Clay Henry: Offensive Line Play Proves Exciting

By Clay Henry

There is only one safe way to write about a football practice, find someone who has coached football to tell me what I’m watching.

I learned that from my mentors. There was a time when I sat with Jimmy Johnson to watch an Oklahoma State practice, or had Louis Campbell at my side to narrate an Arkansas practice under Houston Nutt.

If you are the media, sitting in the stands with the head coach doesn’t happen anymore, anywhere. That’s not hard to understand.

But there was a time that it did happen at times. I’ve watched an Oklahoma practice with Barry Switzer standing nearby. He might spill the beans, too. Like when he told me J.C. Watts was going to be the starting quarterback one week before that was announced.

Johnson invited me – considered an old friend from Arkansas – to sit beside him at a fall practice in 1978 just after I arrived at the Tulsa World. The Cowboys were not great.

They were slaughtered by Oklahoma and Nebraska that year, but Johnson told me at the start of the practice there was something about the competitive spirit of that team that was a positive. Instantly, a fight broke out between two of the best players on the team, pitted in a one-on-one drill.

I thought Johnson would blow his whistle to stop it from the 10th row of the stadium seats. He put his whistle in his mouth and then chuckled as the fight got interesting. He let them swing a couple of times then blew his whistle and made everyone run sprints.
A little later I asked why he let them duke it out for a few seconds. The answer was simple: He wanted to see who would win and everyone else liked it, too. “Don’t squash a good player’s spirit” was the message.

There was a brief visit with Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman about the complete practice I watched Thursday, the first in full pads for the Razorbacks this August. We didn’t talk about football.

But there were two really meaningful talks during and after the practice. I stood with veteran Arkansas high school coach Tommy Tice during the workout to confirm my assessments. There was 15 minutes with line coach Cody Kennedy afterwards. Both produced rich data on what I think is going to be a good Arkansas team, the best since the Bobby Petrino days.

Almost everything I watched centered on line play. I watched Kennedy match his unit against the defensive line, a marvelous group of thick, veteran players that is the deepest I can recall in the Ozarks. It might be 10 players deep.

“It is,” Kennedy said. “We get a meaningful test in everything we do. They are really good at defensive end. At one position, you have Landon Jackson and Trajan Jeffcoat.

“So if our set puts the (jack end) opposite right tackle, both Patrick Kutas and E’Marion Harris, our first two right tackles, are getting reps against a true SEC dude. Jackson and Jeffcoat are not average and they are rotating against my guys so they are always fresh.

“So it’s like they are going against a starter every play. They say iron sharpens iron. It’s so true and what we are getting every period of practice.”

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