LITTLE ROCK — Hundreds of thousands of Razorback fans went to sleep Saturday night dreaming of what might have been.
If only receivers such as Greg Childs and Joe Adams hadn’t dropped passes in the fourth quarter, if offensive lineman DeMarcus Love and tight end D.J. Williams hadn’t cost the Hogs yards late in the game with penalties, and if quarterback Ryan Mallett had just thrown two pass attempts — one in the second quarter, the other his last of the game — into the arms of fans wearing his shade of red instead of cornerbacks wearing another.
Alternative history buffs will also mull over the final few plays of the game, when it seemed that Arkansas would squeeze out one more possession and give Mallett a chance at redemption, which surely he would have seized with six points in the span of 40 or so seconds.
Instead, on fourth down and inches from Alabama’s own 44-yard-line with 55 seconds left, Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban decided to go for it. On an afternoon when No. 1 Alabama battered then-No. 10 Arkansas for 5.7 yards on each of 40 rushing attempts, it was possibly his most predictable call of the game.
Quarterback Greg McElroy churned out a couple of yards, and with that first down stole any chance from Mallett and company at last-second heroics.
He might as well have been Lucy lifting the football as Arkansas, “the Charlie Brown of the SEC — plucky, optimistic, always believing that the next season will be the turning point in their program's history,” wrote AOL Fanhouse’s Clay Travis, whiffed once more.
Indeed, the program had built up quite a head of steam for this one. Unprecedented hype for an SEC football game in Fayetteville led to a week in the national sports spotlight, a long line of tent-dwelling students outside of Reynolds Razorback Stadium starting Monday and a school-record 76,808 crowd on game day. They helped generate electricity that seemed to jump-start the Razorbacks. Seconds in, Mallett fired off a 43-yard touchdown pass to Ronnie Wingo Jr., the second big chunk of Mallet’s 250 first-half yards.
Although in the first half there were signs of Arkansas’ second-half horror to come — such as Alabama’s 143 yards on the ground compared to Arkansas’ 51 — nearly everything seemed gravy for the Razorbacks as they built a 17-7 lead.
Although the Hogs got a 48-yard field goal from freshman Zach Hocker late in the third quarter, there was a feeling by then the Tide had already turned. Two plays before that kick, Alabama’s defense had stiffened at its own 19-yard-line with a 7-yard sack and a tackle for a 5-yard loss. The tone was set for the remainder of a game that the Crimson Tide finished with 17 unanswered points.
The nation’s best team won Saturday, but Arkansas proved to be a worthy heavyweight challenger, and that in itself is a significant step.
Arkansas can still have a very successful year by earning national recognition as an upper-echelon SEC team, which is the first step in bagging more of the blue-chip recruits crucial to future national championship contention.
If these players and coaches recover well from this disappointment, that will turn the tide of history.
Arkansas has never bounced back from losses in its biggest SEC games.
Consider it lost each of three SEC games in which it and its opponent were both ranked in the top 10, according to hogdatabase.com. After losing to Tennessee in November 1998, Arkansas lost the following week to Mississippi State 22-21. After losing against LSU in the last regular season of 2006, the Razorbacks fell 38-28 to Florida in the SEC championship game.
But this year the big-game loss came in the fourth game of the season. Arkansas has time to recover and surpass the ’98 Hogs, who finished 9-3, as the best SEC Razorback team ever. The Hogs have a perfectly scheduled off-week to decompress and lick their wounds before turning attention to a Texas A & M.
This is still a relatively young, unproven team. Barely beating Alabama on Saturday could have easily inflated the players’ egos while diminishing their urgency to address problems in the running game and fourth-quarter focus that would cost Arkansas future games against lower-ranked opponents.
Now, they have little swagger to subdue. Just lessons to learn, and burning, burning regrets that should inspire.