FAYETTEVILLE - If speed is lethal, Arkansas was a killer Saturday night.
Be it the receivers, defensive front or in the return game, the Razorbacks were several steps ahead of an overmatched Missouri State team in a season-opening 51-7 win at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium.
Perhaps nowhere was Arkansas’ speed more evident than in the special teams, where Joe Adams had a record night returning punts. The senior had punt return touchdowns of 61 and 69 yards, becoming the first player in Southeastern Conference history to return two punts for a score in the same game.
The latter of the two returns resembled something you might see in a video game. With Arkansas leading 37-0 in the third quarter, Adams muffed the punt at the Arkansas 31, retreated about 10 yards to pick it up, made several tacklers miss and eventually walked into the end zone to the approving roar of what was left of the 70,607 fans in attendance.
“That was real crazy because it looked like the ball was going to be recovered by them and then we picked it up, and he reversed field a couple of times,” Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino said. “He’s a tremendous athlete. We decided to put two guys (Adams and Marquel Wade) back there and I think it helped us. Marquel always made a good block and got Joe started on a good return.
“It was amazing some of the runs he made.”
Arkansas coaches and players talked in the off-season about significant improvements in 40-yard dash times. Jarius Wright recorded the fastest 40-yard time of any of the Razorbacks with an astonishing 4.29-second mark.
He was the go-to guy for Wilson Saturday, catching six passes for 108 yards and two touchdowns of 33 and 29 yards. He was one of several Razorbacks receivers to make big contributions in the win.
Arkansas out-gained Missouri State 672-273 in all-purpose yards.
“I saw No. 3 (Adams) running pretty fast tonight and Jarius Wright, and you go down the list,” said Arkansas quarterback Tyler Wilson, who completed 18 of 24 passes for 260 yards and two touchdowns. “There were a lot of people running pretty good speeds tonight. It was fun to watch.”
The 44-point margin of victory was the type of win Arkansas hoped for to begin one of the most anticipated seasons in school history. The Bears started a freshman at quarterback and had four first-time starters on the offensive line, while the Razorbacks returned the majority of its defense from a season ago.
Arkansas was especially dominant on the defensive front. The Razorbacks recorded two sacks, had six tackles for loss and had Missouri State quarterback Kierra Harris, an Arkansas native, scrambling seemingly the entire game.
“I felt we played very fast, very physical,” senior defensive end Jake Bequette said. “We didn’t let them cross the 50 for most of the game.
“This was just a pound-it-out game for us. We knew they were going to try to establish the run early so we had to be very disciplined and do our jobs. We knew up front this wasn’t going to be a flashy game. I was very proud of our guys.”
Missouri State had only 18 yards of total offense and only one first down at halftime, which came on a personal foul penalty. Arkansas forced three-and-outs each of the first three times its defense took the field.
“When you control the line of scrimmage like our defense did and run to the ball, I was proud of what our defense did,” Petrino said. “I think we had six three-and-outs and and held them to only one first down in the first half. It was a good job of coming out of the locker room and playing good defense.
“I’m happy with this team. It was a good start for us and as you would say, it was ‘mission accomplished’. We played football well. We executed well. Now we just have to get ready for the next game.”
You can follow Matt Jones on Twitter @NWAMatt.
Running game? How did our running backs do?
Running game did what they needed to. Wingo, Curtis, and Walker all looked good and had solid ypc. The sacks ruined the rushing total. Also Missouri State played their stop the run scheme. They wanted us to pass believe it or not. Two more games to improve before we must be clicking on All cylinders down in the grease capitol of the US in Bama
We played a good game,but the running game has got to get better.Wingo and Johnson are very capable but they have to get the Knile Davis ethic or we probably wont win many in the SEC west.
Are you George from that sitcom?? Go get a doughnut or whatever the hell he eats at that diner!
Our blocking for the run game was suspect. wingo was fine, played with some power. not nearly as smooth as knile, but he’ll be just fine as long as we can improve our blocking. De’Anthony Curtus, though, also played with some size and got his speed going a little bit. I’m just glad we get to warm up our running game before the big time.
I seen the same thing in the running game, we do need some fine tuning on our blocking for it and a little quicker cut to the gaps. Lets face it, this was a couple steps above a high school team and no really big runs. In the SEC, this would have been no run game. But hey its the 1st game and we played more of a practice type game with many players coming in and out as early as the start of the 2nd quarter. Plus no DJ in the game and no playbook really used, so im not to worried yet on the run game.
Like blake said, the Bears wanted us to pass the ball. I know that sounds crazy to us, but if you’re on the outside looking in, Arkansas has a brand new QB this season after losing one of the best in the game to the NFL.
The logic is to make Tyler Wilson beat you with his arm.
With Knile out of the mix and Arkansas looking to establish other RBs, that was probably a good philosiphy for those guys to go by.
What else were they gonna do?
I was very happy to see our defense has improved! Ask for the running game I think Curtis and Walker did better than Wingo! It killed me to see Wingo tip toeing around and almost coming to a dead stop before contact! Look out for Walker to outshine everyone he had some nice flashes of a starter!
I agree about the run game needing to improve, and improve greatly. Against Alabama or LSU we’d not have gained 50 yards on the ground in that game. Our 0-Line should not have allowed ANY sacks to that team. Our D-Line looked fairly good. It’s a start.
Work on that run game!!!!!
This was little more than a scrimmage, so it’s hard to tell how good we are in some areas. The running game will be a huge key to how well our season goes. Ronnie did look a little tentative at times, but we’ll be much better if we can get Dennis Johnson healthy enough to play RB some. He runs as hard (and maybe even harder at times) as Knile Davis. One area that will likely have opposing coaches changing their normal scheme is their punt coverage. After last night, I doubt too many coaches will test fate by punting directly to Joe Adams, and that may lead to short punts and better field position for us. Joe needs to field all of the punts cleanly, though, because they won’t all end up as nicely as his 2nd return for a TD. All in all, we played probably as well as we could for the 1st game (better in most phases than the 1st game last year), and we’ll get better. There is plenty to work on, but also plenty to be encouraged about.
we have two more games to refine the run blocking. I am not worried. Given the improvement we will see…I look for Wingo and company to hit the holes and make lots of hard long runs.
Wingo lowered the boom on one defender, but still needs improvement. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see both Curtis and Walker move ahead of Wingo on the depth chart before too long. They both looked better than Wingo last night. I hope they all improve and have good seasons.
This looks like a rerun of last years “running game comments” .
Then when DJ went down, we were like OMG what now.
Six games later, there was no doubt that we had a running game.
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Have faith Hawg Nation, I believe all factors of our running game will be just fine by the time we go into conference play, always room for improvement though ! Mr. Walker and Mr. Small will be fun to watch as they get up to speed ! The passing game and the DEFENSE ……….this is going to be a great year ! WPS !
Not sure why we are beating the run game so much? Yes they can improve as all of the facets of the game; but the RBs averaged 4.52 yards per carry. De’Anthony Curtis had 7.2 ypc!!! This was against a run blitzing (stuffing) defense. I thought they all looked good. Wingo is Wingo and not Davis. Thats a complimnet to Davis and not an insult to Wingo. Wingo ran and caught passes very well much lke he did last year if not better. With Knile out, you should expect to see more Wingo and not Davis. Walker is going to be a load and Curtis is one breakout game away from establishing himself.
De’Anthony Curtis looked very good IMO. He hit the hole quicker than wingo and walker and showed some good agility as well as a willingness to go north and south fighting for extra yards. I predicted this time last year that Knile Davis would break out and be our featured back. I have the exact same feeling about Curtis this year. He won’t be the same type of back as Knile but I do think he will establish himself as the starter sometime early this season.
It takes a while for an O Line to jell. If these kids get there – and, hopefully before the Alabama game – look out.
i think Kody Walker will come on Big in the next few weeks,but somehow someway Hogs need to find a way to utilize Kelvin Fisher speed,Hurry up and Heal up Dennis.
I may be a slumdog but I can see that our running game needs work. I too think Curtis will soon be the featured back with Wingo assuming for of the type of role he played last year, occasionally carrying the ball but also catching it a lot too.
I agree Hogjim, I think Walker has the makings of a Hershal Walker, Earl Cambell style running back with his size.
rmmr,he does,like his toughness when he,s running with the Ball.
On walker’s first td, he crossed the line and then got bounced backwards a yard or so. He ran stronger as the game went on, but there’s a lot of potential that still needs to get tapped.
IMO Wingo WILL come thru for us. Once he watch the video he will realize he needs to continue what he was doing in the camps. Kody needs to lower his shoulders or ineluctably he will get poppped a big one in the chest. He needs to be the “hammer” not the “nail”.
Arkansas Razorbacks,Running Backs Coach,surprise us this week,come up with something.
I agree that RWJ still seemed a little hesitant to hit the hole. He better get that figured out before DJ gets healthy if he wants carries.
Actually… No one really knows what are running game will look like yet. We haven’t had to use it… We only lined up in two or three three different formations all night on Saturday, but we did line up differently out of these formations to show a little confusion. A big part of our offense in SEC play will come from the “shot” and “gun” formations.. We kept it very vanilla.. I don’t expect to see much more from our offense until Sept. 24th..
I was shocked to see Brandon Mitchell on that first drive, and as much as we did.
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