Single play in Alabama-Birmingham game prophetic of Hogs' 2025 season

Arkansas fans had allowed themselves to hope once again.

The Hogs, with newly minted quarterback Taylen Green and running back Ja'Quinden Jackson in the backfield, had played a near perfect game in a 70-0 win over Arkansas-Pine Bluff before marching into Stillwater and taking the Big 12 champion favorites, No. 16 Oklahoma State, to the wire in double overtime in a game the Hogs easily should have won.

What's why when Trent Dilfer's Alabama-Birmingham team came to Fayetteville, it was seen as a quick opportunity to clean a few things up with reads in the passing game and a few minor things on defense in preparation for an SEC showdown with Auburn.

However, it was anything but that. Green's problems with making reads and finding open receivers had come back to haunt the Hogs for a second week.

His interception near midfield killed an Arkansas drive and the Blazers, already surprising Sam Pittman and his Razorbacks by being up 3-0, were prepared to put an SEC team on upset alert on the road in the first quarter.

That's when wide receiver Kam Shanks first confirmed what what the film already showed. He went into motion to his right and took a glorified handoff on the jet sweep.

There was a little traffic ahead of him, but he found an extra gear and a block. Arkansas linebacker Brad Spence had a chance to stop him as Shanks turned the corner, but gave up on the play and got lost behind a block on a teammate.

Meanwhile, defensive back TJ Metcalf took what he thought was a good angle from the middle of the secondary. It looked like he would knock Shanks out of bounds a yard or two short of the end zone, but Shanks found a third gear as he skirted the sideline, getting his shoulders past Metcalf just before contact, allowing him to break the plane of the end zone just before full contact.

UAB's best player had gone head-to-head with two of the Razorbacks' best and come out on top, putting the Blazers up 10-0 while quickly shifting the mood in the stadium and across the state. In one 15-yard touchdown run, he took every Hogs fan watching immediately into flashbacks of losses to BYU and Liberty.

Arkansas went down as much as 17-3 after a 34-yard touchdown on a short pass over the middle turned into a big play before the Hogs offense found its footing in the second quarter en route to a 37-27 win.

The irony of the play by Shanks that almost put Pittman on immediate job security watch is he is now one of the big reasons for hope for the Razorbacks this coming season after transferring in the offseason. He enters the season as one of two preseason All-America candidates on this Hogs team as a Joe Adams level star on special teams in the return game.

Meanwhile, the other two players primarily involved in that play are no longer Razorbacks. Spence is at Texas hoping to scrape together playing time with the Longhorns.

As for Metcalf, he is at Michigan with his brother Tevis testing how well young men from the shores of South Alabama can handle the extreme winters of the north.

While size is a concern for Shanks at the SEC level, a bigger concern is a bad habit he displayed during the first half of the season last year. Rarely did he ever hit full speed in the passing game.

Instead, he would catch the ball and immediately go into juke mode even if he was in open field. That won't work against SEC secondaries loaded with future NFL talent.

He has to catch the ball, turn up the field and immediately get into his highest gear. The touchdown against Arkansas is one of the rare instances where he displayed his true rate of speed.

If he can break this bad habit, which showed signs of going away later in the year, then he has a solid chance of being a productive receiver for Green in Bobby Petrino's offense.