LITTLE ROCK — The key players in Arkansas' passing game were admittedly unimpressive in Saturday's 34-15 victory over Tennessee-Chattanooga.
"It wasn't good," quarterback Casey Dick said after completing 13 of 22 passes for 116 yards with 1 touchdown and 1 interception.
"It looked like our heads weren't in the game," added fullback Peyton Hillis, who caught a team-high five passes for 56 yards, including a 24-yard touchdown. "Not anything against Tennessee-Chattanooga, but we should've executed a lot better than that."
Offensive coordinator David Lee agreed and said thoughts of Appalachian State's upset of Michigan earlier this season flashed briefly through his head as Arkansas struggled to get untracked. Chattanooga, like Appalachian State, is a Football Championship Subdivision team.
"The first thing is we weren't ready to play offensively," Lee said. "The second thing is my hat's off to Chattanooga, and the third thing is I'm just grateful it wasn't a Michigan-Appalachian State deal because it was scary there for a while." Arkansas' ups and downs in the passing game have been well-documented. Top threats Marcus Monk and Crosby Tuck are out with injuries, and Robert Johnson missed Saturday's game with a sprained ankle.
The offensive line was jumbled, too, as Wade Grayson and Mitch Petrus split time at left guard, and right tackle Nate Garner was forced to leave the game because of dehydration. Garner's departure meant Robert Felton shifted from his starting right guard spot to tackle, and redshirt freshman DeMarcus Love filled in at guard.
Add poor focus to the personnel issues, and Arkansas barely resembled the team thatshowed some encouraging signs in its passing game last week during a 66-7 romp over North Texas. Dick completed 12 of 21 passes for 210 yards and 3 touchdowns in less than three quarters of work against North Texas, but got 72 of his passing yards against Chattanooga on throws of 10 yards or less.
Dick was 2 of 8 for 44 yards with the interception on throws of more than 10 yards, and Arkansas also got a pass-interference call against Chattanooga on a deep pass to split end London Crawford in the end zone.
"We didn't execute well as a whole," Dick said. "We just weren't ready to begin with."
It was a disappointing result from an Arkansas offense hoping to jump-start a unit that entered the game ranked 11th in the SEC and 97th nationally in passing offense (182.5 yards per game). Instead, Chattanooga, which entered the game allowing an average of 186.5 passing yardsper game, yielded fewer yards through the air than in any other game this season.
Arkansas' output wouldn't seem to be comforting as it prepares to return to SEC action with next week's game against Auburn, but Dick and others said Saturday's performance is no cause for alarm.
"We'll just have to regroup," Dick said. "If we play football like we know we can play football, it'll be a good game."
"I'm not concerned at all," said Crawford, who had one catch for 20 yards. "All we've got to do is go out and practice hard, get more consistent at what we're doing, just keep pushing each other, and everything's going to fall in line."
Only Lee seemed more anxious.
"Fortunately it was good enough to win," he said, "but we've got to get better, because if we don't, we'll be in trouble against Auburn."
Sports, Pages 34 on 10/07/2007