Reaching deep into my laptop bag in the dark of a parking garage, I fumbled to find a small reporter’s notebook that I could stuff in my back pocket as I headed to the first fully open practice of spring football.
The one I pulled out had some open pages, if I wrote from the back. It would do for practice and some brief meetings afterward with a couple of players followed by Arkansas coach Chad Morris.
Ironically, it was the notebook from the last game of the season, a 38-0 loss to Missouri that was the finale for a 2-10 season, the worst in Arkansas history in most minds.
Why ironic? Most of what I saw the defense doing to the offense in that Tuesday practice was similar to what I saw happen in the closing stages of the season, especially the blowout losses to Mississippi State and Missouri.
Defensive coordinator John Chavis was dialing up exotic blitzes, his bread-and-butter stuff. Interestingly, there appears to be the speed in his new defensive front to attempt such blitzes.
Senior Dorian Gerald is faster, quicker and just a blur. He was not a blur last year when ankle injuries reduced his speed and strength from almost the day he stepped on campus. Also, he’s lighter, by about 20 pounds. It makes a difference.
And, there was the pass rushing prize of last winter’s recruiting haul, legacy signee Mataio Soli. He strikes like a water moccasin, fast and slithery. He’s going to need 15 pounds over the summer, but he’s an impact player, a true SEC difference maker.
Soli, son of former UA star Junior Soli, was chased by all of the nation’s elite, coveted by all of the top teams in the SEC. He’s all they thought he was. Heck, he might help Chris Bucknam’s track team somewhere. He’s that kind of athlete.
And, one of the few recruiting prizes of the Bret Bielema era, looked like the consensus five star, his true rating. Perhaps finally at his natural position, McTelvin “Sosa” Agim wreaked havoc on almost every play.
I’ve felt for some time that Agim was not an end, where he played in high school. An NFL defensive line expert had given me his scouting report on Agim two years ago. A former coach now retired, my friend is now just a film junkie who prepares for the draft for one of the top NFL outfits.
Generally, if there are Arkansas defensive line draft candidates, I get a phone call to ask about personalities and off-the-field conduct. Do they appear to be coachable in practice? Are they good citizens and teammates?
I’ve gotten those calls to ask about Trey Flowers, Darius Philon, Deatrich Wise and others. Mostly, those all rate highly in my eyes on all of those questions.
The fun part is that I get to ask a few questions in return. It’s often telling. Get this: Flowers was rated by this scout as a first rounder, although his team brass didn’t follow his advice. New England got him much later and won Super Bowls with Flowers as its top pass rusher.
The question I asked after Agim’s sophomore season: Can he play on the edge at the next level?
“No, he’s a tackle,” the scout said. “He’s No. 3, right? I’ve seen him a few times inside in specialty packages and he’s the real deal there. He is not quite elite level at end, in the SEC or in the NFL. I like him, but he needs to stay trim and play inside.”
Then, he said the very thing I was thinking, that Agim could be like Philon, double trouble as an inside tackle. He would be a mismatch for guards, but not outside against tackles.
And, that’s what I saw Tuesday as he toyed with redshirt freshman Ryan Winkel, the right guard in that practice. It so reminded me of what I’d seen of the way the Arkansas offensive line was manhandled at the end of last season. I saw pages of that in the notebook I carried. Yes, ironic, indeed.
It was exactly what Morris had hoped to see, not that he wanted failure from his offensive line. Hardly, he’s trying to prepare them for what they are going to see in the SEC, until they prove they can handle it. He scripted the practice with Chavis heat, those nasty twists and blitzes that they could not handle last year.
It’s the way you build an offensive line, scripting a defensive onslaught, even to the point of taking away some of the bailouts by the offense. Morris made the offense run their base plays into the blitzes.
Some of what the offensive staff continues to call “answers” to those situations were not given to veteran quarterback Ben Hicks, to put emphasis on handling the overloads with base stuff.
Hicks talked about that afterward, because he’s been in that type of practice before with Morris at SMU. There will be growth, although it’s painful to try.
I liked it, not that it was pretty. There was a lot of what happened at Missouri in that practice, forced passes into coverage, quick touches by an end of the quarterback, although the play could continue.
I saw bright spots, one of which points to a looming battle the rest of the spring, at left guard.
Left tackle Colton Jackson appears to have held off at least temporarily the arrival of another winter recruiting prize, junior college transfer Myron Cunningham. So with left guard Austin Capps out with the flu for the early part of the week, Cunningham took snaps not at left tackle, but at left guard.
It’s clear that Cunningham will play somewhere. He has the body lean, the pad level and the athletic ability to be a top flight SEC offensive linemen. It appears line coach Dustin Fry will try him at several spots this fall, perhaps eliminating one of the weak links.
Cunningham has talent to play on Sunday. His arms are long in his 6-6, 305-pound frame. He’s going to add 10 to 15 more pounds in the summer and still be thin. He moves like a tight end.
Too many offensive linemen were sitting out with injuries to tell exactly what Fry’s second group can become, when they figure out how to handle the Chavis blitzes, but they are getting better. Pad level is improved. Detail to fundamentals to start every practice is taking hold. They are heavier, and perhaps quicker.
Sitting out were Shane Clenin, Kirby Adcock, Noah Gatlin and Capps. All of those will be in the fight for playing time. Perhaps two of those will be starters, maybe three. So I didn’t judge the results of this practice too harshly.
Morris told us afterward that it was the most defensive scripted forced plays for the offense that he’d done in a spring. Yes, he’d done it before, but not in that volume. There was as simple reason, a look back at last season.
“Our staff wanted it,” he said. “We’ve done this before in the spring, but not this much.”
It went with what Morris said happened Sunday when the team returned for spring break. They were shown some tape of last season, reminding them about the importance of spring practice and also an indicator that they’ve already improved. This team does look improved.
It’s not where they’ll need to be to get to .500 next season. While it didn’t look like a 2-10 team anymore, it’s hard to say there is enough talent to get to 7-5. But it may in five months when the new arrivals add some more beef and more help arrives in the summer.
I couldn’t help but recall some practices when Bobby Petrino was coach that never featured anything to make the offense look badly. Defensive coaches were never allowed to script something to suit them. In fact, Petrino scripted it to help his side, the offense, often to the detriment of the team.
It’s a step forward in the rebuild process, one that I think is moving along nicely, although probably not at the rate some fans will appreciate when they see the spring game.
There are holes in the depth chart, especially at linebacker, where the team’s undisputed leader, De’Jon Harris, is out with a broken foot. Morris said this is Harris’ team. He’s the captain of captains. Agim will probably be another.
The clear leader on offense is Hicks, although Morris wouldn’t say that Tuesday. He pointed to another injured player, running back Rakeem Boyd as the offensive bell cow.
Boyd is back at practice after shoulder surgery, but isn’t clear for any contact. He’s an SEC difference maker.
I saw another difference maker from the last class, a terrific 6-5 wide receiver, Trey Knox. He reminded me of Robert Farrell - long, lanky and with hands that reached high in the sky to catch the ball at the top point. It’s a gift and it’s clear that he’s already a starter, or at least in the rotation.
There are more on the way, but some are as far away as two recruiting classes. The players who are coming to campus every weekend are in the 2020 and 2021 classes, the nation’s top prep players.
They can’t get here fast enough. Too often Tuesday, the numbers I looked to match names on the roster were walk-ons with no pedigrees and no stars. Maybe a few of them will be surprises, a Brandon Burlsworth if you will. But, I can’t say that I saw one of those in this practice.
But the good news is that I saw something far more entertaining than I’ve seen in years at an Arkansas practice, something scripted to suit the defensive coordinator. Willy Robinson, who disappeared into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, will smile if someone finds him and lays out this scene.
Robinson was one of my favorites as defensive coordinator at Arkansas. He was the opposite of Petrino, engaging and witty and always accommodating. Well, first, he knew my name and called it. That kind of makes a reporter giddy at times.
Why do I think Willy has disappeared into the mountains? It’s because he told me that’s what he was going to do as he left the locker room in Baton Rouge, La., after his last game when a prevent defense as called by Petrino failed.
Oh, how would those blitzes Chavis called Tuesday looked that night at LSU? Oh, I may look for that notebook to recall some of those shortcomings. No, I don’t have that notebook. That would be past ironic.