O'Mega Blake feeling more comfortable in Petrino offense
Wide Receiver O’Mega Blake has been one of the early hot topics of fall camp and he has high expectations for himself in his return to the SEC.
The 6-foot-2, 187-pound Rock Hill (S.C.) native began his college career at South Carolina before transferring to Charlotte prior to the 2024 season, where he had a breakout fall for 49ers.
Blake played in all 12 games with nine starts and hauled in 32 passes for a team-high 795 yards and nine touchdowns, which ranked second in the American Athletic Conference.
Now back in the nation’s premier football conference, Blake is driven to prove that last fall was not a fluke.
“I belong here, honestly,” Blake said in a press conference following Monday’s fall camp practice. “This is where I always wanted to play at. I’m going to go out there this year and do the same thing I did last year and be even better.
“You know, there’s a lot of bad I did and there’s a lot of good, but just put that together and make it happen. So that’s really it.”
O’Mega Blake benefited from offseason drills
Blake arrived in Fayetteville at the beginning of the year and his day-by-day progression has been evident to wide receivers coach Ronnie Fouch.
“Luckily O’Mega got here in the winter time to get the offense down and then by the end of spring he started making some big-time plays and made people miss,” Fouch said. “He knew in the spring that he was trying to learn everything, now we’re trying to bring more leadership out and he has stepped up.”
As a fifth-year senior, Blake feels he can be a leader for the younger guys on the team by showing them that they can also have a voice.
“We try to put in their head that they are a leader too, so they can continue to feel, not be as comfortable as they think they are,” Blake said. “Just staying on them, making sure they handle their business the way they need to.”
Not only was Blake one of the top pass catchers in the American last fall, he led the league by a decent margin with a very impressive 24.8 yards per reception and also ranked second nationally.
“You look at his yards per catch last year, that was the first guy I wanted to go get,” Fouch said. “His average per catch was unbelievable and you insert him in Petrino’s offense, I’m excited. He’s going to take off and hopefully have a better year than last year.”
Petrino’s precise offense making more sense
It is hard enough to learn a new offense coming into a new program, but even more so when you’re trying to soak in all of the fine details that offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino’s schemes demand.
The time between the end of spring practices to the first four fall practices helped Blake connect the dots.
“Just taking that time off to really get in the playbook to understand it more and learn how Coach P wants things to go, it really helped out a lot,” Blake said. “It really helped me turn that switch and once we jumped back in fall camp, I would say I was right on it.”
Now that the X’s and O’s have become more clear to him, Blake has seen that the offense is somewhat similar to what other teams in the SEC run, though the phrasing varies.
“Everybody in this conference runs the same thing, they just use different terminology so it was not hard,” Blake said. “I just had to get used to the terminology that is used here and put it together. But it’s like, still connected.”
Blake and the Razorbacks return to the field for practice five of fall camp Tuesday morning before getting the day off on Wednesday.
Be sure to follow along at The Trough premium message board and visit our homepage for more coverage of Arkansas football. New members can subscribe to HawgBeat right now for $1 and also receive a year-long subscription of The Athletic.
––––––––––––
