Sam Pittman defends Jalen Brown after late fumble vs. Ole Miss

Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman defended Jalen Brown after the latter’s late fumble in the loss to Ole Miss Saturday. Brown fumbled on the final drive in Ole Miss territory and the Razorbacks lost 41-35.

Pittman knew Arkansas had a shot to win, with how explosive their offense was during the game. Plus, it would’ve been a landmark win on the road against an SEC foe.

Brown finished the game with four catches for 40 yards. However, his costly fumbled ended all Razorback hopes. Still, Pittman noted other things throughout the course of the game could’ve been done that could’ve led to a win.

“At the end of the game, we just had a turnover, and I’ve taken Jalen already aside. It ain’t his, that’s certainly not his fault that we lost the game,” Pittman said postgame. “He’s not. He certainly feels terrible about it, but I want to talk to him about it, because he’s made a lot of good plays for us in our first three games, and we’ve got to hold on to that ball. He understands that, but there’s a ton of stuff in that game we could have done better that we’d have won the game, and I’m sure they feel the same way over there as well.”

Arkansas had the ball at the Ole Miss 27-yard line and Brown tried to weave his way through defenders on a screen. However, as he went down, he was stripped by TJ Dottery.

One of the biggest bugaboos for Pittman and Arkansas was not getting to the quarterback. Trinidad Chambliss was the QB for Ole Miss this week and he had a clean pocket all night, throwing for 353 yards, a touchdown and ran for 62 yards and two scores.

“We tried. I mean we were bringing pressure inside, we were bringing pressure outside,” Pittman said. “We just didn’t get there. Most of the time when we did it we were getting penalties from holding, double moves, whatever it may be. And so we went pretty vanilla in the second half, just trying to make them earn everything and it worked better than … it worked better.”

More so, Pittman referred to the team’s lack of tackling on Saturday. Brown certainly couldn’t be at fault for that.

“I don’t think it was very good,” Pittman said of the tackling attempts. “I thought it was horrible. So, we’ve got a lot of work to do. That’s how it is, but we’ve got good kids and they’ll get better, but we’ve got to do a better job of getting them ready.”