TDunk;1824120; said:
Just curious about your perspective on the whole SEC thing and also I know your HC gets a lot of [censored] for his sudden departure from the falcons. I have no qualms with UARK going after a proven coach to squeegee the nutt job. I'm still unsure why a HC would leave one SEC team for another unless it was a dream job. I'm really just curious on the southern aspect of football.
as for nutt, he was fired, even if he officially wasn't. a 50 year AD and a chancellor who backed him were fired as well, even if the official record says they weren't. the nutt/broyles crowd got into an ego contest with one of the state's big high school programs over players and bringing up coaches from the high school program to UA, and when 4 and 5 star players transfer out to USC, heads are gonna roll. thankfully the heads that were responsible and liable were the ones that did in fact roll. frank broyles spent 40 years keeping us down for the sake of his own legacy/ego, much like jerry jones and al davis do in the NFL, but he fell out of favor with big money donors in little rock over playing games there (our home games are split between the campus in fayetteville and little rock, partly due to tradition partly due to money). frank decided to thumb his nose at little rock money, and money doesn't appreciate that (especially after funding a ~billion dollar a year hospital complex for the university, right down the street from the little rock stadium), so that was that, fresh start 3 years ago with petrino and long. first real change in the football program since the late 60s.
petrino landed in our laps. jeff long (pitt) was our new AD hire, and he knew petrino from his big east days. petrino wanted out of atlanta with vick going to prison and the team quitting on the season due to vick being gone, and with the SEC being the preferred conference for any coach due to the ESPN/CBS TV deals, we were the best job available.
as for the 'southern' thing, alot of it is due to the absence of pro franchises. the northern states have the larger concentration of bigger cities with pro sports alternatives. arkansas, alabama, mississippi, and until recently tennessee, have no professional sports franchises. the college teams are it. before the recent success of the saints and falcons you could add louisiana and georgia to that list as well. college has always been first and foremost down here, even when the couple of NFL franchises are winning. when
everyone has a stake in the college program because it's the only game in town, it doesn't take much controversy to get on the front page of the paper. and when that one college program wins head coaches become more powerful than governors and senators, when they lose they become more disliked than governors and senators.
and for my game prediction, from an arkansas homer perspective...
big 10 defenses don't like to blitz, and don't like to take much risk with corners and safeties when they do. mallett only struggles under pressure. given the ability to simply make the reads and make the throws, he's the best pro style QB in college football. petrino's offense is similar to the gameplan of sean payton with the saints. i'm not comparing mallett to drew brees, mind you, but the playcalling philosophy is the same. petrino doesn't check down against cover 2, he attacks the 20-30 yard sideline hole regardless of down situation, even if mallett misses the throws he calls those plays anyway. if a team shows him cover 0 on third down, he throws deep (or even on 4th and 3, look at the LSU highlights).
the downside of this is frustration when the deep ball isn't there. mallett has forced throws, he's not scared to throw picks particularly in the red zone. sometimes we run up 45-50 points on ranked opponents, sometimes we wind up with 3 picks and 3 second half points like we did against saban. alot of that comes down to the opponent's ability to take away the tight end. as with most NFL offenses, the tight end is the third down maker and the key to the arkansas offense. we don't check to RBs, we check to the TE. DJ Williams is the best TE in the nation from a receiving perspective, and teams that can cover him effectively can make mallett wait too long and/or panic at times. alot depends on WHO takes DJ away. if it's a superstar linebacker, that's an issue. if it's a safety mallett will throw deep in the safety's absence and typically hit on the deep ball, our receivers all have world class speed.
defensively, we're coached by the former steelers secondary coach from the cowher days. so although it's a 4-3, it has a lot of 3-4 elements. he will corner/safety blitz quite a bit, especially until the QB/receivers prove they can read it and beat it properly. we have a converted safety as our #1 LB so he will drop the LB while blitzing a corner, as you see said steelers do with james harrison. shooting for sacks and fishing for picks is the basic philosophy.
the downside to our defense is to get that speed at LB we are small. we solve small by 8 in the box to stop the run, while letting the corners play man to man. the corners for the most part have been pretty good, tackling early in the year on big dumb running QBs and bigger RBs was suspect by safeties at and LBs at times in the year but has improved of late. our D linemen are run stoppers, there are no every-down sack threats on the D line per se. the corners are the best players on the D side of the ball, along with a darren sharper type safety who isn't necessarily a great cover guy but has a nose for picks and fumbles (rudell crim). unfortunately you won't see our best corner (ramon broadway), he's out for the year with a broken ankle, but the replacement from his second game on has been solid from a coverage perspective.
i think it honestly comes down to who gets the chance to nurse a lead. both teams are overly effective at running the ball in the 3rd and 4th, we have the best RB statistically in the SEC with the vast majority of his work game by game from the mid 3rd on through the 4th. either team can put the other away, it's simply a matter of who has a chance to do it first.
if the hogs lose it will be due to red zone turnovers from mallett. if OSU loses it will be because arkansas sacks pryor and creates unlikely 3rd downs. since we know tressel doesn't gamble, will he call the deep ball on 3rd and long? will he pull a safety up to blitz mallett and risk giving up the deep ball? if he plays too conservative as he did against florida and LSU in the title games, we'll wind up with an advantage in TOP and total possessions and given scoring threat alone, win the game based on that.
