FAYETTEVILLE -- Bobby Petrino admits his daily duties have changed dramatically in the past two weeks.
Petrino has gone from offensive coordinator to interim head coach since Sam Pittman was fired following the 56-13 loss to Notre Dame.
"There’s a lot more to do, that’s for sure," Petrino said. "Like meeting with the trainer, meeting with the special teams. Understanding who’s going to get on the bus, who’s going to get on the plane. Sometimes it’s a lot easier just to call plays and coach the quarterbacks, but that’s part of it. I have the experience doing it, so that makes it fairly easy."
When three members of the defensive staff was fired Petrino promoted Chris Wilson to defensive coordinator and Che Hendrix to coach safeties. Kenny Perry remains to coach the cornerbacks. He went outside to hire Jay Hayes to coach the defensive line.
"Yeah, I mean it was pretty immediate," Petrino said. "We had to have a plan on what we were going to do. Chris was here. I like what we visited about, talked about. I feel really comfortable with him taking over. Che was here, so him coaching the secondary, he’s been working with those guys and he’s been doing a good job, so he did that, and then it was, okay, we need one more guy to help. The question was linebacker or d-line. All defensive coordinators seem to, I can’t really say all, but they seem to want to coordinate from the linebacker spot because that ties you with the coverage and with the front on meetings, half-line drills, stuff like that. You’re involved in both of them. So, it makes a lot of sense. Chris wanted to see if we could be a d-line guy. It’s funny, because him and Jay actually worked in the same building. I don’t know a whole lot about that league, but they all practice at the same spot. They work in the same building, and they get on a plane and travel together to play in the different cities, so that was pretty interesting, but they knew each other and they respected each other a lot. It made a lot of sense."
But Hayes has been out of the college game and in the NFL so Petrino was asked the pros and cons of that?
"Yeah, I think the advantage that he has is how many years he's coached professionally and the athletes that he's been with and helped develop and help give an edge to and that's kind of what we were looking for here is somebody to come in and give our players a little edge, a little something new that that they haven't had," Petrino said. "And he certainly got right to work. He drove up from St. Pete, got here on Saturday night, was in working hard yesterday, really started with getting to know who the players are, then watching the video of them, then making notes. I think he'll have a fun week this week on giving guys a little something that they can take an edge to."
The defense has struggled the last three games. Have the struggles been because of effort, fundamentals or scheme?
"A combination of all is how we looked at it," Petrino said. "And then we’ve just tried to put it behind us and say, ‘Hey, tear off the rearview mirror, let’s look forward and this is what we need to do.’ Not so much of what we haven’t been doing, but what we need to do. We need to do a better job of getting aligned quickly, getting our eyes where they belong and everybody getting in a good stance. I’m a big guy on stance. I think that football’s starting point is that I’m in a proper stance and my eyes are right, so we’ve been drilling that and working hard on it and they’ve improved on it. Then you’ve got to get off. If you’re a D-lineman, you’ve got to beat the offensive lineman to his technique. Usually up front, whoever gets to their technique first has a great advantage to win that play. It’s really about one play battles between the O-line and D-line.
"Our linebackers are working hard at their eyes and what we’re seeing and then fitting properly, whether I’m A-gap fit on this particular look or I’m a scrape fit on this look. We’ve got to be in the right spots and then our secondary, our safeties, have to work off of that. Sometimes if the linebackers are out of the right spot, then the secondary doesn’t know how to fit, where to fit, where to go, and that’s where you get the big plays and the explosive plays. That’s kind of the starting point.
"I think it’s important we all know how to shed blocks. We’re working hard at shedding blocks. And then when you mention the effort, it’s running full speed to the ball. Not running to the ball, running full speed to the ball. When we get all 11 guys doing that, then good things happen. You get more hits, you get more turnovers. It’s just good things happen when everyone sprints to the football."
Arkansas and Tennessee will kickoff at 3:15 on Saturday and televised on the SEC Network.
