FAYETTEVILLE -- After a long couple of days of critical self-evaluation, a selection of Arkansas Razorbacks faced the music from the media Tuesday.
How could the Razorbacks have been demolished 56-3 at Auburn on Saturday the week after beating a ranked Ole Miss team?
"It's crazy," said quarterback Austin Allen, who predicted he'd be ready to play against Florida on Nov. 5 after getting banged up against Auburn. "No one expected that. It's just the way it happened. I'm not happy about it. No one's happy about it. We'll make sure it won't happen again."
Auburn, coming off an open date, scored 21 points in the first quarter and never let up.
"Auburn was a good team, but we could have played them much better than the score reflected," defensive end Deatrich Wise said. "I think it was more of just everybody had a bad day at once."
The loss dropped Arkansas out of both major polls after the Razorbacks had spent five weeks in the rankings after their 41-38 victory at No. 15 TCU.
"It was big boy Sunday," cornerback Jared Collins said. "There were a lot of corrections made. The coaches told us what we did wrong and told us how to fix it. It was a day we really looked back and were critical of ourselves and learned from it, and now it's time to move forward."
Because the Razorbacks have an open date, Arkansas' 53-point loss -- its worst margin of defeat in an SEC game -- will have to stew for a couple of weeks.
"This one hit hard, but now it's moving on, turning the page and addressing the problems at hand so that in two weeks here we can come back and do a complete 180," offensive tackle Dan Skipper said.
"There's a lot of things we could have done better, should have done better," said running back Rawleigh Williams, who was limited to 22 rushing yards the week after piling up a career-high 180 yards against Ole Miss.
Williams said the lopsided loss doesn't shake the team's confidence.
"We know what we have in our locker room," he said. "At the same time, it is an embarrassing loss and something we refuse to let happen again.
"We just didn't play our game. That doesn't take anything away from them. They're a good football team. They beat our butts. There's a lot of things we could have done better, and we have to do better from here on out."
The Razorbacks opened their bye week Tuesday with work that included a limited amount of ones vs. ones and developmental work. Arkansas is expected to begin preparation for Florida today.
Arkansas' first order of business on defense will be patching up the problems that led to Auburn's 543 rushing yards, its biggest total in an SEC regular-season game and the most the Razorbacks have allowed.
"Everything went wrong," senior linebacker Brooks Ellis said. "We didn't run the game plan like coach wanted to, and it just killed us.
"Just the snowball effect. It kept on piling on. We just didn't play the way we're capable of playing."
Arkansas is one of 38 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision to have played each of the first eight weeks. Five FBS teams, including Arkansas State and Florida have played only six games.
Allen said the Razorbacks cannot afford any more performances like the one from Saturday.
"What we did on Saturday is tough," Allen said. "It's tough for us. It's tough for the fan base. It's tough for everyone. But we have to get over it.
"It really stuck with us watching film on Sunday how we don't want to be that team ever to come back on Sunday and feel that way again. I'm still disgusted really. I just feel like it won't happen again for us and we'll become better from it."
Arkansas will enter its final four-game stretch ranked No. 8 in the SEC in total offense (416.8 ypg), No. 11 in total defense (428.0 ypg), No. 6 in scoring (30.9 ppg) and No. 12 in scoring defense (31.4).
Sports on 10/26/2016