Arkansas football expects positive steps to become leaps forward

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — It has become a popular way to measure the strength and depth of the SEC West: The margin of separation last season between Alabama, which won the division and reached the College Football Playoff, and Arkansas, which finished last, was one point.

For the Razorbacks, coming off a late-season breakthrough they hope translates into more success next fall, the comparison is both encouraging and frustrating.

"We were so close," senior receiver Keon Hatcher says. "We felt like we were close to the top — we just weren't mature enough to make it happen."

At least, not until last November, when they shut out LSU and Ole Miss in consecutive games, then finished with an emphatic rout of old rival Texas in the Texas Bowl. Coming after several earlier near-misses (including that 14-13 loss to Alabama) in which the Hogs competed with highly ranked opponents until the final gun, the fast finish has them dreaming big about next fall.

How close are they now? Has the program matured enough to climb out of the cellar and into contention in college football's most rugged division?

"The goal this year," says senior left guard Sebastian Tretola, "is to win it."

He's referring to winning the SEC West, which lately has extrapolated to winning the SEC championship, and would almost certainly mean earning a berth in the playoff. If that seems like too lofty a goal for a program that has now won a total of two SEC games in the two seasons since Bret Bielema's arrival, it probably is. But consider this:

Attempting to describe the parity, Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen said last week that each team in the West believes it will win the division — and has legitimate reason for that hope. That kind of optimistic outlook is also nearly universal during springtime. Football teams are always either building off momentum from a fast finish or putting off bad memories to get a fresh start. Arkansas would fit the former category.

Bielema says they took "baby steps" last season, learning to win at home.

"Our last two games at home, we beat two ranked teams," he says. "Not only beat 'em, we beat 'em like yard dogs, shut 'em out. We won effectively by defending our home turf."

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Taking the next step won't be easy. It's not like the SEC West has changed a whole lot; though its image was dented somewhat during bowl season, when its teams went 2-5 with only Texas A&M (sixth place in the standings) and Arkansas (seventh place) winning their matchups.

Arkansas brings back 15 starters. Everything begins, as always with Bielema's teams, with an offensive line he predicts will be the best in his short tenure here. That's saying something, considering the way the Hogs' hogs controlled the line of scrimmage at times last season, paving the path for a bruising running game.

Although they've shuffled positions this spring, four starters return. They've slimmed down a little bit, but they're still massive, and if anything, their collective attitude might have only grown nastier with that taste of success last season.

"Our goal," Tretola says, "is to physically dominate you to the point where you don't want to play the game anymore."

They'll poke open holes for the potent running back tandem of Jonathan Williams and Alex Collins (both rushed for more than 1,100 yards in 2014), and Bielema is also touting senior Kody Walker, a 6-2, 250-pound power runner whom the coach calls "a perfect fit for our offense".

The receivers have improved. Noting that several SEC West opponents will have new quarterbacks, Bielema says he expects at least as much improvement from senior quarterback Brandon Allen as he made between the 2013 and 2014 seasons, and has challenged him to "be the best quarterback in the SEC."

New offensive coordinator Dan Enos, who left behind his position as Central Michigan's head coach, has been instrumental, Bielema says, in developing the Razorbacks' quarterbacks. Enos has also simplified the Razorbacks' offensive terminology while adding a significant amount of pre-snap motions designed to disguise the Razorbacks' intent.

Don't misunderstand. The basic goal remains the same: to pulverize defenses into submission. As Tretola puts it: "You see it in a (defensive) lineman's eyes. It's, 'Oh, they're probably gonna run it right up the middle again.' And that feeling is great, when they know what you're doing and you know what you're doing but they just can't stop it."

See the Razorbacks' victories over Texas Tech and Texas last season for the textbook examples. But the Hogs must pass more effectively. And they need to be less predictable, especially in the second halves of games.

Though the offense gets all the publicity because of Bielema's smash-mouth style, defense was the difference when the Hogs turned the corner last November. They allowed a total of 28 points in their last four games. Although six starters return, they must replace three of their top four tacklers, including defensive end Trey Flowers (six sacks).

Overall, though, there's more talent and depth than Bielema's first two teams had. Perhaps as important, there's a different demeanor.

"Everybody has this will to win that we didn't have a year ago," junior linebacker Brooks Ellis says. "We didn't know how to do it. We were struggling to find ways to make ourselves better. But now that we've got that little taste of victory, we know how to do it. We want to keep adding to it."

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Ask several Hogs when they turned the corner, and you'll get several different answers. Bielema believes it came Nov. 1, when Arkansas was tied with Mississippi State — the Bulldogs were then ranked No. 1 — into the fourth quarter before falling in Starkville, Miss. It was the Hogs' third heartbreaking loss in five weeks. They'd blown a lead against Texas A&M in overtime and been edged by Alabama.

Afterward, Flowers stopped on the way to the locker room, slumped against an equipment box and sobbed. Bielema stopped, rubbed his back and tried to console his senior defensive end.

"Here's a kid who came back for his senior year, who had as much invested in the program as any kid I'd ever coached," Bielema says now. My emotional attachment to him was pretty strong. I just kept telling him, 'Hey, keep the faith. Keep the faith.' … We'd come so close."

If they weren't breaking down, they were angry.

"It was like, 'Why does this keep happening?' Tretola remembers. "We've got to stop this. We can't keep doing this.' And then we had our bye week — and LSU happened."

They beat No. 17 LSU 17-0 — snapping a 17-game SEC losing streak that dated back to the 2012 season — and followed that with a 30-0 blowout of Ole Miss (then ranked No. 8).

"We knew what we could do, it just wasn't happening," Tretola says. "And then when it did, it was like, 'What took so long?' Man, when everything starts clicking, we're a scary team, that's for sure."

Arkansas blew a lead at Missouri, giving up 15 fourth-quarter points, but then finished with the win against Texas and took confidence into the offseason, believing they were much better than their seventh-place position in the final standings.

"No one can put a price tag on what the human heart and mind want to achieve," Bielema says. "Our guys have been beaten and battered a lot. Hopefully it's their year."

It's likely Arkansas won't be picked any higher than fourth in the SEC West — and it could easily be lower, given the division's continuing strength and a schedule that doesn't do the Hogs any favors. After opening SEC play against Texas A&M at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas — a fairly neutral site — the Hogs will play at Tennessee and at Alabama. We'll know if they've taken that next step by the time Auburn visits Fayetteville on Oct. 24.

But after that taste of success, the Hogs believe they have what it takes to keep adding to it.

Or as Ellis puts it: "The gap has closed."

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