As we discussed this week, it’s put-up or shut-up time for the Razorbacks and Tigers. The Hogs are talented enough to make some noise in November, but at 2-5, the Hogs have to win these next two to keep the hope alive.
Auburn also needs to keep the hope alive for coach Hugh Freeze, who could be the next SEC coach fired. The Tigers are just 3-4 and still have to face Vanderbilt (in Nashville) and Alabama, so a bowl season probably depends on a win in Fayetteville.
- Box Score Breakdown: Arkansas 109, Southern 77
- The Day After: This is life as a doormat
- The Week Ahead: A desperate race for a good coach begins
Meet the Tigers
The situation down in the loveliest village on the plains is… not lovely. Auburn’s not doing much better than they were last year, when the Razorbacks won a 24-14 slugfest on the road. The Tigers and their hapless offense finished that season 5-7. With coach Hugh Freeze on the hot seat entering his third year, he went big, signing former 5-star quarterback Jackson Arnold, who transferred from Oklahoma.
Initially, the gambit paid off, as the dual-threat Arnold led a resurgent rushing attack in a big opening win over Baylor. But everyone got film on the Tigers… and everyone remembered that Arnold was benched at Oklahoma for good reasons. Those reasons have followed him to his new school, and now the wheels are falling off for the Tiger offense.
Auburn has yet to top 17 points in an SEC game, although it’s worth noting that they’ve played four very good teams. But Auburn expects to be one of those good teams, not going 0-4 against them, so a loss in Fayetteville on Saturday might be all it takes for Freeze to get the axe. As we discussed at the beginning of the week, this would not be the first time that a Razorback team put a nail in the coffin of a struggling Auburn coach; in fact, it wouldn’t even be the first time that an interim Arkansas coach helped get a sitting Auburn coach fired.
The Hogs were our model’s 54th-best team when Sam Pittman was fired, but two games of Petrino and they are up to 26th. Losses are losses, but when you play well, eventually you start winning.
Model pick: Arkansas 32, Auburn 26. The two offense-defense matchups in this game are really fascinating.
When Auburn has the ball
Should Freeze get the axe, it will be because his offense failed to launch, especially at the quarterback position. That’s quite the fall for a guy who built his reputation on a wide-open, hurry-up offense with quarterbacks like Bo Wallace and Chad Kelly at Ole Miss. But like many coaches who rose during the Tempo Revolution of the early 2010s, failure to continue innovating means you eventually fall behind.
As always, Auburn has a tough, hard-to-tackle running back in Jeremiah Cobb, whose 564 yards pace the team. He averages a solid 3.36 yards after contact per rush and has forced 20 missed tackles on 89 carries.
As you can see, the offensive line has been a mess, as Auburn has struggled to protect Arnold. The big red square in the center is Kail Ellis, a 17-year-old freshman who will make his first career start after starting center Connor Lew was lost for the season in last week’s game.
At a very high level, Auburn’s offense is a much worse version of Texas A&M’s. Compare the Aggie preview to this situational offense chart:
Like Texas A&M, the Tigers will do just about all their damage on standard downs. As a refresher, “standard downs” include all first downs, second down and 10 or less, third/fourth down and four or less, and all plays in a four-minute offense (one-score lead, less than four minutes to play). Basically, situations where the offense can run the whole playbook. All other plays are “passing downs”, where the defense can expect a pass most of the time.
Like all efficiency-based offenses (or offenses that don’t trust their passing game), Auburn wants to live on standard downs. Leverage rate (the top stat) is the percentage of plays that come on standard downs, and Auburn is a respectable 31st in that stat. They have a high success rate on standard downs (9th), which keeps them on schedule.
The Aggies shredded the Hogs on standard downs (Arkansas’ only two forced punts came when they forced a negative play on first or second down, thus creating a passing downs situation), and Auburn wants to do the same. However, there are big differences, as Auburn doesn’t generate a ton of explosives on those early downs (64th), so they have to grind down the field with service-academy-like discipline in order to score.
Arkansas has been bad but not historically atrocious on standard downs this year. But on passing downs, everyone may want to avert their eyes, as both of these teams are pretty bad.
Auburn’s only shot is to control the clock and field position using their very efficient rushing attack. Very few runs go backwards, and while they don’t generate a ton of huge runs (just 6.0 additional yards per run of 4+ yards), the run game does the job of keeping the offense on schedule.
Since the opener, the Tigers have been leaning more heavily on Cobb, who had 19 carries for 111 yards against Missouri. Backup Damari Alston left the program a couple weeks ago, and Auburn has not attempted to replace him: no back other than Cobb got more than two carries against Mizzou.
Arnold is a run threat, both on designed runs and scrambles. He torched Baylor in the opener (16 carries, 150 yards, 11 missed tackles forced), but since that game he’s totaled 64 carries for 261 yards (4.1 per rush) with just eight missed tackles forced. That includes scrambles and designed runs, but not sacks. Missouri allowed 33 scramble yards, but held him to nine yards on five carries on read runs.
If Arnold is ever to play to his potential as a five-star quarterback, this is the week, against this Razorback defense. Auburn’s passing game is a mess, and while much of it is Arnold’s fault, a lot of the blame has to lie with Freeze and the offensive scheme.
Let’s start with Arnold’s strengths. He’s dual-threat, ranking third in the SEC (behind Taylen Green and Diego Pavia) with 411 non-sack rushing yards, and he’s also third in scramble yards with 225. While he lacks the long strides of Green that create explosive runs, he can keep the offense on track with his legs. As a pure passer, he’s not bad. When he transferred to Auburn, he drew comparisons to former Tiger Bo Nix due to his ability to deliver big-time, NFL-type throws. His arm is very strong and his high-end throws are as good as it gets.
But against SEC defenses, his biggest weakness is that the game just moves too fast for him. He’s late to every decision that he makes, even on many of his good throws. Slow decision-making creates a sitting duck against SEC pass rushes. After seeing 19 pressures and six sacks against three non-conference opponents, Arnold has been pressured 66 times and sacked 21 times in four conference games. The protection has been subpar, but Arnold holds onto the football way too long. His sack-to-pressure ratio of 31% is “KJ Jefferson in the Dan Enos offense” bad.
Last week’s loss to Missouri ended with Arnold eating the ball on 4th-and-8 in overtime and Freeze appearing to mouth something along the lines of “Throw the football!”:
A positive effect of Arnold’s indecisiveness is that at least he doesn’t wait to make a bad decision with his arm. His first interception of the season came on Saturday against Mizzou, and he threw just three picks in 10 starts last year in Norman. As a team, Auburn rarely turns the football over, which gives them a chance.
However, the Tigers may need to move on.
Backup plan?
Freeze confirmed this week that while Arnold is still on track to start, Ashton Daniels, the Stanford transfer who has yet to record a stat this year, is now splitting reps with Arnold in practice. Going to Daniels would mirror last year, when Hank Brown made his second career start against the Razorbacks, threw three interceptions, and was pulled at halftime, never to start again.
Daniels is a scary prospect for the Razorback defense because he is very different from Arnold, and he’s the kind of guy who has eaten Razorback defenses alive for years. He’s a run-first guy who put up more than 800 non-sack rushing yards with the Cardinal last year, the vast majority coming on read-option keepers. He averaged 3.39 yards after contact per rush and posted an explosive run (10+ yards) in 11 of 12 games. If you’ve been watching the Hogs play defense for several years, you know there’s at least a small chance that Freeze inserts Daniels and goes full read-option, and the Tigers roll up 350 rushing yards as the home crowd watches in dismay.
Here’s an idea of what you’re dealing with:
If you do manage to contain him on the ground, there’s not much else there. Like Arnold, he’s a slow decision-maker who holds the ball way too long. But unlike Arnold, he doesn’t have a high-level arm – on passes that traveled 20+ yards last season, he was 9 of 40 for 266 yards, one touchdown, and four interceptions – and unlike Arnold, he’s not going to protect the football, having thrown 20 picks across two seasons in Palo Alto.
I’m not sure which one I’d prefer to see, but I sort of lean toward facing Arnold, since we know what we’re getting from the Auburn offense with him. However, if Arkansas cannot get consistent pressure on him, the Hog secondary may find out why he’s a former 5-star recruit. Daniels offers more run game dynamism, but he would benefit far less from clean pockets and is much more likely to sprinkle in some turnovers.
We haven’t discussed the receivers much, but this is the first time in a couple weeks that the Hogs won’t face an elite receiver. Tennessee’s Chris Brazzell and Texas A&M’s Mario Craver and KC Concepcion were challenges for the Razorback secondary. Auburn’s Cam Coleman is solid, but the rest of the Tiger pass-catchers have struggled. Arnold threw some pretty balls that were dropped last week (PFF charged Auburn receivers with five drops). That might help the Razorback secondary.
When Arkansas has the ball
Auburn and good defensive lines have gone hand-in-hand for years and years. That’s what the Tigers do best year after year. And this year is no exception. The Auburn front six is the best Arkansas has faced this season.
The two ends – Keldric Faulk and Keyron Crawford – have combined for 46 pressures and seven sacks this season. Arkansas paid big money for Corey Robinson II at left tackle, and this is a prove-it game for him. On the other side, E’Marion Harris is much-improved this year, but he’s got a tall task as well. Both linebackers are also regulars on the blitz.
But even more scary than the pass rush is the run defense. Both interior linemen, both linebackers, and both ends are all elite run defenders. Auburn isn’t going to miss many fits, and all holes will close very quickly.
But the secondary? That’s where Auburn’s got problems.
This game pits one of the nation’s best standard downs offenses against one of the nation’s best standard downs defenses, and as we’ll see in a second, this is a heavyweight fight on the ground. If Arkansas can establish the run and at least decently protect Green, Auburn is going to be in deep trouble. But on the other hand, there’s a scenario where Auburn mostly takes away the Hog early-downs run game and leaves the Razorback dependent on the occasional explosive play, which is exactly what happened in last year’s game until the final drive.
On passing downs, however, the Razorback offense remains elite while the Auburn defense sinks to “pretty good”. The Tigers have been hit with explosives on passing downs, with both safeties and the nickel position having occasional breakdowns.
Meanwhile, he’s the run game matchup of the year in college football:
Although Auburn defensive coordinator DJ Durkin mostly won the first 50 minutes of last year’s matchup (outside of the wild touchdown to Isaiah Sategna), Petrino got the last laugh, running the ball right down Auburn’s throat on the game-sealing touchdown drive. The Hogs ran the ball 10 consecutive times for 60 yards, ending with a 1-yard touchdown run by Ja’Quinden Jackson. That put the Hogs over 200 non-sack rushing yards against a very good Auburn run defense.
But this year’s Auburn run D is even better. The Tigers will surrender an occasional big run (the linebackers are sure tacklers, but the other position units aren’t), but for the most part, they clog things up. As many runs go for zero yards or a loss as gain even just four yards (31%).
Texas A&M is the only offense that has cracked the Tiger run defense. The Aggies posted 233 non-sack rushing yards in a 16-10 win. Last week, SEC leading rusher Ahmad Hardy of Mizzou got stonewalled (24 carries for 58 yards), although his team did manage a victory.
Teams already tend to blitz the Petrino offense, but Durkin is going to blitz at a very high rate, which is what caused so many problems for Green last year. Auburn’s four-man pass rush is decent but far from elite at getting pressure, but the Tigers are recording a pressure on 52% of their blitz calls this season, which is top-10 nationally. Both linebackers have collected several pressures and a few sacks.
Bringing a ton of pressure often leaves the secondary in a tough spot, and Auburn does not have elite coverage players. That sack rate is holding things together, but there have been busts. Baylor’s Sawyer Robertson threw for 419 yards in the opener. Oklahoma’s John Mateer was 24 of 37 for 271 yards. And Missouri’s Beau Pribula was 23 of 40 for 252 yards last week. None of the four SEC quarterbacks Auburn has faced have had overwhelming performances, but all have managed to keep their offense moving, which hurts a Tiger defense with little margin for error given the offense.
Keys to the game
Win (or draw) up front. Arkansas absolutely does not have to dominate on both lines (you can breath a sigh of relief for that). But the Hogs do need to make sure they are not dominated themselves. Arkansas has a better offensive scheme, better quarterback, and better playmakers, so if Auburn cannot control this game with both lines, they are not going to win. Here are some markers for a Razorback victory:
- 2:1 ratio of opportunity runs (4+ gain) to stuffed runs (zero yards or loss) for the Razorback offense
- Sack margin of minus-1 or better (the Hogs allow one more sack or the same number)
- More non-sack rushing yards than Auburn
The Hogs could probably win with just one of those three (if the other two are close), but I would consider guaranteeing a victory if they reach two of those three.
Make the quarterback uncomfortable. Exactly how Arkansas accomplishes this depends on who is playing quarterback. If it’s Arnold, you make him uncomfortable by getting consistent pressure and forcing him to take his eyes away from his receivers. If it’s Daniels, you make him uncomfortable by being aggressive off the edge, messing up reads and goading him into dangerous throws. Winning third down is nice, but just forcing more third downs by creating negative plays is a good start.
Punish the blitz. Auburn is going to bring the heat and light Green up. That’s what Durkin does anyway and it’s what Petrino’s offense is often susceptible to. Green has been pretty good against the blitz generally this year (47 of 84, 745 yards, eight touchdowns, one interception, six sacks), but he has not been great when he’s pressured generally (15 of 48, 197 yards, five touchdowns, two interceptions, 19 scrambles, 16 sacks), although his 19 scrambles have produced more than 250 rushing yards. Green has to avoid turnovers and huge losses to give his team a chance. Getting the ball out quick to hot routes or finding opportunities to scramble are going to be important.