FAYETTEVILLE -- Thursday was Arkansas' first day in full pads and the offensive line appears to be one of the most improved units on the team.

Eric Mateos is back for his second season coaching the offensive line. He was asked about the first day in pads for Arkansas' sixth preseason practice?

"The biggest difference for us from thud practices to full contact practices is we've got to get to the football, because now they're trying to tackle our guy," Mateos said. "We know in thud practices that hey, we want to finish our blocks, however, the pursuit to get to the ball becomes more critical because hey, you can push the pile. A running back gets stood up, you've got to push the pile. There's a tackle attempt and a fumble, we've got to recover it. Just the strain to finish the play is the biggest difference in a thud practice to a live tackle situation. Just a get-to-the-football mindset."

Mateos was asked if he could tell the difference and feel it being in pads?

"You know, I didn’t feel it," Mateos said. "I don’t feel it. As you said, I think we play pretty physical every day. The knee pad is about as big as this cap, OK? Whether we have thing thing over our knee or not doesn’t make a big difference. What makes the difference is they’re trying to tackle our buddy. That’s a personal pride thing."

It appears that most of the offensive line is set. Corey Robinson II, a transfer from Georgia Tech is the left tackle next to Fernando Carmona at the left guard. Caden Kitler is the center after transferring in from UCF. On the right side Kobe Branham and right tackle Shaq McRoy have been working together. Right guard Keyshawn Blackstock and right tackle E'Marion Harris have worked together as a group. Mateos talked about specific tandems on the right side.

"Well we started that way just for continuity just for install," Mateos said. "You just don't want to have too many moving parts right away. We kind of just said the first two days 'Let's just keep the two guys working together so they can do the reps in individual, do the reps in team. Since then, after about three days we've stopped doing that. We're rotating guys, moving them around and working them in different lineups, different groups. They're used to that, we've been doing it all summer. All of our walk-throughs all summer, so it's not like a new thing for them. They've been working with each other."

Mateos addressed what the rotation number could be this season as it appears he has at least seven players he's comfortable playing.

"Yeah, I mean, if you look .. in 2020 when I was at Brigham Young, I had seven starters," Mateos said. "I considered, I basically said I’ve got seven starters and played at least seven, sometimes eight guys in every game that year we went 11-1 or whatever we went. Yeah, to me, if you’ve earned the right to play you should get to play. If there’s a clear drop-off that’s when you start questioning.

"You know 2015, the last time I was here before I left, those guys didn’t come off the field the whole year. We didn’t have any injuries and God blessed us, we were lucky as heck. Denver (Kirkland) had to come out of the Tennessee game because his helmet popped off for one play. Johnny Gibson ran in and then ran off. And that was it the whole season. Then I’ve had seasons where you had 10 different combinations of starting lineups, whether it be injuries or you know maybe somebody’s girlfriend breaks up with him on Wednesday and they’re practicing like crap and that other guy is right on his heels. Well maybe that other guy is the guy that goes that week. I think we have the numbers and the depth to make that a competitive situation. How that’s going to play out, we’ll see."

With Carmona moving from left tackle to guard on that side, Mateos talked about the talented senior's learning curve.

"Fast, I mean, it's a lot," Mateos said. "The biggest change from tackle to guard is everything happens faster, right? When you're a tackle, your brain doesn't have to operate quite as fast as that. If you look at the analytics, and I don't know you guys care, but like, when you do like cognition testing on athletes when they're getting ready for the NFL, you want your center and guards to have higher scores on that than your tackles, because everything happens so fast. And so I think that was really the only learning curve that, and then understand, 'Hey, you're an inside player. You're no longer setting the width of the pocket. You have to set the depth of the pocket now.' So from a mindset and technique standpoint, that is different. But I feel like we got that figured out almost all the way through spring ball and throughout the summer in this training camp. He had one rep two days ago where he kind of turned into a left tackle on the three technique. I say 'Hey, you're not a left tackle. We ain't just running them up, okay.' So it shows up every now and then, but I think he's done a great job."

Arkansas will return to the practice fields on Friday at 9:15 a.m.