing up on a Saturday scrimmage. He shows up every day, but he seems to make big plays in scrimmages which is really good to see. And Mike Washington seems to – in live ball – he seems to make long runs. Today it happened to be a 91 (yarder). I think his second run today was maybe 32 or something like that. So, obviously they're doing a good job up front, but he's also doing a good job of breaking tackles and has tremendous speed. Thought Braylen Russell ran better today. Trent Whalen, defensively, I thought looked better, made quite a few plays at the linebacker spot. I'm just talking off the top of my head who I felt like– Philip Lee, guys, has come on. I'm excited. We need him to. I'm excited to see him out there at that buck and defensive end position."
Following last week's first scrimmage Pittman wasn't pleased with the defense. He compared that side of the ball to last week.
"I thought we played better defensively than we did a week ago," Pittman said. "The two offense did score on the defense, and we did not have many penalties at all today. We didn't last week, but in that drive that the two offense scored on the one defense, there were four penalties. Two alignment penalties, which we've got to get fixed. Obviously, one pass interference and another one where we picked a guy up, which was good teaching for picking him up and threw him to the ground or whatever – like what happened to us last year at Oklahoma State. So, it was a really good learning situation there for the team, for the defense as well. But overall, we had no injuries that I'm aware of right now, and played fast and got a lot of reps in. Obviously, school starts on Monday. The guys are off tomorrow and I think it'll be their first full day off since reporting to camp."
With Washington's long run and seemingly proving himself each day in practice any thought to pulling him out?
"Well, you always talk about that kind of stuff, you know what I mean? But Trey, sometimes you don't want to talk about, you just want to– because it's just scary. He's a really good player and we know what he can do and all that. I will say this at the five-minute mark in the second half, I said, 'I've seen all I want of him.' And he was in there, down there around the 15-yard line and I yell for Braylen, I said, 'Get Braylen in there.' He could use those reps and (we're) getting Mike out of there. But yeah, I mean, might have done that same thing with, Xavian Sorey. However, he's still nursing that hamstring a little bit, so he wasn't out there. But there's a few guys, obviously you do it with the quarterbacks, if they could hit them. Poor offensive and defensive line, they just got to grind it out a lot of times. But yeah we certainly had that conversation about Mike."
Was Sorey's hamstring something serious or more precautionary?
"He's had a procedure that we need to sit him," Pittman said. "We have to for about five days so the medication can work on him, and so it'd be different if we didn't know him and all those things, but he'll have, I'd say, every bit of a week to eight or nine days of full go before we play A&M. So we just made that decision to help him a little bit, get him fixed. And when you make that decision, you got to shut them down for a minute."
With just two weeks until first game what does this next week look like?
"You know, we always have periods of what we call ‘teach,'" Pittman said. "And we’re going to have more of those. In other words, we’re teaching not only something that we haven’t seen defensively for the offense or offensively from the defense. We are also teaching some schematics of future opponents that do something different that we're not seeing, that we can continue to develop our rules, but yet see something different. We're teaching our scout team, our threes and fours, how to play, how to read cards, how to react. You know, they're not the look team. They're just guys running full speed, going. We want to make sure that we teach them that way. So I guess, in a way, what I'm telling you is that we won't do as much good on good. Now, every day we will do good on good, but not quite as much. It'll be a little bit more of learning and seeing some things that either side of the ball are not allowing us to see right now in those teach periods, which we haven't had but one in each practice. Now we'll have two to three and work some of our opponent's stuff. We won't talk to the kids about it, but some of the things that we're going to see in the future. And then starting next Saturday, we'll start on Alabama A&M."
Anyone on the two-deep chart that may not play against Alabama A&M?
"Offensively, no, I don't think so," Pittman said. "I think we'll be ready to roll. Defensively, the only one I can think of, and we're still waiting to see, is David Oke. He may miss a game or two with a knee. I don't know exactly. I haven't talked to the doctors yet, but it was kind of trending towards that way, maybe a little trim job, and might take two or three weeks for him to recover."
photos of practice by: Craven Whitlow
