When you’re a coach on the hot seat, high-leverage games lurk around every corner. Sam Pittman, who for six seasons has won the bare minimum number of games necessary to keep his job (and little more), saw his Hogs give away yet another golden opportunity in Oxford last week. That makes this a must-win.
It’s hard to see how the Hogs can rebound from a 2-2 start. They’d have to beat Notre Dame, at a minimum. Heading into the year, I would have grouped Arkansas’ schedule like this:
Will win (must go 2-0)
- Alabama A&M (W)
- Arkansas State (W)
Should win (ideally 2-0, might could survive 1-1)
- at Memphis
- Mississippi State
Relative toss-ups (need 2-3, or 3-2 if you lose an above game)
- at Ole Miss (L)
- Notre Dame
- Texas A&M
- Auburn
- Missouri
Can afford to lose (don’t need any of these if you meet expectations above)
- at Tennessee
- at Texas
- at LSU
That seems reasonable, right? That would lead to a bare minimum of 6-6. If you can steal a game from a toss-up group you’re looking at 7-5.
So looking at this, the Hogs have already lost one of the toss-ups. If they lose to Memphis, they’d have to go at least 4-1 in their remaining home games. That’s not a brutal home slate in the least, but a team that loses to Memphis (even on the road) probably isn’t winning four of those five.
Meet the Tigers
As a university named for a large US city that has no major college athletics competitors in its home metro, Memphis imagines itself as a potential powerhouse in all sports. Basketball has long been the dominant sport for the Tigers, with the peak coming under John Calipari (2000-2009), who went 48-0 in conference play over his final three seasons in Memphis and reached the 2008 national title game.
Football has been the more recent emphasis. Years of bad football started to fade when Tommy West won bowl games in 2003 and 2005, but the real breakthrough came with the hiring of Justin Fuente in 2012. Fuente struggled his first couple years but reached a bowl game in his third season, 2014. Memphis hasn’t missed a bowl since. After Fuente’s four years, Mike Norvell went 19-5 in conference play over three seasons before he was hired at Florida State.
The Tigers opted to promote offensive line coach Ryan Silverfield to replace Norvell after the 2019 season, and the good times have continued. Silverfield initially struggled: after an 8-3 debut in the 2020 COVID season, he went 6-6 (3-5 American) in both 2021 and 2022, prompting some concerns about his job security. But the breakthrough came with a 10-3 year in 2023. Silverfield has yet to deliver a conference title, but he’s 4-0 in bowl games and 24-5 over his last two-plus seasons.
Memphis finished last season ranked 24th in the final AP poll, their first ranked finish since Norvell’s final team in 2019. However, they turned over a significant portion of their roster and their depth chart looks very different from last year. Despite an influx of cash from hometown FedEx, Memphis’ football spending still lags basketball, so the Tigers’ ability to retool using NIL is limited.
Still, the Tigers have been doing more with less since the Fuente era. They beat 2-10 Florida State last year, but a win over Arkansas would go a long way towards gathering program interest. Expect Memphis’ fans and coaches to be very fired up for this game.
The Tigers are 3-0 but are completely untested. Georgia State is one of the worst teams in the FBS, and Troy isn’t significantly better. Both of those teams are projected to finish below Arkansas State in the Sun Belt.
We have full advanced stats now, but with just two games of FBS data in the books for most teams, the model outputs remain pretty unstable. Expect significant week-to-week changes for at least the next couple of previews. Side note, but small sample size is why the larger college football models (like ESPN’s FPI and Bill Connelly’s SP+) make heavy use of preseason ratings (which blend last year’s final stats, returning production, and recruiting and portal rankings) for the first several weeks before fading them out starting around Week Six. The good news is that leads to more stable results early in the year; the bad news is that the model is slow to respond to new information, which is why this week’s FPI still ranks Alabama 3rd, way ahead of Florida State who beat them.
Anyway, if we go by this, we’re looking at Arkansas 31, Memphis 29 on a neutral field. This isn’t a neutral field, but I’m curious to see how many Hog fans show up to the Liberty Bowl to try and negate the home team’s advantage.
When Arkansas has the ball
There are some things that we know: Arkansas’ offense is very good. Memphis also has a strong offense, though we don’t quite know exactly how good. Arkansas’ defense is bad, possibly very bad. The biggest unknown is how good Memphis’ defense is. Is it closer to Arkansas State or Ole Miss? Is Ole Miss’s defense even that good?
The Memphis scheme: a familiar look
The Memphis defensive scheme will look familiar to Hog fans, since it traces it origins to a coach that Arkansas and Memphis share in recent years: Barry Odom. Odom was Fuente’s first defensive coordinator, and he laid the foundation for what Memphis has done defensively ever since.
During his time as Arkansas’ defensive coordinator in 2020 to 2022, Odom was best-known for his use of “tite” fronts and three-high safety looks, and that’s what Memphis is still doing.
If you remember the Odom era, this is a very linebacker-friendly scheme. It starts up front, where Memphis likes to play “tite” fronts against teams that want to run the ball. Tite just means that three down linemen all align inside the tackles to take away the run up the middle, as we can see below.
The result of this look is that the defensive linemen are creating a logjam up the middle, which gives those three linebackers (the third is aligned on the edge) a ton of freedom to move laterally and make plays. The scheme demands smart linebackers who can make decisions quickly, since the defense wants to commit to any run looks early. If the linebackers are not quick to react, the defense will struggle to get any penetration, which was an issue for Arkansas at times.
Memphis will still use four-down linemen sometimes, but since the tite is a common anti-spread look, the Hogs should expect to see it Saturday.
While tite fronts are fairly common in college football, the combination of the tite front with three deep safeties is what Odom is best-known for. Memphis will do plenty of that, keeping a deep middle safety on a large chunk of their plays. This makes a lot of deep passing routes much harder to throw, as the middle of the field deep will rarely be wide open.
The main key to attacking this scheme is patience, since this defense will probably struggle to create negative plays while being very good at preventing explosives. So far, the numbers have borne that out.
All rankings are out of 135 FBS teams. The Hogs obviously have an elite offense. They are both efficient (2nd) and explosive (3rd). So far – and in a stunning turn from the last several years and multiple offensive coordinators – they are not allowing negative plays at all (2nd).
The Hogs start drives with horrible field position (106th), which essentially just allows them to get more yards. They go on long drives (12th in plays per drive). They are very good on early downs (second in EPA per play on standard downs and fourth in early conversion rate) and absolutely elite on third down (first in marginal third down conversion rate). If they can just limit turnovers (119th), they’ll be perfect.
Through two FBS games, we have an idea of what Memphis is all about, and it’s about what we expect given the scheme. Their D has benefitted from the nation’s best starting field position (mostly because their own offense doesn’t turn it over). The Tigers are elite on early downs, ranking fifth in EPA per play allowed on standard downs, 18th in early conversion rate allowed, and third in leverage rate allowed. Related to that, they defend the run well (23rd).
However, they can’t seem to get off the field. The two quickest ways to end a drive are third down stops and turnovers, but Memphis ranks 118th and 111th in those two stats. As a result, the average drive against them lasts 6.4 plays, 126th in the nation (or 10th-longest, if we count backwards). If the Hogs protect the football and take what the Tigers give them, they should be able to steadily march up and down the field.
The Arkansas run game against the Memphis run defense is very intriguing. On paper, Memphis has a solid run defense. But on paper, Arkansas’ run game is almost overwhelming. The Hogs led the nation in rushing explosiveness last season, but they also allowed a lot of negative runs. So far this year, they are maintaining that explosiveness while also reducing negative runs and increasing success rate. More than half of rushing attempts gain four-plus yards, and the Hogs have more runs of 10-plus (19%) than zero or a loss (16%).
Mike Washington has been excellent, posting a 52% success rate, 19% explosive rate, and +0.37 EPA per carry. But Taylen Green has been overwhelming as a runner. Just look at these numbers on his non-sack rushes: 76% success rate, 48% explosive rate, +0.95 EPA per rush. Only 6% of his runs fail to gain any yards at all, and 79% gain at least four yards.
What we don’t know is what kind of run defenses the Hogs have abused so far this year. Arkansas State’s is probably terrible, but as we discussed in last week’s preview, Ole Miss’s run defense had some issues with Kentucky, which is why that game was close.
The tite front may help against between-the-tackles runs, but the Memphis defense has already shown some vulnerabilities against mobile quarterbacks. Three-man rushes don’t usually get a ton of pressure, but bringing linebackers as rushers off the edge can hurt contain:
By the way, that’s TJ Finley, who started for LSU when they beat Arkansas in 2020. He’s still playing football.
If Memphis cannot get pressure, they will probably be in trouble. They’re only 115th in sack rate so far, and while they are pretty good at keeping short passes in front of them, they’ve faced two pretty awful passing attacks in FBS play.
When Memphis has the ball
Memphis lost just about all of its key offensive players from last year’s 11-2 team, namely star quarterback Seth Henigan, a four-year starter who threw for 3,000 yards in each of his seasons at Memphis. To replace him, they’ve gone in a very different direction, raiding the 3-10 Nevada Wolfpack for their starting quarterback and top receiver.
So far, so good. Memphis avoids turnovers (seventh) and negative plays (ninth) in order to move the football, especially on early downs (third). This is far from an elite offense – probably not as good as the Henigan-led offense from last year – but it’s not going to shoot itself in the foot.
Schematically, this is a fairly simple spread offense with a dual-threat quarterback, so get ready for a heavy dose of zone read and a scramble threat on passing plays. Quarterback Brenden Lewis was a tad inconsistent as a passer at Nevada last year, but he rushed for 775 yards and eight touchdowns. If the Hogs can’t contain him – just like they couldn’t contain Trinidad Chambliss last week – he could present some major issues.
New starting tailback Sutton Smith is off to a nice start. He’s small (5’9) but very slippery:
On the flip side, ProFootballFocus charts him with just three missed tackles and a meagre 2.12 yards after contact per rush this year, so that might be a concern against an Arkansas defense that, despite major issues on the back end, isn’t allowing much running room so far this year. The Hogs contained Kewan Lacy of Ole Miss, and he’s a much better runner than Smith.
Lewis is probably the bigger run threat, even though Smith has more yards. Lewis has forced nine missed tackles, averages 3.52 yards after contact per rush, and has nine scrambles for 82 yards this year. The Hogs must keep him uncomfortable.
Arkansas’ pass defense numbers aren’t just horrifically bad because the Ole Miss game isn’t the only one the Hogs played. Arkansas completely overwhelmed Arkansas State’s passing attack, so that’s helping here. Is Memphis closer to A-State or Ole Miss in terms of passing quality? I have no idea. I do know that they don’t have Lane Kiffin calling plays.
Lewis is hard to sack: only 15% of pressures against him result in a sack. He’s also very good under pressure: PFF has him at 11 of 17 for 235 yards on pressured dropbacks this year, including his excellent find following a nifty escape:
The Hogs have actually had a decent pass rush so far, mostly thanks to Quincey Rhodes, who is tied for the SEC lead with three sacks. However, they had several “almost-sacks” against Ole Miss where Chambliss ended up escaping. Lewis is another quarterback who creates a lot of “almost-sacks”.
Keys to the game
Do not lose the turnover battle. The Hogs lost the turnover battle 1-0 against Ole Miss and that was all it took. Memphis protects the ball well, but their defense hasn’t forced many turnovers. If the turnover battle in this game ends up 0-0, that’s advantage Arkansas.
Avoid negative plays. Negative plays have been a major drive-killer for the Hogs for several seasons under several different offensive coordinators. But so far this year, the Hogs are doing a great job of avoiding them. Memphis doesn’t force many, and if they can’t get pressure on Taylen Green, they’re going to have a hard time getting stops.
Keep the quarterback contained. The quality of Memphis’s passing attack and running backs remain largely unknown, but the run threat presented by QB Brenden Lewis is well-known. The Hogs would rather face his arm than his legs. Keeping him in the pocket on dropbacks, corralling the zone read game, and limiting the production of the running back are all good goals.
Arkansas and Memphis kick off from the Liberty Bowl at 11 am on Saturday.