Sarah Bentham • Special to the Arkansas News Bureau
By Scott Faldon
Times Record • sfaldon@swtimes.com
FAYETTEVILLE – The play of the game in Arkansas’ 51-7 win against Missouri State wasn’t run exactly as it had been designed.
Trailing 37-0 late in the third quarter, Missouri State was punting again. After giving up a 61-yard punt return to Joe Adams in the first quarter, you’d have thought the Bears’ punter, Jordan Chiles, was going to kick away from the senior speedster. He didn’t.
However, Adams didn’t catch this punt cleanly. The ball bounced in front of Adams, who reached up and touched it. The ball bounced away from Adams and Missouri State’s Kaleb Mueller tried to recover it.
But the ball bounced away from Mueller, and Adams picked it up at the Arkansas 31.
“I was trying to get away (from the ball), and it bounced. The guy jumped on it, and I tried to nudge him off,” Adams said. “Then I saw the ball rolling, and I just picked it up and started running. I’m never trying to dive on the ball, I’m trying to make a play on it. I tried to pick it up and make some guys miss.”
Adams began heading upfield, sort of. He went left against the flow of the other 21 players on the field, then cut back to the right at midfield. Three Bears barely touched him.
“When I picked it up, everybody ran to the sideline, so I just tried to reverse field, and then I came back across,” Adams said.
Mueller, meanwhile, was chasing back on the play … without his helmet. It been knocked off when he tried to recover the muffed punt.
He appeared to have an angle to stop Adams inside the Missouri State 20. But Marquel Wade – had lined up alongside Adams as a second punt returner – raced into Mueller’s way to ensure the TD.
“I saw the end zone, and then I looked to my left and there was a guy with no helmet chasing me. I was like, ‘Aww, I can’t let him get me,’” Adams said. “Then (Marquel) Wade came in and picked him up, and I walked into the end zone. I was glad Wade picked him up.”
Jarius Wright was as astounded by the return as anybody else in the stadium.
“It was electrifying,” Wright said. “It was good to see him turn a bad play back into a a good play. He made a way out of no way.”
Considering he’d returned the opening punt of the game for a TD, Adams was a little shocked he got five more chances after that.
“I didn’t think they was going to punt to me again, and a couple more times they punted it to me,” Adams said. “So I just tried to make something happen. … I didn’t think the second one was going to go because I did a lot of shaking and baking, I was tired at the end.”
The 69-yard TD return gave Arkansas a 44-0 lead and capped a huge night for Adams. The Little Rock native finished with six punt returns. He totaled 174 punt return yards, which is a new Arkansas single-game record.
The previous high was 146 yards by Jack Morris against North Texas State in 1971.
Without returning a kickoff, Adams also slid into second place in total return yardage for a game behind DeCori Birmingham’s 219 yards on eight returns against Alabama in 2002.
Arkansas head coach Bobby Petrino said the entire punt return squad deserved credit for Adams’ big night.
“You can’t say enough about the return team and Joe Adams,” Petrino said. “Everybody on it was blocking, and Marquel Wade had some real nice blocks on it.”
