Tag: Kenny Guiton

Arkansas – Florida: LIVE updates, scores and highlights from second half

We’re all tied up at 17 in Gainesville as the second half begins. Follow along for live updates from the final 30 minutes from “The Swamp.”

The Arkansas Razorbacks got off to a quick start in the first half against Florida.

Their first offensive drive under [autotag]Kenny Guiton[/autotag] went 7 plays, for 75 yards and ended with a touchdown. On the first play from scrimmage for the Florida offense, Arkansas defensive back Jaylon Braxton stripped the ball from Ricky Pearsall and took it 34 yards for a touchdown.

Arkansas led 14-0 less than three minutes into the game, but it was rather ugly from that point on. Florida settled in and scored two touchdowns to the tie game back up. Meanwhile, the Razorback offensive line continued to struggle, which led to plays not being able to develop and drives ending very quickly.

The two teams traded field goals before halftime, and that’s where things stand now. Follow along below for live drive-by-drive and score-by-score updates from the second half in “The Swamp” in Gainesville.

Watch: Arkansas absolutely marches down the field on first drive against Florida

The Kenny Guiton Effect is real for Arkansas. At least to start things against Florida.

Kenny Guiton’s start as Arkansas offensive coordinator could have been better.

In his first game calling plays after taking over for the now-fired Dan Enos, Guiton’s Razorbacks scored a touchdown on the first drive of the game against Florida. Running back AJ Green caught a touchdown pass in the flat from KJ Jefferson as Jefferson was perfect on the drive.

Enos was fired after Arkansas scored just three points against Mississippi State two weeks ago. Guiton was promoted from wide receivers coach. On his first play call, Green took a direct snap, handed the ball to Jefferson and the quarterback hooked up with Ty Washington for a gain of 25 yards.

Arkansas has never beaten Florida on the road in Gainesville.

Three reasons Arkansas football can pick up a historic win over Florida

On paper, Saturday’s game in Gainesville has all the makings for a close contest. Take a closer look at three reasons the Hogs and Gators each will win.

It will have been two long weeks since [autotag]Arkansas football[/autotag] has played a game when the Hogs take the field against Florida on Saturday morning.

Following an embarrassing 7-3 loss to Mississippi State at home, changes had to be made entering the BYE week. The Hogs are in the midst of a six-game losing streak and on the verge of not being bowl eligible for the first time under [autotag]Sam Pittman[/autotag].

As a result, [autotag]Kenny Guiton[/autotag] takes over calling plays for the Arkansas offense after the firing of offensive coordinator Dan Enos. While it may not be the change needed to turn this season – and program – around, it could potentially offer a much-needed spark.

The Razorbacks will hopefully be playing with a different energy on the offensive side of the ball and should play with nothing to lose. Will that be enough, though?

Let’s take a closer look at three reasons the Hogs can finally win in “The Swamp” and three reasons they will suffer a seventh-straight defeat.

Arkansas has better chance to beat Florida than most expect

It might be hard to believe, but ESPN thinks Sam Pittman and Arkansas have a decent chance at beating Florida this weekend.

Not many believe that [autotag]Arkansas football[/autotag] can go into the Gainesville and beat the Florida Gators on Saturday.

The lack of faith comes with good reason. The Hogs are 2-6 overall and 0-5 in SEC play, riding a six-game losing streak. Add in the fact that [autotag]Kenny Guiton[/autotag] will be calling plays for the Arkansas offense, despite never having called plays previously during his coaching career, and there’s not much hope to be had.

Despite all of that, though, ESPN’s FPI projections have Saturday’s game as a virtual toss-up – giving the Razorbacks a 48.2% chance to beat the Gators in “The Swamp.” That’s the second-highest chance that ESPN has given the Hogs in SEC play so far this year, with the highest being two weeks ago against Mississippi State.

If [autotag]Sam Pittman[/autotag]’s team is able to walk out of Gainesville victorious this weekend, it would not only go a long way in getting Pittman off the hot seat but it would also be a historic win for the program.

In 12 all-time meetings with the Gators, Arkansas has never won in Gainesville. They’ve only ever beaten Florida twice, the last of which coming in 2016 under Bret Bielema.

Kickoff from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. and will be televised on ESPN2.

Pittman closes practice to media to ‘limit distractions’

Sam Pittman closed practices entirely to the media this week in order to focus on the team and limit distractions.

One thing that Sam Pittman elected to do in preparation for Saturday’s 11 a.m. tilt with Florida was close off practice entirely to the media.

Normally the media is allowed to view 20-25 minutes on Mondays during team stretches and then around 15-20 minutes on Tuesdays.

It’s nothing personal against the media, but Pittman wants to make the transition from Dan Enos to Kenny Guiton as smooth as possible, he said.

“We’ve had plenty of distractions,” Pittman said. “I’m just trying to close it in and make it be about us. We don’t have a problem with y’all coming to practice at all. It’s just something with Kenny and his new role, I’m trying to take any type of added pressure he might have off of him.”

Viewing practice has gotten reduced significantly less with each full-time coaching change Arkansas has made over the last 15 years.

Houston Nutt used to let the media view the majority of his practice sessions.

Once Bobby Petrino was hired, he closed practices. They were reopened somewhat more under Bret Bielema, but closed practices returned under Chad Morris.

Odds are Pittman will be given at least one more season with Hogs

Arkansas football coach Sam Pittman has less than a 10 percent chance to lose his job after this season.

According to the oddsmakers, Arkansas Head Coach Sam Pittman has at least a better chance to retain his job for another season, than Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher and a few others on the proverbial hot seat.

Dan Kilbridge, an oddsmaker for Bookies.com, has released his odds of coaches that may be fired at the end of the season – or before.

Along with Boston College’s Jeff Hafley, Pittman is at 10-1 to be let go, which equates to a 9.1 percent chance of his demise. Ironically, Fisher, who has defeated Pittman’s Razorbacks three of the last four years, stands at 6-1 to be sent packing, meaning there is a 14.3 percent chance.

The two head coaches with the highest probability to be removed are Indian’s Tom Allen, who has 3-2 odds, or a 40 percent chance, and New Mexico’s Danny Gonzalez at 4-1 and 20 percent.

Pittman took over one of the biggest dumpster fires in America when he was hired at Arkansas, prior to the 2020 season. The Razorbacks were in the midst of a 21-game SEC losing streak, orchestrated under former Head Coach Chad Morris.

Regarded as one of the country’s premiere offensive line coaches, Pittman landed his first Division I head coaching job at Arkansas, where he served as Bret Bielema’s associate head coach and O-line coach from 2013-15.

He won a relatively impressive three SEC games in the in COVID-shortened 2020 campaign, then followed that with a huge turnaround year in 2021. The Hogs finished 9-4, with wins over Texas, Texas A&M, LSU and Penn State in the Outback Bowl.

There was a slight drop-off last season, when Arkansas finished 7-6, but did win the Liberty Bowl over Kansas, 55-53, in three overtimes.

With higher expectations entering this season, led by senior quarterback KJ Jefferson and junior running back Raheim “Rocket” Sanders, the Hogs now find themselves in a tailspin, and nursing a six-game losing streak. Granted, that has been affected by the loss of Sanders – who was injured in the season-opener – as well as having two new coordinators and a heavily penalized and lackluster offensive line.

But nonetheless, Arkansas fans are tired of being the SEC’s doormat in football. Since Pittman brought the renewed hope three years ago, the program seems to be in a downward trajectory.

With some sort of move needed to try and right the ship, Pittman fired offensive coordinator Dan Enos after the recent Homecoming loss to a downtrodden Mississippi State team in Fayetteville. The Arkansas offense is currently ranked No. 119 of 130 FBS teams, and could only muster three points against the Bulldogs.

Enos’ interim replacement is wide receivers coach Kenny Guiton, who served under former offensive coordinator Kendall Briles for one season at Houston and three more with the Razorbacks. Which means the Hog offense will likely revert back to the higher-paced scheme that Arkansas has used the previous three seasons.

With three of their final four games at home – where the Razorbacks now have a two-game losing streak – there is a chance to have some sort of resurgence. But most Hog fans don’t have a lot of hope at this point.

Decisions will have to be made following the season, but it looks like Pittman will be given at least one more season to turn things around.

Best and worst case scenarios for the four games after the bye

Here are the best and worst case scenarios for Arkansas’ last four games of the 2023 season.

Arkansas fired Dan Enos.

The offense was beyond repair, so Sam Pittman did something about it. Now Kenny Guiton will be given the opportunity to see if he can make something out of the situation he’s been put in.

Defensively, Arkansas has been good enough to stay in almost every game they’ve played in this season.

In five SEC contests, the Razorbacks have only surrendered 126 points, which averages out to 25.2 points per game.

Not elite, but certainly not league-worst or even league-average. It’s good enough for fifth, just behind Georgia, Alabama, Texas A&M and Tennessee.

Even a halfway decent offense, that was capable of averaging 26-27 points per game instead of 19, would probably have Arkansas 4-4 or 5-3 right now instead of 2-6.

Let’s see how the final four games should shake out.

Arkansas’ offense won’t change too much under Kenny Guiton

Big changes aren’t coming to Arkansas’ offense. Instead, see fewer plays and, preferably Sam Pittman said, more of what works.

Dan Enos had been on the offensive side of the football as a coach for about 25 of his 30 years as a college football coach.

Accordingly, the packages he ran as offensive coordinator were chock full of plays. Per Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman, there too many plays, in fact. The shrinking of the playbook is likely what will change most now that Enos has been relieved of his job, replaced by Kenny Guiton, who is shifting from wide receivers coach to quarterbacks and will take over play-calling duties.

“We’re trying to eliminate some of the volume that we have offensively,” Pittman said. “Obviously it was important that we stayed in-house so we wouldn’t have a lot of terminology and things.”

Pittman believes Arkansas can get things trimmed over the course of the next week-and-a-half before its next game against Florida so that the Razorbacks will give themselves a chance to still reach a bowl. Arkansas needs to win all four of its remaining games to reach .500, the qualification mark for bowl eligibility.

“We’ve got to give our kids a chance to win,” Pittman said. “It just seems that nothing never came easy for us this year. We’ve got to do some things differently. One of it is cut down the volume that we have.”

How will the Arkansas offense look under Kenny Guiton?

Sam Pittman has handed the Arkansas offense over to Kenny Guiton for the final four games this season. Here’s what to expect from it going forward.

In the middle of a six-game losing skid, staring at another possible two-win season, [autotag]Sam Pittman[/autotag] made the decision to fire Dan Enos as Arkansas’ offensive coordinator.

With that decision, Pittman will hand over the play-calling duties to wide receiver coach [autotag]Kenny Guiton[/autotag] on an interim basis. The 32-year old former Ohio State quarterback is in his third season as the Hogs’ wide receiver and has been coaching at the FBS level since the 2015-16 season at Houston. Despite nearly eight seasons of experience, Guiton has never called plays.

So, why is Sam Pittman trusting him with the offense for this extremely important final stretch of games?

“Well, he knows the offense,” said Pittman. “Obviously, he’s going to need some help probably in the run game, which his expertise would be the pass game as a wideout (coach). He’s a very intelligent guy and obviously, I felt like he knew both.”

“I thought he was the most intelligent guy in the whole offensive package, so that’s why I went with him. He’s very intelligent and you can tell that in yesterday and today’s meeting. I felt like he’ll do a really good job.”

As far as what the offense will look like over these final four games, expect the Hogs to simplify things and get back to more of what they were doing under Kendal Briles.

“I’ve been in meetings yesterday and today with the offensive staff,” Pittman said. We’re trying to eliminate some of the volume we have offensively. You’re not changing offenses, because Lord knows we have a lot of offense. You got to shrink it. In my opinion we have to shrink it down and do a little bit, and let the players make plays.”

“I don’t think we’re going to see anything that we haven’t done this year. I think we may do more of some things that we’ve done a few times. And then you could see a faster pace and some things of that nature. But our volume is what we’re cutting down so that we can do something really well.”

Pittman also mentioned how the team will have more of an emphasis on moving the pocket for [autotag]KJ Jefferson[/autotag] instead of having him drop back nearly 30 times per game. When asked why the team has not been doing that in recent weeks, Pittman suggested that the team has practiced moving the pocket more, but those plays were not getting called during games.

There is still a lot of issues with the Razorback offense that will take more than just an in-season scheme change to fix. That said, playing with tempo, making an effort to get playmakers the ball and letting KJ Jefferson be KJ Jefferson have all proven successful over the last couple of seasons. It will be interesting to see if Guiton’s version of the offense can produce a similar level of success in short order.

Arkansas is on a BYE this week and returns to action on November 4 on the road against the Florida Gators. Kickoff is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. and will be televised on ESPN2.

Florida game to kick off at 11 a.m. on November 4

In news that surprises no one, Arkansas will again kick off at 11 a.m. its next time out against Florida in Gainesville.

For the third consecutive time out, Arkansas will kick off at 11 a.m.

The Razorbacks will face Florida in Gainesville following this weekend’s bye on November 4 at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

It will be televised by ESPN2.

Arkansas has never won in Gainesville, having lost all five previous meetings in the ‘Swamp.’

The closest the Razorbacks have come to winning there was nearly pulling an upset of the then defending national champion and No. 1 Gators in 2009, but controversial calls helped Florida pull out a 23-20 win.

Kenny Guiton will be in his first game calling plays after the firing of Dan Enos on Sunday.

Florida will be coming into the game following its annual rivalry game in Jacksonville with Georgia, commonly hailed as the “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.”