Arkansas football held its third practice of 2023 fall camp on Saturday morning in Fayetteville. After watching practice and speaking with special teams coordinator Scott Fountain, Cam Little and Eli Stein, I've written about three thoughts from the day...
Physicality
From the moment we walked inside the Walker Pavilion to start watching practice, the team was locked in. This is a group that likes to hit and hit hard...sometimes too hard.
As I wrote about in my Day 3 practice takeaways, freshman linebacker Carson Dean blew up walk-on wide receiver Kamron Bibby in a swing pass drill for linebackers to work on getting receivers from an angle.
Head coach Sam Pittman got on to Dean because he wasn't being blocked, so there was no reason for him to make that hit.
While Dean shouldn't have done that, it just goes to show how physical this team is. When I walk by the tight ends, they are going 100% in blocking drills. From freshman Luke Hasz to super senior Nathan Bax, that is a big, strong group.
From top to bottom, this is easily the best defensive line Arkansas has had under Pittman. The defensive backs are playing extremely physical, the linebackers are smiling while hitting each other and I could go on and on.
The point is, this team is displaying exactly what Pittman asked for after losing to Missouri in the regular season finale last year: physicality. I think the Head Hog is making sure that this team won't be losing this season because it wasn't physical enough.
Kickoffs
When asked about what areas that need to be improved on, special teams coordinator Scott Fountain led with kickoff return. If you've watched the Arkansas special teams over the past three seasons, you know that kickoff return has been virtually non-existent for the Hogs.
Fountain said they've done a lot of studying on kickoff returns over the offseason and they'd like to be more productive there this season. The Hogs have true speed threats such as Isaiah Sategna, AJ Green and Bryce Stephens who could make a play happen if given the chance.
"We'd like to take a few more opportunities than what we've done in the past," Fountain said. "You can sit back there and fair catch them all day with that rule, but we feel like we have some guys that have a chance to change the game.
"A big part of scouting report this offseason, we did a breakdown and felt like when we won the field position battle on special teams and our offense was getting in better position and our defense was as well, we won 75 percent of the games. That's something we will be real conscious of this year to try and help our football team with our punt return and kickoff return unit."
Not only does Fountain want to return kickoffs more, but he said they might reconsider having so many touchbacks when kicking off. Over the past two seasons, Vito Calvaruso and Jake Bates have been two of the nation's best kickoff specialists for Arkansas.
While the Hogs have candidates who could do as well as Calvaruso or Bates, Fountain said they might not try to kick the ball out of the end zone as much.
"When you start looking at stats, particularly on kickoff coverage, that doesn’t play well in your favor always getting 25 yard returns, if that makes sense," Fountain said. "So we want to try to do things to boost that up."
Max Fletcher
If we are being honest, Fletcher was someone that was frustrating to watch last season because you knew he wasn't playing to his potential. He's always been extremely impressive in practice, but then it seemed to go away during games last season.
It can be easy to quickly react to Fletcher's struggles, but kicker Cam Little really put things in perspective.
"I think people have got to realize at some point, Max was a guy coming I don’t know however many thousand of miles away from a totally different country," junior kicker Cam Little said. "Never stepped foot on a real football field before and all he had done was prior punting with a thing called ProKick Australia, which they do a great job of preparing their punters and kind of guys transitioning from Australian rules football over to America."
It's just a different situation when you're in a live game and it took Fletcher some time to get used to that. Little added that Fletcher benefited from sitting behind Reid Bauer for the second half of the season, and by the time the Liberty Bowl rolled around, Fletcher was much more confident.
We will still need to see it in a game from Fletcher, but right now it sounds like he's turned things around. Being the primary holder on kicks has also built his confidence, which he will need often this fall.
If Fletcher can play to his potential, he could really help the Razorbacks out more than it might show on paper.
