Sam Pittman opens up on if he saw offensive line struggles coming

Arkansas‘ run game has come to a grinding halt over the last two weeks behind a depleted offensive line, with the Razorbacks unable to get anything going there in the middle of a four-game losing streak.

Coach Sam Pittman admitted he had some inclination struggles might be coming given the depth at the position and the loss of a few key contributors.

“What happens is you go into situational football and were there some things that might flare up in third down, protection?” Pittman said. “Absolutely.”

What has happened across the board with the Arkansas offensive line has been costly, but what has emerged in the run game is downright problematic.

Arkansas went from averaging 3.8 yards per carry and 147.8 yards per game rushing in the first four games to just 1.1 yards per carry and 39.0 yards per game in the last two. In other words, the ground game has completely disappeared.

Pittman pointed to key injuries as part of the reason.

“We had Devon Manuel, I think there was times during fall camp that I thought he was one of two, three best linemen we had,” Pittman said. “Then he basically has not played this year. Which not only takes away from there, but it takes away from other things you might possibly could do from movement when you don’t have him.

“Ty’Kieast Crawford is another guy who has been hurt and this, that and the other. That’s not an excuse, but has it flared up? Yes, it did, but not quite as much (early) because we were a little healthier at that point, had a few more things we could do.”

But the real question is where the Hogs go from here. Pittman had a detailed answer there, one that dove into the intricacies of different blocking schemes up front on the offensive line.

“How to fix that, you might get out of man schemes,” Pittman said. “In other words, it’s like if you’re having slide protection and you know you have backup. So I don’t have this guy particularly just one on one. Now tackles are different, because if they stay outside you can chip out and things of that nature. But if they blitz you can’t, because you’re taking your chip out of it. But if I’m in a slide, I know I got backup. I got backup.

“It’s the same way when you run a true gap scheme. Everybody’s going this way, someone’s pulling. Guy moves, I’ve got backup. I’ve got backup. I’ve got backup. When you play, when you’re in a man scheme, which it could be on the backside you’re reading the linebacker or something like that, and I’m one-on-one over here, but over here if anybody crosses face I have no backup. So I think some of the plays that we’re running, we’ve got to back each other up.”

In other words, the scheme needs to be built to help the current players that Arkansas has on the offensive line. The Hogs have lost some of their bulldozers up front, so the scheme must adjust to help out who’s left.

“We’re not there right now where we can go OK, you can whip him, you can whip him, you can whip him,” Pittman said. “It’s got to be if he moves someone’s going to help me with this. I think that’s a little bit more where we’re headed so we can have some type of success running the football. It’s the same way in pass protection, there’s some things called true gap schemes where you’re just everybody sliding. Now they can beat you too off the edge if you don’t watch it. But some of those things, we have to do to cover up for movement we’re not handling.

“It’s not so much that we’re getting just drilled one-on-one, it’s we’ve got to have ability; excuse me, if they’re not moving, we’ve got to have ability to back each other up in our run game because we’re getting so much movement. Movement’s been the glaring thing for us.”