Freshmen Impress at Practice

The August heat forced Arkansas to move Wednesday’s closed practice to later in the evening, so the Hogs took to the practice fields at 5:30 p.m. and worked out for over two hours with shoulder pads and helmets.

“This is good for us to move practice to later in the evening,” Arkansas head coach Houston Nutt said. “It’s a little cooler and I think we got more things accomplished. We just had one guy fall out at the end of practice and that was Chase Pressley, but we had a good practice overall. To me this has been the fastest it’s been in two or three years. The new turf is really hot. You could tell the difference between the grass and the turf.”

With the cooler temperatures the team was able to get more done and they concentrated on several different game situations.

“We covered a lot of different situations, like third and eights and then we did a situation with 15 seconds to go in the first half and 15 seconds left at the end of the game,” Nutt said. “You’re two points down, what are you going to do? We’re getting better.”

The freshmen have persevered through three days of fast-paced practices and have been impressing the coaching staff, especially the offensive linemen.

“I’m really proud of the freshmen,” Nutt said. “The speed and tempo of practice has been a shock to them. Meaningful reps were the key to practice today. Usually the third day is when it starts to get fuzzy to them, but I’m really proud of the back and linebackers. These offensive linemen are impressive as freshmen.”

Nutt also noted that redshirt freshman Desmond Williams was moved to safety after showing “tremendous improvement.”

The Razorbacks will utilize the later practice time again on Thursday. Workouts will begin at 5:30 p.m., but remained closed after the first 20 minutes.