FAYETTEVILLE — Seeing as how he had not appeared in a game in almost 11 months, Arkansas sophomore tailback Rawleigh Williams made sure to get his money’s worth in Saturday’s season opener.
Williams, who suffered a major neck injury in last season’s overtime win over Auburn, rushed a career-high 24 times for 96 yards and a touchdown as the the Razorbacks rallied to down visiting Louisiana Tech 21-20 at Razorback Stadium.
Arkansas 21, Louisiana Tech 20
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Allen overcomes first-game folliesArkansas 21, Louisiana Tech 20
“God is good, man,” Williams said. “It has been a tough road, but that is definitely…a good way to come back and say, 'Man, I’m back.’ To have that touchdown is a great feeling and to have this win this week is a great feeling.
“I’m just trying to improve every week and continue with the season.”
Williams was the workhorse on Arkansas’ game-winning drive, a 13-play march on which he had eight carries. The possession was capped by Austin Allen’s fourth down 4-yard pass to Jeremy Sprinkle.
It came after Jonathan Barnes’ 39-yard field goal attempt - that would have put Louisiana Tech up 23-14 with 14:14 left - hit the left upright and bounced away.
“When the defense did what they had to do and they missed that field goal, we knew that we had to finish the game,” Williams said. “You just have that mentality, especially at this school, that you just have to be able to run the ball.
“That’s what we did on that drive and it worked out for us.”
Williams’ horrifying neck injury last season left him on the field, in fear of of it being a career-ending one. But he battled back and took some big shots to his back and neck Saturday.
“That’s football,” Williams said. “I got hit hard a couple of times today, but I didn’t hurt anything and it didn’t feel like anything different. That is a good thing.”
In addition to Williams’ effort, sixth-year senior tailback Kody Walker rushed 6 times for 24 yards and wide receiver Jared Cornelius had 3 carries for 13 yards.
Highly-celebrated freshman tailback Devwah Whaley had a pair of carries for three yards in limited action in his college debut. Arkansas head coach Bret Bielema said he was guarded about the rookie’s use in a tight game.
“If you put him in there and things don’t go well, you can make a player that age setback in his career multiple games,” Bielema said.
“He goes in there and the game is on the line - having already put a ball on the ground or anything and I don’t have any reason to think that is going to happen - you would just rather go with the guys that have been there a little bit and continue to work with him in practice, get him to where he needs to be.”
Walker lined up at fullback on a fourth-and-1 play from the Arkansas 37 with just 1:27 left in the game.
A first down would allow the Razorbacks to run out the clock, but a failed attempt would have given the Bulldogs a short field with two timeouts.
“Kody has never ran that play before,” Williams said. “It is something that we practice, but he had never ran it. We knew that we had all the faith in the world in Kody to get it. He said, ‘Coach, I got it,’ and he did what he had to do to get it and win us the game.”
Williams, a Dallas native whose longest run of the day was 14 yards, thought he left some yards on the field and hopes to get them when Arkansas goes to face TCU next Saturday night in Fort Worth, Texas.
His effort against Louisiana Tech was four yards shy of the 100 yards he gained last season in a road game at Tennessee.
“Just yards after contact,” Williams said. “There are a couple today that I felt that I should have broke and helped my team out a little bit more, but I think we did enough to win.
“It’s the first game and we have to come out next week better if we want to beat TCU.”
Bielema said he didn’t think that his first three teams at Arkansas would have been able to win on Saturday with all the mistakes on offense, defense and special teams.
“This team is just hungry,” Williams said. “We went through what we went through last year, losing those early games and not finishing and one of our goals this year is to finish strong.
“We knew that didn’t start like we should have, but we had the chance to win the game. That was our goal - to finish strong - and that is what we did today.”