Monday Down South: Sam Pittman just arrived in purgatory. Billy Napier is already somewhere worse
By Matt Hinton
Published:
Takeaways, trends and technicalities from Week 4 in the SEC.
Ask not for whom the Hogs call
As of this writing, Sam Pittman is still employed as Arkansas’ head coach. By the time you read it, who knows? Barring a miracle, the only question at this point is timing.
Pittman might linger for a while yet. Locally, speculation following Saturday’s gut-wrenching, 32-31 loss at Memphis honed in on a clause in his contract that would reduce the cost of his buyout — currently estimated at $9.3 million — by 50% if his overall record as head coach falls below .500. (The clause excludes the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Pittman’s first year on the job.) The Razorbacks are 29-26 in the relevant time span, meaning they would have to fall 4 games below the Mendoza line over the next 2 months against a schedule in which they project as likely underdogs in all 8 remaining games, give or take a Nov. 1 visit from Mississippi State. There are exactly 4 games between now and then, the next 3 against ranked opponents.
That’s the kind of grim math they’ve been reduced to. Even in the midst of a season in which their dynamic senior quarterback, Taylen Green, leads the nation in total offense, the only number that matters is the cost of turning the page.
On the field, the really frustrating part is that, flip the outcome of just a couple plays the past 2 weeks, and it’s easy to imagine a timeline where Taylen Green has favorable Heisman odds on a 4-0 team that’s rallying around its head coach rather than counting down the days until his demise. But then, the Hogs’ tendency to let winnable games slip through their fingers is a prime source of frustration, too. And right up to the end, the loss at Memphis was about as winnable as they come. Arkansas led by 18 points in the first half, boasting a win probability (according to ESPN Analytics) as high as 95.2% late in the 2nd quarter. Even after Memphis rallied to take an improbable, 1-point lead in the 4th quarter courtesy of a 65-yard touchdown run, the pendulum swung immediately back to the Razorbacks, who responded by promptly driving inside the Tigers’ 20-yard line with 1:30 remaining on the clock.
At that point, a first down could have effectively ended the game. They didn’t even need a touchdown: 3 kneel-downs followed by a chip-shot field goal would have left the Tigers with no timeouts and virtually no time to respond. Arkansas’ win probability stood at 89.5%, and in real time felt higher. A harrowing win, for sure. A win that was closer than it needed to be, in a game that should never have required shifting out of cruise control after halftime. A win that left more questions than answers, that felt more like an escape than something to build on ahead of the SEC gauntlet. But still, in the end, a win that would keep the cloud looming over Pittman’s fate at bay for at least one more week.
Short of botching a no-brainer field goal, there was really only one way left for the Hogs to blow it. Right on cue, they did exactly that. Running back Mike Washington Jr. exposed the ball lunging for the pivotal first down inside the 10-yard line, losing it when a defender punched it out of his outstretched hand; the Tigers pounced for their 3rd and most crucial takeaway of the day. Still needing a first down of their own to put the comeback on ice, Memphis got it in the most insulting possible fashion, bringing backup quarterback Arrington Maiden off the bench for his first and only snap — a 3rd-and-8 plunge into the middle of the line on which Maiden literally dragged the SEC’s heaviest player, 387-pound Arkansas nose tackle Ian Geffrard, a full 10 yards across the line to gain.
Coming on the heels of last week’s 41-35 heartbreaker at Ole Miss, the loss in Memphis marked the second week in a row that Arkansas racked up 500 yards of total offense, only to burst into flames on defense and gack up a fumble on the potential game-winning drive. Hogs fans could only be so disappointed by any of that. But blowing a 3-score lead, then getting visibly bullied with the game on the line by a Group of 5 underdog that simply wanted it more? That felt like the moment the air really went out of the tires.
At this stage of the proceedings, the the prevailing sentiment is resignation. On some level, the end might even come (whenever it comes) as a relief. Pittman is well-liked and respected for salvaging the program from the smoking crater of the Chad Morris years, but the locals have been conspicuously checking their watches pretty much from the moment he signed his current deal in the summer of 2022. Since then, the Razorbacks are 7-18 in SEC play with only 1 win anybody outside of the state remembers, a 19-14 upset over Tennessee last October. That win might have saved Pittman’s job for another year, but to what end? His boss, athletic director Hunter Yurachek, just last week conceded to an audience of boosters that — unlike in baseball and men’s basketball — “we’re not set up to win a national championship” in football due to a lack of resources compared to the top half of the conference. Implicitly, he was also conceding that the folks willing to cut checks for a hoops team coached by John Calipari don’t see nearly the same potential for return on investment in a football team coached by Sam Pittman.
Now, it’s just a matter of how much longer they’re willing to let this already wayward campaign run its course. An open date looms between this weekend’s date against Notre Dame (the Razorbacks opened as 6.5-point home underdogs via ESPNBet) and an Oct. 11 trip to Tennessee. The next one falls on the second weekend of November, ahead of a brutal closing stretch against LSU, Texas and Missouri. Is there any reason to allow Pittman to linger that long? For the sake of salvaging bowl eligibility if the team fares well enough? For the sake of saving a few bucks on his buyout if it doesn’t? Either way, it’s only prolonging the inevitable. Sooner or later, the specter of Interim Head Coach Bobby Petrino is a prophecy which must be fulfilled.
Florida: The Final Countdown
Oh wow: Another Monday, another obituary for the Billy Napier era at Florida. What fresh hell awaits us this week?
I will hand it to the Gators for this: They do keep coming up with creative new ways to plumb the depths offensively. The last time we saw them, face-of-the-program quarterback DJ Lagway was melting down at LSU, where he served up 5 interceptions on the worst night of his career, by far. Against all odds, Saturday’s 26-7 flop at Miami was another giant step backward. Often literally: Florida opened the game by losing yardage on its first 3 plays from scrimmage, setting the tone for an all-time disaster of a first half in which the offense went 3-and-out on 5 of 6 possessions. The Gators went to the locker room with 32 yards, a single first down, a long gain of 8 yards, and zero 3rd-down conversions.
The second half was only a marginal improvement, and only then due to a heroic, 80-yard touchdown drive to open the half that generated Florida’s only points as well as the majority of both its first downs and total yards on the night. Lagway, under constant duress from start to finish, averaged a depressing 2.7 yards per attempt, on an average depth of target of just 3.8 yards, per Pro Football Focus; he was 0-for-4 on attempts of 10+ yards, and didn’t even attempt a pass of 20+ air yards. He didn’t have time. In addition to being sacked 5 times, Lagway was harassed on such a consistent basis that any ball that didn’t leave his hands almost immediately was a disaster waiting to happen. Normally, I’d advise taking PFF grades with a grain of salt, o-line grades especially. But in this case, they paint a portrait of a front in total disarray:
FLORIDA OFFENSIVE LINE: PFF PASS-BLOCKING GRADES vs. MIAMI
• Jake Slaughter: 70.6 (29 pass-blocking snaps at C)
• Knijeah Harris: 34.9 (29 snaps at LG)
• Austin Barber: 17.0 (29 snaps at LT)
• Caden Jones: 11.2 (17 snaps at RT)
• Roderick Kearney: 7.8 (16 snaps at RG)
• Damieon George Jr.: 0.0 (13 snaps at RG)
• Bryce Lovett: 0.0 (12 snaps at RT)
The average grade is around 60.0, just for context. Jake Slaughter is an All-American who’s going to play for a long time in the NFL. As for the rest, I glance at these grades on a weekly basis and have never seen anything like the concentration of red ink spilled over this performance. Miami edge rushers Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor alone were credited with a combined 19 QB pressures at this group’s expense, often with both creating havoc on the same play. This is a crime scene.
Bain and Mesidor are going to make a lot of opposing linemen look bad and already have; they’re not going to hold many of them to 0-for-13 on 3rd-down conversions, or to their worst offensive output since 1999.
Normally, this is where you’d say “at least there’s nowhere to go but up” on the other side of an open date in Week 5. But after the past 3 weeks — a direct descent from a 16-point debacle against USF to a 5-INT nightmare in Baton Rouge to a wholesale collapse at Miami — any assurances that the course is due for a correction ring hollow. Three of the next 4 games on the other side of the open date are against Texas, Texas A&M (in College Station) and Georgia. If we learned anything new from the Gators’ ongoing skid, it’s that it can always get worse. Now it’s just a matter of how long they’re going to keep Napier around to endure it.
Sacks are a quarterback stat, Jackson Arnold Edition
For a unit on the wrong end of a record-setting sack total, Auburn’s pass protection in a 24-17 loss at Oklahoma wasn’t quite the catastrophe it felt like in real time. Per PFF, Jackson Arnold was under duress on just 14 of his 49 drop-backs on the afternoon — a 28.6% pressure rate, about average. Nothing remarkable about that number.
What was remarkable was the Sooners’ finish rate: 10 of those 14 pressures actually resulted in sacks, good for an astronomical pressure-to-sack ratio of 78.6%. (PFF credited Oklahoma with 2 more sacks than the official box score, presumably counting a pair of sacks that were wiped off the ledger by holding penalties against Auburn; for consistency’s sake here I’m going with the official box score.) For context, the median pressure-to-sack ratio in the SEC this season is about 15%. The fact that 9 different OU defenders got in on the sack party contributed to the impression that Arnold was being hounded from all directions all afternoon, as did the fact that a few of the takedowns — especially a couple of dominant reps by future pro R Mason Thomas in the second half — were the kind that tend to leave a lasting impression of the quarterback as a sitting duck. More often, the reality is that Arnold’s internal clock is running a tick or two too slow.
Sacks are a recurring issue for Arnold, as Oklahoma fans already knew well. As the Sooners’ starter in 2024, he was among the most sacked quarterbacks in the country despite playing in only 9 games. In his defense, he was under more than his fair share of heat in that role, facing pressure on 40.4% of his drop-backs for a team that was frequently in comeback mode; still, his pressure-to-sack ratio (27.3%) was the worst among regular SEC starters. After Saturday, that number for 2025 now stands at 51.5%, easily the worst in the FBS despite enjoying better protection so far at Auburn than he ever did at OU.
Here’s an idea for keeping him upright: Run the dang ball. A big part of the optimism that followed the Tigers’ season-opening, 38-24 win at Baylor was the fact that it didn’t require Arnold to be something he’s clearly not at this stage of his career, a conventional pocket passer. Instead, Auburn gashed the Bears for 321 yards rushing on 6.3 per carry, with Arnold and his top running backs, Damari Alston and Jeremiah Cobb, splitting 16 carries apiece. Meanwhile, Arnold put the ball in the air only 17 times, and only 4 times beyond 10+ air yards. He was in his element in a run-first attack that emphasized his mobility.
Contrast that with Saturday’s exhibition of chuck-and-duck. In a close, competitive game in front of a jacked-up crowd hooting for Arnold’s scalp, Cobb and Alston combined for a grand total of 13 carries for 86 yards, half of that number coming on a grown-man run by Cobb in the 3rd quarter. He broke 5 tackles on that play alone, then didn’t touch the ball again until the last-gasp drive that ended in a game-clinching safety.
Granted, Auburn can’t roll into Oklahoma expecting to bully a Brent Venables defense the way it did Baylor’s in Waco. But it certainly can’t expect anything good to come from Arnold dropping back 49 times in a hostile SEC road environment, either. Somewhere in between the ideal run/pass ratio on display in the opener and Saturday’s sack-fest in Norman lies a sustainable balance. Hugh Freeze‘s job might depend now on how quickly he can find it.
Reffer Madness
I hate dwelling on officiating, I really do. Just think about the number of dubious calls on any given Saturday as a matter of course. Then again, think about how bad one of those calls has to be to force the league office to actually admit publicly that the refs got it wrong. The negligence that allowed Oklahoma’s first touchdown against Auburn was that bad.
There is “wide open,” and then there is “suspiciously wide open.” As soon as he appeared on the screen, Isaiah Sategna III fell into the latter column, for good reason. Late Saturday night, the SEC released a statement confirming what irate Auburn fans were yelling at their televisions: The play was an illegal version of the “hideout” tactic, explicitly banned in the rulebook. Per Rule 9-2, Article 2, Paragraph (B): “No simulated replacements or substitutions may be used to confuse opponents. No tactic associated with substitutes or the substitution process may be used to confuse opponents. This includes the hideout tactic with or without a substitution.” (Emphasis added.) “If properly officiated,” the statement goes on, the touchdown would have been wiped out and “resulted in a team unsportsmanlike conduct penalty of 15 yards assessed from the previous spot.” The officiating crew will receive “appropriate accountability” for the mistake, the nature of which was left unspecified. If Auburn fans had a vote, presumably it would involve renting out the side judge as a piñata.
A free touchdown for the side that went on to win by exactly 7 points is, obviously, a pretty big bone of contention. But for my money it wasn’t necessarily the most dubious call of the game, or even the most dubious involving Isaiah Sategna. On Oklahoma’s first offensive possession, Sategna corralled a screen pass from QB John Mateer, took 2 steps upfield, and lost control of the ball while being wrangled to the ground by Auburn DB Jahquez Robinson; the loose ball was scooped up by Tigers’ Kayin Lee, who returned it 65 yards for an apparent Auburn touchdown just 5 minutes into the game. Not so fast, my friend. Upon further review: Incomplete pass, Oklahoma retains possession. The Sooners went on to knock through a field goal to open the scoring.
For possibly the first time ever, I can sympathize with Freeze. It was actually difficult to make any kind of determination from the broadcast whether Sategna ever had complete control of the ball, given that the replay angles were almost exclusively focused on whether he regained possession before contact with the ground popped it loose. (I would argue that the very fact it popped loose is proof enough that he did not.) But if the question boils down to whether Sategna made a “football move” with possession, well, those initial 2 steps when he changes his course from horizontal to vertical sure look like a football move to me. Either way, was anything about that review conclusive enough to overturn the initial call on the field of a fumble? The “rules analyst” on the broadcast apparently agreed with the reversal, although notably not until after it had already been announced; I didn’t. To my eyes, taken along with the illegal hideout touchdown later in the first half, those 2 calls amounted to a 14-point swing in favor of the Sooners.
Now, that’s not the same thing as saying the game itself swung on those calls, especially considering how early they occurred. But it’s worth mentioning as part of what was frankly a sloppily officiated game throughout. Auburn’s list of grievances against the refs also included an obvious pass interference penalty that went uncalled at a crucial moment in the 4th quarter because the official who would have thrown the flag was too busy scurrying out of the path of the ball to see it. That one proved irrelevant as the offense went on to score a go-ahead touchdown on that possession anyway, thanks in part to an obvious pass interference penalty a few plays later that was called, extending the drive on 4th down.
In the end, there were far too many self-inflicted wounds (see above and below) to justify the Tigers blaming the loss on anyone but themselves. But even the people responsible for overseeing the refs had to admit the refs gave them plenty of excuses.
Dude of the Week: Missouri RB Ahmad Hardy
How did the recruitniks miss on Hardy? A small-town product from rural Mississippi — a part of the state I’m familiar with, so trust me when I say rural, I mean about as country as it gets — he went almost completely unnoticed by the recruiting sites until 247Sports assigned him a token rating when he signed with UL-Monroe in December 2023. He was an immediate hit at ULM as a true freshman, running for 1,351 yards and 13 touchdowns, the vast majority of that total coming after contact. Per PFF, the only FBS backs who forced more missed tackles in 2024 than Hardy were Ashton Jeanty and Cam Skattebo.
As a sophomore, he might be in a class by himself. Through 4 games at Mizzou, Hardy leads the nation in both missed tackles forced (37) and yards after contact (458), numbers that — based on the Tigers’ 29-20 win over South Carolina — are not going to suffer in the transition to SEC competition.
Hardy ran 22 times for 138 yards against the Gamecocks (118 yards after contact), a week after going off for 250 yards (177 after contact) against Louisiana. As a team, Missouri is No. 2 nationally in rushing yards behind only Indiana, with Hardy and fellow sophomore Jamal Roberts both averaging north of 7.0 yards per carry.
Dud of the Week: Auburn’s special teams
Auburn’s issues in the kicking game nagged at them in close games throughout last season, and based on Saturday, help is not on the way.
The woes began at the start of the 2nd quarter, when a booming, 66-yard bomb of a punt by Oklahoma’s Grayson Miller sent Auburn return man Malcolm Simmons drifting back toward his end zone. Instead of letting the ball drop for a touchback, Simmons inexplicably fielded it over his shoulder as his momentum carried him across the goal line. (At least he actually did manage to field it.) He reversed course just in time to be swarmed at the 3-yard line.
The offense made some headway on the ensuing possession before a slapstick succession of sacks and penalties resulted in a 4th-and-33 from the Auburn 24-yard line. Then, another disaster as onomatopoeically-named punter Hudson Kaak was forced to corral a low, wide snap at his feet. Rolling to his left after fielding the ball, Kaak declined to attempt a desperation kick in favor of … well, just plain desperation.
Oklahoma capitalized on the gift 2 plays later on the controversial touchdown pass from Mateer to Sategna discussed above.
In the 3rd quarter, the Tigers missed an opportunity to tie the game when a 50-yard field goal attempt by backup kicker Connor Gibbs sailed wide late — a familiar feeling. Field-goal angst was a recurring theme in 2024 after starting kicker Alex McPherson was diagnosed with a serious intestinal issue, and with McPherson still struggling to get back to 100%, putting the ball through the uprights remains as uncertain as ever.
Notebook
1.) Vandy: We see you. The Commodores’ 70-21 massacre over Georgia State was another milestone win for an outfit making a habit of them in the early going. Avenging a 2024 loss to GSU, the final score marked the first time Vanderbilt has hung 70 points on any opponent since 1918, if you even consider college football circa World War I to be same sport. That was 107 years ago! On Saturday, Vandy scored touchdowns on 7 of its first 8 offensive possessions before QB Diego Pavia exited the game, added another TD on a blocked punt, and ultimately outgained GSU by 346 yards.
The ‘Dores are serious. Their 4th blowout in as many games moved them up to 18th in the updated AP poll, just 1 spot below Alabama. (Vanderbilt plays at Bama in Week 6, a grudge match that’s shaping up as possibly the most anticipated Vandy game in living memory.) So far, Vandy’s average margin of victory now stands at 29.5 points. The last time Vandy averaged 29.5 points per game, total: 2013, when it put up 30.1 ppg en route to a 9-4 finish that got coach James Franklin hired away by Penn State.
2.) John Mateer: Confirmed dude. There were not many moments in Oklahoma’s slugfest of a win over Auburn that made me think “there goes the Heisman favorite,” but in a pinch Mateer continues to be exactly the guy the Sooners bet that he would be. After an ugly first half on Saturday, he finished 16-for-17 passing over OU’s last 4 possessions, which yielded 2 field goals and — after Auburn rallied to take a late, 22-17 lead — the winning touchdown courtesy of Mateer’s legs. Altogether, he was 4-for-7 on attempts of 20+ air yards, including a sensational connection with Isaiah Sategna that set up the decisive score with a little over 5 minutes to play. If he makes that throw again in November in a game with Playoff implications, yeah, it’s going on the Heisman reel.
The biggest concern about Mateer might be what kind of shape he’s going to be in by November. The man is doing everything, accounting for an impressive/alarming 81.6% of Oklahoma’s total offense through 4 games, easily the highest individual share in the SEC. In wins over Michigan and Auburn, that number is over 90% — simply unsustainable. The Sooners’ conventional, non-Mateer-based rushing attack was nonexistent in both of those games. An open date followed by an open scrimmage against Kent State in Week 6 is a perfect opportunity to take stock of the running back situation before wading into the deep end of the schedule.
3.) Cam Coleman: Confirmed problem. Coleman’s presence was Auburn’s one and only excuse for allowing Jackson Arnold air it out. On 8 targets, Coleman came down with a pair of deep balls covering 46 yards and 42 yards, respectively; hauled in a short touchdown reception on a goal-line fade; forced 2 pass interference penalties at the expense of true freshman OU cornerback Courtland Guillory; drew what should have been a 3rd DPI on the egregious no-call discussed above; and had what should have been a wide-open TD go through his fingers on a badly overthrown ball in the end zone.
This guy is going to make a lot of money catching passes from an NFL quarterback one day. He should be a lock to join Auburn’s short list of 1,000-yard receivers — if not the first to crack 1,100. At the rate it’s going, Auburn should probably start worrying that he’s not willing to wait until he actually gets to the NFL to do it.
4.) If you had Auburn +6.5, woof. Oklahoma’s game-clinching sack extended a 5-point OU lead to 7, securing the bad beat of the year to date. Careful betting on coll… – [tackled mid-sentence and hustled into the back of a van by our sponsors…]
5.) Given the state of the Arch Manning Discourse, I knew Arch must have enjoyed something like a flawless outing against Sam Houston State when I went to bed on Saturday night without having encountered a single errant throw on social media. The box score confirmed it: Manning finished 18-for-21 passing for 309 yards and 3 touchdowns in a 55-0 blowout that was even more lopsided in the details than the final score implies. (The Longhorns outgained the Bearkats by nearly 500 yards, 607 to 113, with Manning exiting the game midway through the 3rd quarter.) He ran for a couple of scores, as well, 1 of which supplied the viral highlight of the night when Manning taunted a prone defender in the end zone — not enough to draw a flag from the officials, but more than enough to earn a stern lecture from Mom. Everybody’s a critic.
6.) I’m going to save my Trinidad Chambliss takes for the weekly QB rankings, where — spoiler alert — he will almost certainly be replacing Austin Simmons as Ole Miss’ starter following a couple of gonzo performances against Arkansas and Tulane. Just a word of advice in the meantime: Don’t make the rookie mistake of asking how this guy wound up at Ferris State.
Moment of Zen of the Week
Matt Hinton, author of 'Monday Down South' and our resident QB guru, has previously written for Dr. Saturday, CBS and Grantland.
