You could see the dejection on Sam Pittman’s face.

During Saturday’s postgame press conference, you could sense that the Arkansas coach recognized the golden opportunity that his team let slip away. Self-inflicted errors left the Hogs on the wrong side of a pivotal game against Texas A&M. “Pivotal” is an appropriate way to describe it, not only because of the obvious SEC West implications of falling to the Aggies, but let’s just say College GameDay making a trip to Fayetteville for the first time since 2006 was sitting on the table with a victory.

It wasn’t just that Arkansas missed out on hosting the popular pregame show. It was having another week inside the top 10 — something that Pittman has been more blunt about than any other coach with referring to the recruiting benefits of it — ahead of a home game against Alabama.

Those opportunities are few and far between. Here are all the instances of Alabama traveling to face a top-10 team in a true road game since Nick Saban started winning championships (after 2009):

  • Sept. 25, 2010 — at No. 10 Arkansas (W, 24-20)
  • Nov. 3, 2012 — at No. 5 LSU (W, 21-17)
  • Sept. 14, 2013 — at No. 6 Texas A&M (W, 49-42)
  • Nov. 30, 2013 — at No. 4 Auburn (L, 34-28)
  • Oct. 15, 2016 — at No. 9 Tennessee (W, 49-10)
  • Nov. 25, 2017 — at No. 6 Auburn (L, 26-14)
  • Nov. 3, 2018 — at No. 4 LSU (W, 29-0)

Five of those 7 games were either an Alabama loss or a 1-score victory. Only 3 times in the Playoff era have we seen Alabama in that spot. By virtue of losing to A&M, now-No. 20 Arkansas won’t put the 2nd-ranked Tide in that spot on Saturday in Fayetteville.

But recent history suggests that maybe, just maybe, Alabama could be in some dangerous territory even with Arkansas coming off the loss.

Last year, A&M was coming off not 1 but 2 losses heading into that game against Alabama in College Station. What happened? The Aggies had a veteran defensive front that harassed Bryce Young, and the high-octane offense was playing from behind all day. As a result of that — and some out-of-body play from Zach Calzada — A&M took down the Tide as a 3-score underdog.

Yeah, it was an outlier performance. But given what we’ve seen both in recent memory, there’s at least a path for the Hogs to pull off the upset.

Take a look at Young’s true road games as a starter and tell me what you notice:

  • 2021 at No. 11 Florida — W, 31-29
  • 2021 at Texas A&M — L, 41-38
  • 2021 at MSU — W, 49-9
  • 2021 at Auburn — W, 24-22 (4 OT)
  • 2022 at Texas — W, 20-19

That’s right. Five true road starts, 4 of which were decided by 3 points or less. This was an underrated theme throughout Alabama’s national runner-up season. Six of 8 SEC games were 1-score games in the 4th quarter, including last year’s game against Arkansas.

That Alabama team walked the tightrope on almost a weekly basis last year, and after seeing its only game against real competition this year, it’s fair to wonder if that’ll be the case throughout 2022. A game-winning field goal against Texas saved Alabama after it was a 3-score favorite. Who knows how that game would’ve gone had Quinn Ewers been able to avoid that injury late in the 1st quarter after a blistering start.

Oh, that’s an underrated part of Alabama’s true road games since the start of 2021. They faced Emory Jones, Zach Calzada, Will Rogers, TJ Finley with an injured ankle and 1 quarter of Ewers before his injury put a banged-up Hudson Card into the lineup. Go figure that Rogers, who is the best quarterback of that group, was the only guy to get blown out. So it’s no longer a situation where you need a Johnny Manziel-like performance just to have a chance against Alabama when it travels to an opposing campus.

What else have we seen in those 5 true road games? Penalties, penalties and more penalties.

  • 2021 at No. 11 Florida — 11 penalties, 75 yards
  • 2021 at Texas A&M — 8 penalties, 82 yards
  • 2021 at MSU — 6 penalties, 60 yards
  • 2021 at Auburn — 11 penalties, 129 yards
  • 2022 at Texas — 15 penalties (Saban-era record), 100 yards

That’s an average of 10.2 penalties for 89.2 yards in true road games since the start of 2021.

Yeah. That’s a thing.

Then what does all of this mean? Should we expect an Arkansas upset?

It means that Alabama has a propensity for playing with fire, and it also has a knack for getting bailed out by a quarterback immune to pressure. Maybe we’ll get another reminder of that on Saturday against an Arkansas team who hung with the Tide in Tuscaloosa last year. Or, perhaps, Alabama will get burned.

We know that the Arkansas pass rush, which leads the nation in sacks, should have a rather unproven Tide offensive line on its heels. Drew Sanders is playing against his former team, and he’ll do so with a tie for the FBS lead in sacks (5.5).

Last year in College Station, A&M successfully confused the Alabama offensive line with the way it got pressure on Young. It wasn’t just that it got home 4 times. That A&M pass rush hurried Young on 5 separate occasions. Granted, Young still finished the night with 369 passing yards and 4 touchdowns, but in key spots, the Alabama offensive line looked overwhelmed.

Mind you, that was in the midst of a season in which Young led Power 5 with 18 passes of 40 yards, thanks in large part to Jameson Williams and John Metchie. Both of those guys are gone. As a result, this year’s Alabama offense has 1 such play, and it happened this past weekend against Vanderbilt. Without Louisville transfer Tyler Harrell, who has been out the first month with a foot injury, Alabama lacks a deep threat (we don’t know officially his status for Saturday).

That’s significant because Arkansas’ pass-defense issues have been well-documented. The Hogs came into Week 4 as the worst passing defense in FBS, though the combination of Myles Slusher’s return and an unproven A&M passing attack now has the Hogs all the way up to … No. 126 out of 131 FBS teams against the pass. It’s possible that the Arkansas secondary is exactly what the doctor ordered and Alabama’s downfield passing woes will be cured.

It’s also possible — dare I say “likely” — that the Hogs find themselves in a winnable game late.

If you’re Pittman, that’s all you can ask for. You can’t assume that KJ Jefferson is going to throw for 400 yards and Alabama’s all-world defensive front is going to be on its heels all day against that ground game. This doesn’t figure to be a clean game on either side of the ball.

But Arkansas is living proof that sometimes, this is a game of inches. If Cam Little’s kick is a few inches left (or maybe up?) the conversation would be about whether we’re about to see a stunning power shift in the West. For what it’s worth, we could still be having that conversation if it’s a 1-score game late and Young needs to be a hero like he has in the majority of his road starts. Perhaps Ja’Corey Brooks lands with a toe out of bounds on a 4th down conversion attempt. Maybe Jahmyr Gibbs takes a page out of the Mizzou playbook and somehow fumbles a go-ahead touchdown into the end zone.

So often, it feels like Alabama is in these games of inches. Whether that’s Tank Bigsby not getting out of bounds in last year’s Iron Bowl or Alabama actually getting out of bounds with 1 second on the clock in the 2013 Iron Bowl, we’ve seen the Tide in these spots. More times than not, Saban usually finds a way.

Saban found a way back in 2010 when his top-ranked team traveled to Fayetteville. His team needed to overcome a 13-point deficit to survive No. 10 Arkansas. That, too, was a game of inches. Who knows what would’ve happened if Dre Kirkpatrick’s toes hadn’t barely landed in bounds on the interception that squashed Arkansas’ last-minute comeback attempt. Bobby Petrino said after that game that “we had our chances.”

Arkansas has a chance to do something it’s never done before on Saturday — finally take down Saban’s Alabama. It would be a crowning achievement of the Pittman era.

Anything short of that and again, Pittman’s postgame face will say it all.