Sam Pittman calls KJ Jefferson 'fine' after being injured

KJ Jefferson isn’t your typical quarterback. Standing at 6-foot-3, 247 pounds, the senior QB doesn’t fear contact. Yet, you wouldn’t know that if you watched him in Arkansas‘ narrow 38-31 loss to BYU on Saturday.

In the loss, Jefferson dipped toward the sideline to avoid clashes with defenders several times. The uncharacteristic behavior raised questions after the game.

“He’s fine. He was a little banged up going into the game. We wondered the same but we knew the answer of why,” Pittman said. “A lot of times you’re telling guys to run out of bounds, but we have not told him that because I didn’t think he’d do it if we did. But I’m sure that had a little bit to do with how he was feeling.”

Despite his setbacks, Jefferson still put up a solid performance on Saturday, completing 24-of-35 (68.6%) pass attempts for 247 yards and a touchdown. Jefferson also rushed for 21 yards in the contest.

Unfortunately for Jefferson, the list doesn’t stop there. Due to constant pressure and four sacks, Jefferson committed two fumbles and an interception in the contest. After the loss, Pittman addressed the front five’s poor protection.

Sam Pittman evaluates offensive line

“They whipped us,” Pittman said. “That’s what happened out on the edge and we started chipping them and all those types of things, and going into the game we really didn’t feel like we would need to chip out there. Thinking we could get the back out on the route, but they proved that they were longer, stronger than what we anticipated on watching film-wise, and they got after us.”

Arkansas is currently 79th in the country in terms of sacks allowed. Through three games, the Razorbacks are giving up 2.33 sacks per game. Now, the question is whether or not this problem can get fixed midseason.

“The kids from BYU are pretty good,” Pittman said. “We’ve got some hands issues and things of that — I’m not talking about placement of hands. I’m talking about three of our five linemen are casting up pretty good.

“We’ve got some hand issues that we’ve got to fix because it’s hard to grab. I know everybody will say you grab because you have holdings, but you understand what I’m saying. It’s hard to get a feel in there.”

Sam Pittman is an offensive line coach by trade. So, this is a unit he should have a good feel of throughout the season. For now, he’s not too worried about the group.

“I’m not overly panicked. We’re gonna have to chip. We’re gonna have to some help. We’ll have some tight ends out, especially when we continue to go into teams like BYU and continue to go into the SEC.”

On3’s Dan Morrison also contributed to this article.