Chris from Loxley had it down cold. During Nick Saban’s Thursday radio show, he called in and got animated about how he felt Alabama football’s fans were overlooking Arkansas ahead of Saturday’s game.

“I ain’t heard a dadgum one of them mention Arkansas,” the caller said. “Listen, Arkansas is the most dangerous team we’ll probably face all year. They’ve lost what? Three or four games in a dad-blame row. They’re a good football team. Two years ago they came within a gnat’s ass of beating us in Tuscaloosa.”

Saban cracked a smile during the on-air rant but agreed with the analogy. Arkansas, a 20-point underdog, was going to be a tough team to beat.

Wednesday, Saban had appeared unhappy with how his team practiced and tried to use his midweek press conference to send a message. In the first half and early third quarter, it seemed the preaching had worked.

Then, seemingly all at once, the bottom dropped out of Alabama’s execution. The offense stopped moving, the defense had trouble tackling Razorback quarterback KJ Jefferson and penalties became a problem.

Alabama was in the midst of a trap game.

“I told our team, I said this is going to be a different kind of fight,” Saban said after his team squeaked out a 24-21 win to move to 6-1 on the season, 4-0 in SEC play. “Because you know Sam (Pittman, Arkansas’ head coach) is an offensive line guy. He’s a tough guy and their team is going to keep fighting in the game, no matter what. They always do when they play us, so we need to be ready for that. And I obviously didn’t make that point as well as I needed to.”

The Razorbacks slowly dragged the Crimson Tide to hell. Jefferson finished the game with 150 yards passing and two touchdowns, but he really torched Alabama on the ground.

In the second half, the 6-foot-3, 247-pound QB refused to be sacked multiple times. He ended the game with 64 rushing yards, not counting the losses from the four times the Tide did put him down behind the line of scrimmage.

“He finally had big success on a run,” Pittman said after the game of one play where Jefferson threw Alabama corner Terrion Arnold off of him. “And that, it gets you motivated, gets him motivated and he was dead to rights on that one and then came out of, made a big play and went down and scored off of it later on. It was just two teams fighting their butt off there today.”

Had Arkansas got the ball back one more time, it might have been a different result. But when Alabama took possession with 5:19 left in the fourth quarter after a Razorback punt, it did what needed doing.

The Crimson Tide faced third down twice on that drive. Each time, it converted, the final one on a five-yard run from Jase McClellan facing third and two.

With that, Milroe took two knees and UA survived, at least for another week.

“Had the resilience to take the clock at the end of the game and not give them the ball back, which is really, I think, important in the game,” Saban said. “But hopefully we can learn how to beat the other team. Not just win the game, but beat the other team.”