FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas emphasized passing to its tight ends and working its running game in a two-plus hour scrimmage that yielded 164 plays and 947 yards total offense Friday at Reynolds Razorback Stadium.
D.J. Williams led the trio of tight ends with 9 catches for 82 yards and 2 touchdowns, while tailback Ronnie Wingo Jr. scored three times, including a tackle-breaking 26-yard run toward the end of the workout.
“I was happy with the scrimmage,” Arkansas Coach Bobby Petrino said. “I felt like it was very competitive, that both sides of the ball had their times in the scrimmage when they made plays.”
The Razorbacks suffered no major injuries in the workout, which was the team’s seventh practice and essentially the halfway point in the four-week spring practice period.
Sophomore quarterbackTyler Wilson passed for 179 yards and three touchdowns while working with the top offense.
Brandon Mitchell, who worked mostly with the second team but also had a couple of series with the ones, threw for 242 yards and three touchdowns.
Wilson led a 16-play scoring drive capped by Broderick Green’s 4-yard run to open the scrimmage, and he directed touchdown drives on three of his other four series.
“I thought overall the quarterbacks did well today,” said Wilson, who threw scoring passes to Dennis Johnson, Joe Adams and Williams, three of the stalwarts in the Razorbacks’ offense.
The two best plays of the day went to Johnson and Williams.
Wilson called an audible at the line to find Johnson cruising across the middle about 7 yards deep. Johnson made the catch for first-down yardage, put on the brakes and cut back to race 58 yards for the score.
“We got into a little check there and I read the defense and took a 5-yard pass there to Dennis and he took it [for the touchdown], which is really valuable in this offense,” Wilson said.
Williams was running wide open down the middle on a Shotgun play during the first half of the scrimmage and it looked like Mitchell had overthrown him, but the senior jumped high, made a one-handed grab and scored on the 28-yard play.
“We all had our mind right,” Williams said, regarding the lengthy scrimmage. “The good thing about this year compared to other years is that we used to dread it. This year, we’re looking forward to it.”
Sophomore tight end Chris Gragg caught eight passes for 90 yards, including a 30-yard score from Nick Petrino, and redshirt freshman tight end Austin Tate grabbed 5 passes for 60 yards, also including a 30-yard score from Petrino.
All together, the three tight ends had 22 receptions for 232 yards and 4 touchdowns.
“We had a little list of things we wanted to get done with DJ, and we certainly feel like Chris Gragg needs a lot of work,” Petrino said. “He’s very, very talented.”
The quartet of top running backs did little to separate themselves, as Wingo, Johnson, Green and Knile Davis all rushed for between 46 and 58 yards on 10 to 14 carries.
Wingo was averaging just a little more than 2 yards per carry until he broke an Austin Moss tackle and sprinted 26 yards for a late score.
“He came back, you know,” Petrino said. “We got on him a little bit about the last scrimmage of not running physical enough, not keeping his pads down. ... He did a much better job of that today.”
The starting defense gave up three third-down conversions and a fourth-and-5 on Wilson’s 13-yard keeper around left end on the first series. But the top unit stopped the first offense on its next sequence, and it performed much better at running to the ball and on stopping the run late in the scrimmage.
Scrimmage stats RUSHING Ronnie Wingo Jr. 12-58, 2 TDs;
Knile Davis 14-54, 1 TD; Broderick Green 12-49, 1 TD; Dennis Johnson 10-46;
Ronald Watkins 12-43, 2 TDs; Mitchell Bailey 3-31; Brandon Mitchell 4-18; Tyler Wilson 3-16; Jacoby Walker 3-4; Price Holmes 1-0; Cobi Hamilton 2-(-1); Nick Petrino 6-(-14) PASSING Tyler Wilson 16-21-0, 179 yards, 3 TDs; Brandon Mitchell 15-22-0, 242 yards, 3 TDs; Nick Petrino 14-20-0, 181 yards, 2 TDs; Jacoby Walker 6-14-2, 41 yards RECEIVING Greg Childs 6-109; Chris Gragg 8-90, TD; D.J. Williams 9-82, 2 TDs; Joe Adams 4-63, TD; Austin Tate 5-60, TD; Dennis Johnson 1-58, TD;
Jarius Wright 3-33, TD; Ryan Farr 2-31;
Broderick Green 3-30; Knile Davis 1-23;
Ronald Watkins 2-16; Ronnie Wingo Jr.
1-15, TD; Justin Wortman 1-14; Cobi Hamilton 1-12; De’Anthony Curtis 1-8;
Carlton Salters 1-4, TD; Mitchell Bailey 2-3; Brandon Pyle 1-(-4) INTERCEPTIONS Seth Armbrust, Dustin Cain SCORING PLAYS GREEN 4 run WINGO 15 pass from Mitchell GRAGG 30 pass from Petrino WINGO 2 run TATE 30 pass from Petrino WILLIAMS 28 pass from Mitchell JOHNSON 58 pass from Wilson ADAMS 21 pass from Wilson WRIGHT 10 pass from Mitchell WATKINS 4 run WILLIAMS 12 pass from Wilson WINGO 26 run DAVIS 2 run WATKINS 1 run
Sports, Pages 19 on 04/10/2010