Bobby Petrino confident Arkansas will handle the noise at Neyland

Bobby Petrino said on Monday that Rocky Top won’t be blaring at Arkansas practice this week. But the interim head coach said he’ll still have a headache when he leaves the field as he prepares the Razorbacks to play at No. 12 Tennessee on Saturday. 

“Just the noise that you have to make between plays and all that,” Petrino said of the piped-in noise on the practice field, “so you can call the play. It makes for stressful time. But it’s fun.”

It will be Petrino’s first game back in charge of Arkansas (2-3, 0-1 SEC) at Tennessee (4-1, 1-1) on Saturday (4:15 p.m. Eastern Time, SEC Network) at Neyland Stadium. 

Petrino, the former Arkansas head coach, was promoted from offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach last Sunday after the school fired head coach Sam Pittman on the heels of three straight losses.

Tennessee a ‘challenge’ for struggling Arkansas defense

Both the Razorbacks and the Vols are coming off bye weeks. 

“They’re a challenge,” Petrino said of Tennessee during his weekly press conference. “They’ve always been a challenge. They spread the field, but they want to run the ball. So the biggest challenge is how do you defend the pass and stop the run? So that’s something that we’re working hard at, is to be able to understand we have to stop the run first.”

Petrino last Monday fired three defensive coaches on his Arkansas staff, promoting Chris Wilson to defensive coordinator and hiring Jay Hayes as his new defensive line coach. 

Arkansas gave up 42 points and 420 yards of total offense in the 56-13 home loss to Notre Dame that led to Pittman’s firing. The Razorbacks a week earlier gave up a 28-10 lead in a 32-31 loss at Memphis. 

“(We) gotta get a lot of bodies to the football (against Tennessee),” Petrino said, “tackle well, be gap sound, which we’ve worked really hard at, and play with great effort. So that’s kind of the things that we’ve been emphasizing.”

Tennessee is 13-7 all time against Arkansas, but the Razorbacks have won the last four, including the 19-14 upset in Fayetteville last season and a 24-20 win in Knoxville in 2015. 

Petrino’s 2011 Arkansas team beat Tennessee 49-7 in 2011. He was also Texas A&M’s offensive coordinator when the Aggies lost 20-13 in Knoxville in 2023.

‘I feel like we’ll go in there and handle (the noise) well’

Petrino on Monday described Neyland Stadium as “awesome.”

“You always want to go into a hostile environment and have fun with it and go,” he said. “So I felt like at Ole Miss, we did a really nice job of handling the noise, the communication, the knock on wood, didn’t have pre-snap penalties. 

“I thought the experience for Taylen (Green) and those guys were right on. So I feel like we’ll go in there and handle it well. I’m optimistic we’ll go in there and handle it well.” 

Arkansas was tied at 28-all late in the first half at Ole Miss on September 13, before the Rebels scored the next 13 points and held on for a 41-35 win in Oxford. 

“It is different,” Petrnio said of the Neyland Stadium, while comparing it to the road game at Ole Miss. “It’ll be louder, it’ll be more hostile than Ole Miss was, but we’ve got to do a good job preparing for it. 

“What that says is that you come off the practice field with a headache every day because that noise you play out there is awful.”