Opening Statement:

“Really sloppy first half. I thought I was in an extra-inning baseball game because it went forever. We weren’t scoring points that’s for certain. We’ve got a long way to go to get where we need to go. But I want to be positive about the second half and what the guys were able to do. We gave them a little energy, a little juice. I thought we were very stagnant with undisciplined penalties and every time we had something going we’d shoot ourselves in the foot. It was either 15 yard penalty, 10 yard penalty or a turnover. You can’t win football games doing those things. I am proud of the way they were resilient in the second half. Special teams played really well. I give a lot of credit to Arkansas’ defense, they gave us a lot of problems but we’ve got to improve and get better.”

RE: Quarterbacks:

“We talked on the headphones and said we were struggling offensively. We didn’t have a lot of rhythm and we felt like we needed to change some things up. I don’t know how many drives we were into with D’Wan [Mathis], it felt like five maybe six, I don’t know how many total it was before we went with Stetson [Bennett] but we just though he could give us some energy. There are some things he can do well. He’s different than D’Wan and more experienced. He gave us a spark and he’s very decisive with the ball. He makes good decisions. He understands what the defense is trying to do to him so getting to watch them [Arkansas] defensively I think helped him.”RE: The Crowd/Atmosphere:

“The atmosphere was great. The crowd noise made it seem like it was a normal game. I think — as a competitor, a football player and a coach — there’s no concern for how many people are in the stands. I thought it got pretty loud on some third downs between what fans they had and the crowd noise they pumped in.”

RE: Why they looked sloppy and uncharacteristic:

“It starts with the penalties. Also we had guys busting assignments, guys missing signals and guys not doing what they’re supposed to do. That’s 100 percent what I attribute it to. When you turn the ball over— which we did when we had a pretty good drive — when you hold people and line up in the backfield, you’re not going to have a lot of success. That’s just not going to happen. Nobody’s going to give you plays on second-and-15 and second-and-20. It just not going to happen. You got to be efficient, you’ve got to execute, play clean. We did not play clean today.”

RE: On coach Pittman and his team:

“Well, we talked before the game and his kids believe. I know from trying to start the program at Georgia, it starts with that fight and competitiveness. I respect the way his team played and competed right down to the wire. I love the fact that he was trying to fight and compete at the end to score and call timeouts. I got a lot of respect for that. The kids need that opportunity because we aren’t guaranteed 10 games. Those aren’t guaranteed because of the pandemic were in so you better go enjoy it and go play. They competed throughout the game.”