HOG CALLS: Hogs secondary ready to back up talk

— Several Arkansas Razorbacks on defense say they hear things behind their backs.

Things beyond overhearing a muttering fan or talk radio/Internet gossip. Things Jake Bequette constantly hears said behind his back.

“I don’t know if you can hear them chattering, but they are moving around, they are yapping,” Bequette said recently. “It’s always good to hear that.”

“They” are Arkansas’ secondary players aligned behind the Razorbacks’ fourth-year junior defensive end.

So far in practices, Bequette likes the results he’s seeing from what he hears.

“It’s nice to see them getting picks,” Bequette said. “They have created turnovers.”

Some say talk is cheap, but it is a valued commodity on defenses as players interpret an offensive formation and adjust on the fly.

A linebacker - and the Hogs have an old hand there, fourth-year junior Jerry Franklin, “doing a good job,” Coach Bobby Petrino said - must communicate to the front seven.

Meanwhile, the far-flung defensive backs have to communicate with each other, adjusting before and during the developing play.

“Our communications are a whole lot better,” fourth-year junior cornerback Isaac Madison said. “Our chemistry, we know the defense, so we can communicate better and that helps us play faster and under control with a lot of speed and technique.”

Now this defense wasn’t silent in the preceding years, but too often the talk was “Oops!” Or worse.Much worse when “your fault” prevails over “my bad.”

That was the case, some of these veteran Hogs say, when massive graduation from the 2007 defense threw them together in 2008 as rookies and barely beyond rookies on a new defense with a new coordinator, Willy Robinson, and a new head coach, Petrino.

“We are having so much more fun,” said senior cornerback Ramon Broadway, a defensive captain along with Bequette and Franklin. “You don’t have guys fighting with each other like we have had in the past. It’s not a point-finger thing. It’s everyone taking the arrows. Fortunately, we got guys who are on the same page.”

It’s mostly the same guys from two years ago, but they are growing up together and are now familiar with Robinson’s system and getting more help from recruits added.

“We all know each other well and have all been together long enough,” junior safety Tramain Thomas said. “That’s the biggest key.”

Another big key was having something to talk about to build toward.

Arkansas’ offense got the accolades for an 8-5 season in 2008, an improvement from 5-7 in 2007, but it was defense that won the Hogs’ last game. While the Arkansas offense appeared allergic to converting on third down, the defense stopped East Carolina cold in the cold during the Hogs’ 20-17 overtime Liberty Bowl victory in Memphis.

“That was big for us,” Thomas said. “That was a big confidence booster for this season.”

It must have been huge for Thomas, the Liberty Bowl defensive MVP who had a 37-yard touchdown interception return and nine tackles and started only because the safety ahead of him broke curfew.

“That was big for me because I didn’t have the type of season I wanted last year,” Thomas said. “It’s going to keep me focused throughout the season.”

And keep him talking behind his teammates’ backs.

Sports, Pages 20 on 08/14/2010