Postgame thoughts from Arkansas' loss to Texas A&M

Arkansas coach Sam Pittman (right) and Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher speak prior to a game Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022, in Arlington, Texas.

ARLINGTON, Texas — A few yards and a few inches made all the difference in Jerry World for the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday. 

Like the Missouri State game a week before, Arkansas can look back on missed opportunities that contributed to a fourth-quarter deficit. 

Texas A&M is better than any Football Championship Subdivision team, though, and Arkansas did not have the talent gap — or the home-field advantage — that helped make up for the mistakes the week before. The Aggies handed the Razorbacks their first loss with a 23-21 victory. 

Despite its struggles, Arkansas still put itself in a position to win. Cam Little’s 42-yard field goal attempt off the left hashmark clanged off the right upright with 90 seconds remaining. Had the kick been a few inches left, Arkansas might have celebrated its second consecutive win over the Aggies. 

The Razorbacks were playing for a field goal and drained the clock in the closing minutes. Arkansas coach Sam Pittman said afterward that if he had it to do over again he wouldn’t have taken so much clock, but it felt like the right play at the time for a kicker who was a Freshman All-American last season when he hit a game winner at LSU. 

Little’s kick was made more difficult by the two plays that preceded it. The Razorbacks had second-and-5 at the Texas A&M 16 before the reliable center Ricky Stromberg hit his leg with a shotgun snap to quarterback KJ Jefferson. That resulted in a loss of nine yards, but Arkansas still had a high-percentage field goal from between the hash marks before Jefferson ran left on third down. 

That run set up a tougher angle for Little. 

The difference of a few yards before halftime had a far bigger impact on the game. Jefferson’s decision to stretch for the end zone on a first-and-goal run from the Texas A&M 3 resulted in a fumble that was returned 97 yards for a touchdown. 

Instead of a potential 21-7 Arkansas lead at the half, the Razorbacks had only a 14-13 advantage after the Aggies botched the extra point. 

Arkansas seemed to take several series to recover from the mistake and the Aggies built a 23-14 lead before the Razorbacks began to mount a fourth-quarter comeback attempt. 

“It was a huge play in the game,” Pittman said, “and, unfortunately, it happened to us. We can't do that on first down. If it was fourth down, that's a different story. Unfortunately, it just got popped out.”

The play felt strikingly similar to a potential 10-point swing the week before against Missouri State when running back Raheim Sanders fumbled on first-and-goal from the 1 as the Razorbacks were trying to tie a 7-0 game. That fumble led to a field goal that extended Missouri State’s lead to 10-0. 

Ball security was an emphasis for Arkansas throughout the week. The Razorbacks went through an extra ball-security drill during a Wednesday practice just to hammer home the importance. 

“If kids did everything you coached them, you'd be 15-0 and undefeated,” Pittman said. “It's human. They're human. I mean, certainly that was one of our (points of) emphasis.”

Fumbles are a concern for Arkansas, which fumbled five times but only lost one against the Aggies. That came a week after the Razorbacks lost 2 of 4 fumbles against Missouri State. 

Arkansas has fumbled 10 times through four games. Four of those fumbles have been recovered by the opponent. 

Compare that to last season when the Razorbacks lost only six fumbles in 13 games. 

With a defense that has been one of college football’s worst defending the pass and that struggles to tackle in the open field, Arkansas’ turnover margin is a statistic that might predict success this year. 

The Razorbacks have committed four turnovers and forced none in the past two games when they have been in a fourth-quarter fight. Arkansas forced five turnovers and committed one in games against Cincinnati and South Carolina that felt in hand during the fourth quarter. 

Teams have a tendency to learn more from losses than from victories. That point was underscored by Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher, who said after the game that his team’s 17-14 home loss to Appalachian State forced the Aggies to grow up. 

“Three weeks ago, we didn't make those plays,” Fisher said. “We had plays to make, had a kick to make, could have made it. We could have been sitting here undefeated and be top five in the country and still be the same football team….We learned to gut it out. 

“I’d have rather been (undefeated), but at the same time it wouldn't have made us a better football team. We're finding out about ourselves a lot right now and what we're trying to do.”

The same can be said for the Razorbacks. 

Poll Talk

Arkansas dropped like a rock in the Associated Press Top 25 poll Sunday. 

The Razorbacks fell from 10th to 20th following the loss to the Aggies. Texas A&M improved six spots to No. 17. 

Alabama, which comes to Arkansas next weekend, is ranked second after it defeated Vanderbilt by 52 points. 

Arkansas' ranking is probably justified given its struggles with Missouri State a week ago and the loss to Texas A&M, but 10 spots seem to be a steep cliff for a team that came within inches of scoring the potential game-winning points in the final two minutes. 

Groundhog Day

Players and coaches change, but there has been an all-too-familiar feeling of what might have been as Arkansas has left AT&T Stadium through the years. 

Saturday’s game was the third time in which the Razorbacks blew a 14-point lead to the Aggies in Arlington since 2014. 

Texas A&M also overcame that deficit in overtime wins of 35-28 in 2014 and 50-43 in 2017. 

Each game has included unique, game-changing plays. 

On Saturday it was the Jefferson fumble at the goal line, which was followed by a Texas A&M defender taking the ball away from his teammate to turn an otherwise short return into a 97-yard touchdown. 

In 2014, Arkansas offensive lineman Dan Skipper was called for tripping on a 51-yard run by Jonathan Williams to the Texas A&M 1. Without the penalty, which the 6-10 Skipper has since said was incidental as he tried to pick himself up off the field, the Razorbacks would have been in position to take a 21-point fourth quarter lead. 

The 2017 game included a 100-yard kickoff return touchdown by Christian Kirk after the Razorbacks went ahead with 5:21 to play.

Arkansas snapped the long losing streak in the series last year, but the Aggies still have a knack for delivering a heart-breaking loss.

Stoppages in Play

During a 90-second stretch of the second quarter Saturday, ESPN went to three commercial breaks that lasted a combined 9 minutes, 35 seconds. 

All told, the network had 15 commercial breaks that lasted a combined 49 minutes, 15 seconds during the game last lasted 3 hours, 21 minutes, including halftime. 

Those stoppages have a tendency to be momentum killers, but probably did not affect either team as much as a poor decision by the SEC’s replay official to review a clear Texas A&M incompletion along the sideline in the fourth quarter. The Aggies had lost two yards on their first two snaps of the drive that began at their own 25. 

The review allowed Texas A&M time to regroup for a third-and-12 that was converted with a 16-yard pass from Max Johnson to Donovan Green. 

The Aggies eventually missed a 53-yard field goal with 6:30 remaining, but the review seemed to aid a drive that otherwise might have ended a few minutes earlier — a key consideration to a Razorbacks’ comeback bid that ran out of time. 

Declining Attendance

Do not call the Southwest Classic a Texas A&M home game. 

In 11 meetings between the Aggies and the Razorbacks at AT&T Stadium, the Arkansas side has almost always made it a true 50-50 split in the stands. The Dallas Metroplex is a massive alumni base for both schools. 

On Saturday it looked and sounded as if the Razorbacks had an advantage in the crowd. Pittman said earlier in the week he had been told Arkansas’ ticket office had sold 4,000 more tickets to the game than Texas A&M’s. 

Saturday’s attendance of 63,580 was the largest for the Southwest Classic since 2017, but still quite below the levels when the series was first scheduled as a neutral-site non-conference game in 2009. 

The writing appears to be on the wall for the future of the series, which is contracted to be played at the neutral site through 2024. After that, all indications are the Razorbacks and the Aggies will play in their home stadiums that have undergone large-scale renovations since the series began as a non-conference game while Texas A&M was in the Big 12. 

Much has changed in the decade since the series began, including a lot of programs’ views on playing neutral-site games, which seem to have fallen out of style in favor of more games on campus. The attendance for games like the Southwest Classic — which has included two ranked teams the past two seasons — seems to underscore that. 

But don’t call it a Texas A&M home game.