Razorback defense mental mistakes raise coaching question

The Arkansas defense didn’t just have a bad day against Utah. It looked lost.

Missed tackles. Blown assignments. Guys running wide open with nobody near them.

This defense appears to be doing worse than the last couple of years and nobody thought that was even possible.

So here’s the real question. Is this on the coaches not knowing how to fix it? Or is it on the players not locking in enough to learn it?

Defensive coordinator Ron Roberts didn’t dodge the question this week. He laid it all out for reporters and it wasn’t pretty.

“We made a lot of mistakes,” Roberts said. “Didn’t play assignment football. I don’t know. What’s the reason? There’s a couple. You could find blame in a couple places: First time on the road with these guys, a lot of new players. First time getting stressed I guess. Just way too many mistakes. You can’t do that.”

That’s a coach admitting he’s still searching for answers three days after the game.

The tackling numbers don’t lie

Roberts didn’t hide from the tackling problem either. He put a number on it and it wasn’t small.

“Didn’t tackle well,” Roberts said. “I think we had 17 missed tackles. That’s too many.”

Seventeen missed tackles in one game is a lot for any team. It’s especially rough for a Razorbacks group that was supposed to be the more dependable side of the ball this season.

Roberts also made it clear the mistakes weren’t complicated ones. He called a lot of the busted plays basic stuff the defense installed on day one of camp.

“Some of the things we busted on, to be honest some of them were Day 1 calls,” Roberts said. “It wasn’t nuclear physics what they were doing. Is it complicated? Yeah. Is it nuclear physics? No, it’s not.”

That’s a pretty blunt way of saying his players should have known better.

Film session got honest fast

Sunday’s film review after the loss didn’t turn into a blame game between coaches and players. Roberts said the whole room stayed honest about what went wrong.

“It was genuine,” Roberts said of the meeting. “We were honest and put the film on, and a lot of it is they know what to do and, ‘Why did you do it?’ ‘I don’t know.’ So, we’ve got to learn from that.”

That answer matters here. If players know the plan and still mess it up, that points more toward focus and stress than a coaching scheme problem.

Roberts backed that up when he explained what the mistakes weren’t.

“The good thing is it wasn’t, ‘Oh, they out-physicaled us up front,'” Roberts said. “It wasn’t, ‘Oh they out-ran us.’ … It was a bunch of mental busts.”

Georgia offers zero room for more slip ups

The Hogs don’t get a get-right game this week. No. 2 Georgia is up next and the Bulldogs have scored more points through two games than any Georgia team in over 100 years.

Roberts said Georgia hasn’t even shown its full playbook yet and still looks dangerous.

Quarterback Gunner Stockton is the biggest concern. Roberts praised how efficient the Bulldogs signal caller has been through two weeks.

“I think the quarterback is really efficient at what he does,” Roberts said. “Doesn’t make mistakes. He makes the right decisions all the time.”

That’s a tough matchup for an Arkansas defense that’s still trying to figure out why it keeps beating itself.

The Razorbacks have one week to turn mental mistakes into muscle memory before a Georgia offense that doesn’t forgive many.