Sam Pittman delivers parting thoughts on Arkansas' fall camp

Arkansas‘ fall camp is over, with the team now into normal game week preparations ahead of a season opener against Western Carolina.

Unfortunately for the Razorbacks, they’re dealing with a handful of injuries at the moment. None are expected to be major, but Arkansas still needs to get healthy in a hurry.

“I liked camp. We are beat up,” coach Sam Pittman said. “If you guys come to practice there’s several guys in green. There’s some guys not in there. I do not think today, though, to be perfectly honest with you, that we’ll have anybody, I don’t think, that we’ll have anybody miss a game except for obviously (Samuel) Mbake.”

Mbake was ruled out for the 2023 season after suffering a season-ending injury during Arkansas’ fall camp.

The rest of the injured players, though, are dealing with more minor knocks. And Pittman has been careful to try to protect players after going through a 2022 season that was absolutely destroyed by injuries, particularly in the secondary.

“We’re trying to be smart with them,” Pittman said. “Some of the guys today we did scout team work with them but did not do good on good work with them. We had three different segments of good on good, we didn’t put them in live action. We did have some guys with some ankle injuries, some things of that nature that we’ve got to get healed up between now and when we play next Saturday. So it’s been a physical camp.”

In one of the final practices before fall camp, Pittman did his best to balance getting the injured players some work with getting them healthy.

He described how the team approached the close to Arkansas’ fall camp, which was a physical one.

“It was a physical practice today. It was just a Tuesday practice for us, but there’s three segments of good on good and a lot of physicality,” Pittman said. “We went goal line, we went short yardage, all those things that we all know we needed to work on last year, and we’re trying to correct all those things. Really proud of where we’ve been.

“I wish we weren’t as banged up as we are right now, but I believe by Monday at least half, maybe more of the guys that we’re holding from good on good section will be back.”