By DON KAUSLER JR.

Already, midseason arrives Saturday for the Arkansas football team when it visits No. 16 Ole Miss. Woe are the Razorbacks.

Arkansas is an 11½-point underdog in a 6:30 p.m. CDT game (SEC Network). Ole Miss is 4-1 (1-1 SEC).

With a fourth-consecutive loss, Arkansas would fall to 2-4 overall (0-2 in the SEC).

A road game at No. 11 Alabama in Tuscaloosa follows the trip to Oxford, Miss.

Bowl eligibility would be questionable. Fourth-year Coach Sam Pittman’s future at Arkansas could be shaky.

The ground is quaking. The sky is falling. The planet is spinning. Locusts are on the horizon.

But Pittman is resolute.

“I like the team. I do,” he said Saturday after a 34-22 loss to Texas A&M. “You guys, unfortunately or fortunately, you’re not able to be in the locker room after the game, so you don’t know really what’s in there. I like our kids. I think we still have the team. I think they’re fighting. We’ve got to coach better. In some areas, they have to play better.”

The Razorbacks now have lost 3 consecutive games in each of their past 7 seasons.

“Every time you go out there, there’s always a chance you’re not going to win,” Pittman said. “The bottom line is, if you don’t, what do you do? The only way I know how to do it is you got to go back and you’ve got to fight.”

Arkansas lost more than a football game Saturday. It lost a rising star.

This is a good place to start. …

FIRST DOWN

Arkansas Hasz a big problem: Just when freshman tight end Luke Hasz was beginning to emerge as a dynamic weapon, poof! The rest of his regular season disappeared Saturday when he broke his left clavicle on the third play.

The 4-star signee from Bixby, Okla., came into the game ranked second on the team with 16 catches for 253 yards and 3 touchdowns. He caught 4 passes for 78 yards and a touchdown on Sept. 16 in a 38-31 loss to BYU. He caught 6 passes for 116 yards and 2 touchdowns and a pass for a 2-point conversion on Sept. 23 in a 34-31 loss at LSU.

Now what?

Var’keyes Gumms, Francis Sherman, Nathan Bax and Ty Washington are the options.

“We’re going to play 2 of them with the first group and 2 of them with the second group and let them battle it out [in practice] and figure out who it is on Saturday,” Pittman said Monday. “I don’t think there’s any of them that have really excelled over the other guy or anything like that.”

Gumms, a redshirt sophomore transfer from North Texas, might have the edge. He caught 1 pass for 2 yards against Texas A&M. That’s 1 more catch than any of the other 3 Arkansas tight ends have this season.

As a true freshman last season, Washington caught a 17-yard touchdown pass in a 55-53 three-overtime victory over Kansas in the Liberty Bowl. Sherman transferred from Louisville after playing sparingly in 3 seasons. Bax is a redshirt senior who came to Arkansas in 2019.

Gumms and Washington primarily are receivers. Sherman and Bax primarily are blockers. Hasz is both.

“You have two different types of guys,” Pittman said. “You have Washington and Gumms, and then you have Bax and Francis. So, we’re just going to let them battle it out this week and give them an equal amount of reps and see who we’re going to throw out there on first [team].”

Redshirt junior running back Dominique Johnson has practiced with running backs and tight ends this week, but don’t look for him at tight end Saturday.  

SECOND DOWN

The OL Shuffle: If at first Arkansas’ offensive line doesn’t succeed, try, try again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Now Pittman is ready to try something else.

“You’ve got to evaluate what’s wrong and try to fix it or throw it out and do something else,” Pittman said.

He isn’t ready to make personnel changes, but he is shuffling positions this week.

“We’re going to look at some different scenarios up front,” Pittman said Monday. “There’s a difference in panic and really reviewing what we’re trying to do and who is trying to do it, so we may shake up the offensive line a little bit.”
Brady Latham and Beaux Limmer are fifth-year seniors. Latham has moved this week from left guard to right tackle. Limmer has moved from center to left guard. Sophomore Patrick Kutas has moved from right tackle to center.

Last season, Limmer was a right guard but switched to center for the Liberty Bowl. Latham has spent most of his career at left guard but also has played left tackle.

This season, Limmer, Kutas and Josh Braun have started every game. Latham missed the opener because of a concussion. Braun, a redshirt junior who transferred from Florida, has started the past 4 games at right guard but started the opener at left guard in Latham’s absence.

Andrew Chamblee started the first 4 games at left tackle because Devon Manuel was injured. Manuel made his first career start against Texas A&M.

Ty’Kieast Crawford and E’Marion Harris have made appearances this season but will remain backups.

“I think we have the guys, the 5 best, [but] I don’t know that we have them in the correct position,” Pittman said. “We may, but I think we’re going to look at some of that changing to maybe help them. Maybe simplify it. Maybe put them by an older guy that can help them, communicate with them.”

Arkansas is ranked No. 97 in the FBS in total offense. The line has struggled in run blocking and pass protection. It has given up 18 sacks this season, tied for the 13th-most in the nation.

The Razorbacks had 174 total yards Saturday, including only 42 yards rushing yards (1.1 yards per carry). Texas A&M had 7 sacks and 15 tackles for a loss.

“Obviously there’s a lot of different reasons to shuffle your line,” Pittman said Wednesday. “One is to get the attention of your guys that are playing. One of them is a changing up that would hopefully help you perform better.”

Pittman said the line isn’t the team’s only problem on offense.

“We’ve got to make some guys miss at running back, our quarterback has to play consistent and we’ve got to be able to get open,” he said. “If you look at it offensively, I think a lot of it has been maybe tagged on the offensive line, and there’s certainly problems there, but there’s a lot of areas that we can get better at.”

The Razorbacks have corrected a penalty problem. They averaged 9 penalties for 96 yards through their first 4 games (14-125 vs. BYU). Against Texas A&M, they had no penalties. Zero.

THIRD DOWN

Fireworks and other explosions: Surprise, surprise. Arkansas’ defense has far outperformed the team’s offense, but a big challenge awaits.

Ole Miss ranks No. 1 in the SEC in scoring offense (44.6 points per game), No. 2 in total offense (517.4 yards per game), No. 2 in passing offense (336.6 ypg) and No. 4 in rushing offense (180.8 ppg).

Arkansas, in a substantial contrast, ranks No. 7 in scoring offense (33.6 pgg), last in total offense (342.2 ypg), No. 12 in passing offense (215.6 ypg) and No. 12 in rushing offense (126.6 ypg).

The Rebels are coming off a 55-49 victory over LSU. They gained 706 total yards, 389 yards passing and 317 yards rushing.

Last season, Arkansas allowed 453 total yards per game (273 passing, 179 rushing).

This season, the Razorbacks are allowing 339 totals yards per game (227 passing, 112 rushing).

This improvement has been overshadowed by regression on offense.

“I think lost in this a little bit is I’ve been fairly pleased with our defense,” Pittman said.

He noted the Razorbacks’ 3 takeaways against Texas A&M, including a pick-6. The Razorbacks rank No. 1 in the SEC and ninth in the nation with 11 takeaways this season.

But Pittman said he knows what it will take to beat Ole Miss and Coach Lane Kiffin.

“We’ve got to score a lot of points to stay in the game,” he said. “You think of Lane Kiffin, and what a … I don’t know, the word ‘mastermind’ or whatever. He’s as good a play-caller as there is in the game.”

Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart can throw and run. Running back Quinshon Judkins got off to a slow start this season after leading the SEC with 1,567 yards rushing last season. He has 378 yards rushing this season, including 177 against LSU.

Ulysses Bentley IV, a transfer from SMU, is averaging 7.5 yards per carry. He and Judkins benefit from a veteran offensive line.

“They’re really good at protecting the quarterback, and they’re really good at run blocking,” Pittman said. “I think those are where the 2 things start … [and] obviously having high-powered running backs.

“As much as we talk about Ole Miss high-powered and all that, they’re a running football team. They want to run the football, and they’re really good at it, because you have to get out of the box to cover them. And then once you do that, they’re going to run the football.”

The Rebels also are known for their explosive plays, something Arkansas needs much more of on offense.

Pittman said he is confident that his defense can limit the Rebels’ explosive plays.

“And that might be limiting it to 5,” he said. “It might be limiting it to 3. They’re gonna get some. I mean, you know it, I know it, everybody knows it. …

“It can’t be 10, it can’t be 12, it can’t be, I mean, can’t let them get behind us. LSU, obviously, did. Yes, to answer your question, I’m very confident. I’m confident in our defense, and I think they’re making huge strides as the season goes on.”

FOURTH DOWN

Social media, continued: The topic of social media keeps coming up in Sam Pittman news conferences. This week the subject came up because of @Lane_Kiffin.

“He’s great at it,” said Pittman, who closed one of his social media accounts last month because he was fed up with anonymous criticism that wasn’t focused on football. “I look at Coach Kiffin in that as he just doesn’t care.

“I don’t know. I can’t speak for the man. But if somebody says something to him, he’ll come right back. I bet it doesn’t bother him an ounce if he wants to make a joke on there about something. I think he’s special. He has a special gift there that I don’t think it bothers him.

“He just goes with it, and obviously I wish I had that ability. I don’t,” Pittman said. “But I respect how he handles all that. He takes some jabs, and I think it’s all in good nature, though.”

Kiffin has 634,800-plus followers on X (formerly Twitter). He follows 5,300-plus accounts. He has a dog, and Juice, a lab, has his own account: @JuiceKiffin

In July at SEC Media Days, the coach talked about social media.

“I think I took a different approach than most coaches, which is kind of what I do in a lot of areas when it comes to social media, especially Twitter,” Kiffin said. “I just started it, and I was like I kind of want to feel like a normal person and comment just like if I was a normal person, or retweet things without having a meeting with my SID before where we figure out whether this is a proper thing to tweet that everybody will like and stuff. …

“It just started. It wasn’t a master plan. Kind of like Juice’s Twitter. It just fell together, and then I just kind of ran with it and embraced it.”