Pittman after lopsided loss to Notre Dame: 'I'd be mad at me too'
Arkansas head football coach Sam Pittman acknowledged following his Razorbacks’ one-point loss at Memphis last week that he has already had enough pressure for “about three years” as it relates to his tenure as head coach.
Pittman reiterated that following the Razorbacks’ 56-13 blowout loss – Arkansas’ third straight defeat – to the No. 22 Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Saturday before a crowd of more than 75,100, a top 10 all-time program home record attendance.
“We’ve come back at times from this situation,” Pittman said. “Yes, it’s tough, but there’s a lot of teams out there that have tough situations that turn it around.
“Am I glad there is a bye week? Yeah, five in a row (games coming up) there and it’s time that we look at ourselves and look at the team as well. There’s no doubt that we can get it turned… We got to figure out why this happened today because this one was very disappointing?”
A game that was essentially over at halftime as Arkansas (2-3, 0-1 SEC) scored all of its points in the first two quarters and surrendered 42 in the first half for the first time in two decades, the crowd erupted in boos – that Pittman said he “didn’t hear” – on more than one occasion. It was the first time 42 was scored on the Hogs in the first half at home since 1973.
“I understand, I get it,” Pittman said of the frustrations. “If I was a fan, I’d be mad at me too. I’d be frustrated as hell with me. But here’s what I have to say.. As long as I am the head coach at Arkansas, I’m going to fight my butt off to get the guys out there.
“How long that is, it is partly up to me because of what we put on the field, but that’s not my call. And if I’m worried about that all the time, I won’t be able to do as good a job as I possibly can. But I will say this, if I was the fans, I’d be mad at me, too. Hell, I’m mad at me to be perfectly honest.”
Same song, different verse
Arkansas’ defense has been a major issue in the past three games and plagued the Hogs once again Saturday, allowing a season-high 641 total yards. Of those, 420 were in the first half to Arkansas’ 207.
“You’re giving me stats, I’ll add one for you and that’s an astronomical number,” Pittman responded. “You know what I mean? We’ve been trying to figure out how to stop people defensively with different people and different schematics and we haven’t been able to do it. We’re working on it as hard as we can and each week we like the plan against our opponent, but we’re still not tackling well and we still aren’t playing great man to man coverage.”
While the defense has been immensely disappointing, Bobby Petrino’s offense that came in as a national top 10 unit certainly deserves plenty of the blame. After scoring a total of 10 second half points in losses to Ole Miss and Memphis, they were blanked in the second half against the Fighting Irish (2-2), though the game was essentially out of reach at that point.
“I think they were a little bit better in the secondary than possibly we might have thought,” Pittman shockingly said of Notre Dame. “Really, I thought in the first half, I felt like we protected Taylen well and we ran the ball real well.
“One of our goals was to stay out of third and long. We had put ourselves into some of those situations this year and converted them, and really, we just did not today.”
Changes coming to staff?
Along with being asked about his job status, Pittman was also questioned about whether or not changes would be made to his staff.
“I don’t know, let me see,” Pittman said. “The game got over, what, 20 minutes ago? Listen, we owe it to everybody to put the best product out there and so there’s a lot of things that come in play with that.
“I mean, I’ve got some time to think about some things. And … possibly,” He finished answering the question following a pause.
It could be an interesting two weeks with the Hogs idle next weekend before heading across the Mississippi River for the third time this season to take on No. 15 Tennessee on Oct. 11.
