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Arkansas Built a Vault on Defense, Then Handed Auburn the Combination
A weekly, unique recap show for each college football team that played a game. This unique look at what occured has a forward-looking approach and gets you what you need to know. For hardcore fans, casual onlookers and the gambler looking for an edge. Check out the Depth Dossier!
This is the Depth Dossier: the Arkansas Razorbacks, Week 10.
Arkansas spent thirty minutes building a vault on defense against Auburn, then handed over the combination after halftime, and it cost them a game they had firmly in hand.
The final score was Auburn 26, Arkansas 23, and that number barely captures how lopsided things looked at the break. Arkansas held Auburn to just 18 rushing yards and 109 total yards in the first half, building a 10 to 3 lead behind a touchdown from running back Braylen Russell. Then everything flipped. Auburn scored on five of its final six possessions, quarterback KJ Jackson took six sacks, and kicker Max Gilbert missed two field goals from beyond 50 yards that would have loomed huge in a three-point game. Jackson did find wide receiver Antonio Jordan for a 23-yard touchdown with under two minutes left to tie it, but Auburn answered with a field goal, and an intentional grounding penalty on the final possession, which came with a mandatory ten-second runoff, killed any shot at a response. Arkansas falls to 4 and 5.
Dig into the numbers and the collapse is almost hard to believe. Arkansas held Auburn to that 109-yard, 18-rushing-yard first half with Auburn converting just one of nine third downs. In the second half, Auburn piled up 254 yards, 165 of them on the ground, and scored on nearly every possession. Quarterback Byrum Brown went from negative rushing yardage before the break to a real problem after it.
The kicking swing is what Arkansas fans will be replaying all week. Gilbert made field goals from 38, 37 and 46 yards, but missed from 53 and 51. Six points left on the field in a three-point loss is the kind of math that ends seasons.
What makes it sting more is that Arkansas actually won most of the game's other battles. They held the ball for over 33 minutes to Auburn's under 27, and were sharper on third down too. This wasn't a 60-minute execution problem, it was a handful of moments. A fourth-quarter review overturned what looked like an Auburn interception, ruling that the Auburn defensive back's pick came after the receiver had already touched the ball out of bounds, which kept Arkansas's tying drive alive. And the ending was its own kind of chaos, with that late grounding penalty costing Arkansas a down and the clock, before a desperation hook-and-lateral ended in a fumble.
Tie it all together and the sack total is the thread running through the collapse. Six sacks, some deep in Arkansas's own territory, repeatedly pinned the offense back or killed drives outright.
Now, on to who's up and who's down heading into next week.
No new injuries were announced after the game, but those six sacks allowed have the staff taking a hard look at pass protection and depth on the right side of the offensive line. That's one to watch as they search for answers before the problem gets worse.
Availability-wise, defensive back Brayden Lee and tight ends Maddox Lassiter and Gavin Garretson all remained out, which keeps tight end depth thin. Defensive lineman Quincy Rhodes Junior was a game-time call and his snap count is worth tracking going forward.
The clearer change is at receiver. Jordan is stepping into a bigger role after his fourth-quarter touchdown, now running alongside Chris Marshall and fellow receiver Ismael Cisse rather than behind them. At kicker, Gilbert isn't losing his job, but after Saturday's misses, expect a shorter leash on attempts beyond 50 yards. The backfield rotation of running backs Sutton Smith and Russell stays the same, with Smith's 65-yard run setting up Russell's goal-line score exactly the way that pairing is supposed to work.
At 4 and 5, with bowl eligibility now needing two wins in the final three games, how quickly that offensive line cleans up its pass protection may matter more than anything happening at the skill positions.
This was the depth dossier. For everything college football, be it depth charts, data or dossiers, head over to C F B Depth dot com. We will be back next week. This was an AI-generated podcast from content developed by real human beings passionate about college football.