Fans accustomed to watching Texas pound the ball down Arkansas' throat were pleasantly surprised Saturday night.
Looking like Texas at its wishbone zenith under Darrell Royal, Arkansas ran for 333 yards, averaging seven yards per carry. Those were especially telling numbers in a shockingly easy 40-21 Razorback rout. A Reynolds Razorback Stadium crowd of 74,531 stormed the field after Arkansas' first Fayetteville win over Texas since Lou Holtz' 1981 team rocked and rolled 42-11.
Asked by an ESPN sideline reporter if he would be joining the postgame celebration on Dickson Street, Arkansas coach Sam Pittman said, "I'm not going down there. I'm too old for that."
The teams hadn't met since the 2014 Texas Bowl when Bret Bielema, like Pittman Saturday night, eschewed a late touchdown, the issue (31-7 that night in Houston) long decided.
Five wins in the last seven meetings with Texas amounts to foot-in-the-face domination of Arkansas' oldest football rival, which leads 58-23 in a one-sided but often meaningful series that dates to 1894. Hold that thought until 2025, when Texas, along with Oklahoma, joins the Southeastern Conference.
Speaking of college football's gated community, the SEC comes off a weekend in which all members but Tennessee were perfect in nonconference games. Kentucky won at home against Missouri in the first conference game of the season. Lowly Vanderbilt won at Colorado State, which a Chad Morris-coached Arkansas team could not do.
Arkansas' biggest win under Pittman, whose first team finished 3-7 against an all-SEC schedule, represented the first over a team from the state of Texas since Bielema's 2016 squad beat TCU. In the meantime, Arkansas had lost on the same field against two former SEC teams, TCU and Texas Tech, and in embarrassing fashion to North Texas and Western Kentucky.
About the impact of the win on the program, Arkansas linebacker Hayden Henry said, "Huge. I don't think it puts us on the map, but there's other teams that are going to look at our score tonight and think, 'Arkansas is good. Arkansas can play some football.' It's huge for coach Pittman and our team to just send that message tonight."
Arkansas excelled in many areas but mostly up front. Five Razorbacks combined to rush for between 75 and 50 yards and four ran for touchdowns. Arkansas gained more yards on the ground than Texas (256) totaled.
"You can totally just take the wind out of the defense when you're running the ball down their throat," Henry said. "To have well over 300 yards? I mean, that's unbelievable."
Triggerman was third-year quarterback KJ Jefferson, who silenced critics after a shaky opener against Rice. Proving a dual threat, Jefferson completed 14 of 19 passes for 138 yards, helping Arkansas notch 20 first downs and, by two minutes, control the clock.
Jefferson atoned for his only serious mistake, a tipped ball that B.J. Foster intercepted on Arkansas' first possession of the second half. A 45-yard pass to Tyson Morris, whose one-hand catch switched the momentum against Rice, came on second and 11 from the Arkansas 18 after a Razorback timeout and one-yard loss by Jefferson.
Sophomore Dominique Johnson, giving Jefferson time to throw, gashed Texas for 19 and 12 yards before junior Trelon Smith jumped the pile for a one-yard gain and 23-7 lead. Johnson, formerly buried on the depth chart, morphed into what an ESPN announcer called a "meaty muscle back" with six carries for 44 yards.
Arkansas fans must delight that its main ballhandlers against Texas are underclassmen. Freshmen AJ Green and Raheim "Rocket" Sanders combined for all eight carries on the 75-yard drive that made it 33-14. Smith, coming off a 100-yard game against Rice, led with 12 carries for 75 yards, Jefferson adding 10 for 73, Green 7 for 67 and Sanders 8 for 50. Backup quarterback Malik Hornsby had a 29-yard run after subbing for Jefferson.
Pittman and the team praised offensive-line coach Cody Kennedy, the former tight-ends coach, who switched positions in June when Brad Davis went to LSU.
"I think it's a testimony to hard work," junior center Ricky Stromberg said. "People working and just pounding the rock and getting better at blocking."
Leaving the field at halftime up 16-0 Pittman said, "We had a pretty good idea about what they were going to do. And (referring to Barry Odom, his first Razorback hire) we have one of the top (defensive) coordinators in the nation."
Arkansas' linebackers generally made life miserable for Texas redshirt freshman quarterback Hayden Card, Henry with a team-high 15 stops, Grant Morgan 13 and Bumper Pool 10. Deflating Card's confidence in his first road start, Texas went for 0-for-6 on third down in an 86-yard first half.
Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, Nick Saban's offensive playcaller in a 52-3 Alabama win on the same field last December, finally turned to backup Casey Thompson, who ran for two touchdowns. Though he wore No. 16, perhaps making old-time Arkansas fans shiver, no James Street was he.
Not on a night that Cam Little kicked four field goals and Arkansas, after having a punt blocked against Rice, got a piece of a dropped Texas punt and collected its second field goal.
The Razorbacks averted early disaster when Greg Brooks Jr. mishandled a punt but a Texas player stepped on the sideline before recovering at the UA 4. Brooks earned a measure of revenge with a fumble recovery after Zach Williams knocked the ball from Card. Sanders went 26 yards for a TD on the next snap and it was 26-7.
Heroes included end John Ridgeway, who missed the Rice game with an appendectomy. His five-yard sack of Card on third down preceded a missed 52-yard field goal.
In short, Arkansas gained confidence by the minute against a ranked Texas team that looked unprepared and, not for the first time in Fayetteville, got ambushed.
And now to keep it going. Arkansas plays Georgia Southern at 3 p.m. Saturday in Fayetteville, then goes to Arlington, Texas, for the Sept. 25 SEC opener against Texas A&M.
"The next step, I don't know," Pittman said. "I think we took a step already. That was the No. 15 team in the country and they beat the No. 23 team in the country (Louisiana-Lafayette) soundly last week. I think we have taken a step, and now we have to keep climbing."
"Beat Texas," the fans chanted all week. That they did, with gusto.
"You could say all the way back to January we've been preparing for this moment," said Henry, younger brother of Mackey Award-winning former Razorback tight end Hunter Henry. "We really have. We had a great week of practice, a great game plan and coaches were pushing us. We knew what we needed to do to win this game."
On a day America celebrated heroes, Arkansas found some new ones wearing red jerseys.