I just came back from watching the first few minutes of today’s practice. The Razorbacks are practicing inside their indoor facility because, well, why not? A few things stood out immediately.

Wide receiver Joe Adams appears to be making progress. He ran routes and caught passes with the rest of the receivers during position drills. That was more than the sophomore did Tuesday, when he mostly caught passes from a ball-throwing machine. Adams has missed the past two games because a mild stroke, and it’s uncertain when he’ll be able to return to the lineup. But at least he’s showing signs of improvement.

Meanwhile, fellow wide receiver Lucas Miller was back at practice after missing Tuesday for an undisclosed reason. A few yards away, running back Michael Smith took part in position drills with the rest of Arkansas’ tailbacks. Smith continues to be bothered by a hamstring injury, and his status for Saturday’s game at Ole Miss is up in the air.

Cornerback Rudell Crim wasn’t wearing a yellow, no-contact jersey at practice, a sign that he’s getting over whatever injury has been bothering him lately. And finally, reserve quarterback Brandon Mitchell – who recently had surgery for a hernia – was watching practice. The freshman wasn’t dressed out, but stood nearby in shorts and a T-shirt.

Well, that’s it for now. But check back later for more information after practice. Also, you can follow me on Twitter (@NWAAlex).

We just returned to the media room after watching the portion of practice open to the media.

There’s a couple of things worth mentioning:

• RB Michael Smith is out on the field practicing after missing Saturday’s game with the hamstring injury. Smith was out on the field last week, but looks much closer to full speed now than he did preparing for Florida. We saw him get in the mix in some early blocking drills for the running backs. I don’t think he did anything like that last week.

• Another return – of sorts — for the offense. WR Joe Adams is in his helment and pads today. Adams wasn’t doing anything on the field. He was catching passes off to the side and working with a member of the training staff. But it was a good sign for the sophomore, who is trying to bounce back after suffering a minor stroke the week of the Auburn game.

• A few more tidbits — 1. CB Rudell Crim is wearing a yellow, non-contact jersey out on the practice field today. Not sure what the exact injury is, but I didn’t see him sit out any of the open portion of the practice. 2. I did not see WR Lucas Miller out there. I know Miller collided with receiver Cobi Hamilton on crossing routes late in the first half, but he did play after that. Not sure what is wrong, if anything, right now. 3. RB Dennis Johnson is practicing after missing the final minutes of the Florida game after having his bell rung. He seems fine.

  Need something to read on a wet Tuesday morning?

  For starters, here is my story in today’s Morning News about Alabama running back Mark Ingram, who’s leading the Crimson Tide’s four-headed running attack. Robbie Neiswanger has a notebook, in which he writes about linebacker Jerry Franklin not being suspended, wide receiver Lucas Miller coming back and running back Michael Smith feeling fine.

  As far as Alabama in concerned, Gentry Estes of The Mobile-Press Register discusses the Crimson Tide’s “Pistol” formation in this item. And Don Kausler Jr. of The Birmingham News discusses Alabama’s retooled offensive line in this report. To read everything Alabama, check out al.com.

  And don’t forget: You can follow Robbie (NWARobbie) and myself (@NWAAlex) on Twitter. 

Just walked back in the door from Arkansas’ press conference. Bobby Petrino, QB Ryan Mallett, WR Greg Childs and DE Jake Bequette were selected to participate today. Here are the biggest things we learned:

1. LB Jerry Franklin, indeed, will be back on the field Saturday. Petrino confirmed what the SEC office told us earlier today, saying Franklin won’t be suspended for his ejection. However, Petrino said reviewing the film showed that Franklin did bump an official and deserved to be ejected. He said it will serve as a lesson to Franklin and anybody else who was watching. Franklin will be disciplined in house according to Petrino, but will be back in his starting spot Saturday.

2. Arkansas’ WRs will get some help Saturday from senior Lucas Miller. The senior will be back on the field after missing the first two games with a broken collarbone. It should help, considering Petrino believed his sophomore trio of Greg Childs, Joe Adams and Jarius Wright were worn down in the second half. The Razorbacks plan to get Miller and freshman Cobi Hamilton more work, giving them at least five receivers they can count on against the Crimson Tide.

3. Petrino said there are a handful of players that need more playing time. The three he mentioned — freshman running back Ronnie Wingo, freshman offensive tackle Greg Oden, and junior safety Anthony Leon. Not sure if it means those three will find their way into starting roles (OK, not Wingo). But we’ll know more when we take a look at the first 20 minutes of practice. Petrino did say that Wingo’s lack of playing time is on him. He just didn’t want to put a freshman in a game like that and in a situation like that. Instantly, I thought of Houston Nutt’s decision not to play Darren McFadden and Felix Jones vs. Vanderbilt in 2005.

4. Speaking of running backs, Petrino was asked about Broderick Green and the goal line. He put the blame on the offensive line for not opening any sort of path for Green to run. Remember, the big back was stuffed a couple of times in the second half. Arkansas eventually scored on the drive, but the inability to run the ball into the end zone remains obvious.

  Arkansas’ coaches and players just finished talking with the media following Tuesday’s practice. It was the Razorbacks’ first full practice since Thursday, and according to offensive coordinator Paul Petrino, the intensity was good.

  ”I think we need to improve the execution, but you could feel the energy out there and the intensity was real good,” Petrino said. “Obviously, you can always get better on the execution, so there’s a lot of things we need to get down the next two days and our walk-throughs prior to the game.” 

  Here are some quick highlights from practice:

  Arkansas backup quarterback Tyler Wilson said he and starter Ryan Mallett are preparing as if they both might see action in Saturday night’s game against No. 23 Georgia. Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino naturally didn’t want to say how he intended to rotate the quarterbacks, but it sounds like Mallett and Wilson will be used like they were in the season opener against Missouri State.

  Mallett started the game, but Wilson came in toward the end of the first quarter and played the first few series of the second quarter. The redshirt freshman brings a change of pace to the position.

  ”Apparently, we’re going to work like we did last week and it will depend on the game situation, I think,” Wilson said. “I think we’ll both be prepared and we’re just going in with the mindset that we can be in the game at any point.”

   Wide receiver Lucas Miller appears to be improving from the broken collarbone that has sidelined him since preseason camp. 

  ”He’s improving. He got to go through some drills today,” Paul Petrino, though he declined to give a timetable on when the senior might be cleared to play. 

  Early in practice, the rain came and players had to deal with it while working inside Reynolds Razorback Stadium. Apparently, the wet conditions didn’t affect the offense Tuesday.

  ”It was quite a bit of rain, but we threw and caught the ball a lot better tonight. So it was good,” Petrino said. “We’re going to end up playing a game in the rain sometime, so it was nice to see guys running around.”

  Well, that’s it for now. And as always, I guess I’m obligated to give a shameless plug and say you can follow me on Twitter (@NWAAlex).

Arkansas offensive coordinator Paul Petrino spoke to the media after Thursday’s practice.

The biggest news? He gave us an update on receivers Lucas Miller and London Crawford. Miller broke his collarbone in the preseason. Crawford broke his during the season opener.

But Petrino said Miller could be coming back soon.

“We’re hoping best scenario, Alabama,” Miller said. “Worst, the week after that (against Texas A&M). That’s what I’ve heard.”

Crawford obviously has a longer timetable until he can return. If he returns this season. Petrino was asked if there has been any discussion about Crawford redshirting and he said there is a chance.

“That’s a possibility,” Petrino said. “We all talked about that and a lot of that depends on how fast he heals. But with him having the redshirt available, that’s a positive for him and us.”

Arkansas has gotten more bad news on the injury front today.

WR Lucas Miller, who was working his way back from the knee injury he suffered late last year, will be out for 4 to 6 weeks after breaking his collarbone Thursday. Miller went down hard diving to make a catch during the workout. He was in obvious pain and stayed on the field for several minutes.

The Razorbacks say Miller is scheduled to undergo surgery tomorrow to repair his collarbone. If Miller misses just four weeks, he could be back in time for the Georgia game on Sept. 19. If he is out for the full six weeks, Miller would be looking toward a return for the Texas A&M game.

Either way it’s an unfortunate break for Miller, who was looking to add to his 2008 success. The senior caught 30 passes for 490 yards with 2 touchdowns last season before injuring his knee at Mississippi State.

It’s also a blow to Arkansas’ receiving corps. The Razorbacks still have plenty of options at the position with the likes of Joe Adams, London Crawford, Greg Childs and Jarius Wright, but Miller had impressed Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino with how quickly he had come back from his knee injury.

He is the third player to suffer a serious injury during the first two weeks of practice. TE Chris Gragg (dislocated ankle) and CB Isaac Madison (torn ACL) are both out for the season.

  Thursday morning proved to be one of the more eventful and definitely the most physical practice Arkansas has had this preseason, though it wasn’t what coach Bobby Petrino had hoped to see. And here’s why:

  • Wide receiver Lucas Miller suffered an apparent right shoulder injury early in practice when he dove to make a catch. As he landed on the field inside Arkansas’ indoor practice facility, it appeared that Miller drove his shoulder into the ground. He stayed down for several minutes, screaming in pain before he was helped off the field. He didn’t return to practice, and the extent of the injury isn’t known. But it didn’t look good.

  • The practice only got more physical. Two fights broke during a spirited goal-line drill that pit the offense versus the defense. The first skirmish was minor, but the second one started when offensive tackle DeMarcus Love and defensive end Tenarius “Tank” Wright ignored Petrino’s repeated whistling and threw punches at each other. The fight grew and continued for several moments until all the individuals involved were pulled a part.

  Upset with the fighting, Petrino yelled at his team and made them run sprints for a few minutes. Love and Wright, meanwhile, were forced to spend the rest of practice pushing rocks, doing crunches and taking part in other conditioning exercises. Oddly, they did these exercises while standing or sitting next to each other on the sideline.

  • Now on to something a bit more upbeat. Arkansas has a new running back on its roster, though he’s wearing an old number. Freshman Garry Grace is an invited walk-on who has joined the team and took part in his first practice Thursday morning. Grace played at the same high school in Alpharetta, Ga., as safety Elton Ford. Grace was wearing No. 42, which came open when tailback Adrian Moore decided to transfer.

  Coincidentally, Moore’s departure freed up a spot on the 105-man roster for Grace, who was recently cleared to play. He spent his first practice in shorts, doing conditioning work separate from the rest of the team.

  Arkansas practices again later today. We’ll have more on Miller’s injury, and hopefully the tempers cool down. But this is football practice after all.

  Since Arkansas went through its first extensive scrimmage of preseason camp, there is plenty of information to come out of Saturday.

  Robbie Neiswanger was nice enough to add up the statistics from the 154-play scrimmage, while I typed up what Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino had to say about the day. Here are some highlights from Petrino’s news conference following the scrimmage.

  On the performance of quarterbacks Ryan Mallett and Tyler Wilson:

  “I think Ryan Mallett did a good job of completing passes and knowing where to go for the most part. I think what he has to improve on is not taking sacks and not taking negative plays. He’s got to know when to throw the ball away. He’s not a scrambler or a running quarterback, so he has to be able to throw the ball away and get us to second-and-10. We had way too many second-and-extra-longs, which I didn’t like. 

  “Tyler again shows how well he can throw the ball. He’s got to be able to execute the offense and do the different things in the running game and not fumbles snaps, and keep improving in that part.”

  On how the running backs played:

  “Played a lot running backs. I think initially you see Dennis Johnson stand out. I thought he played fast and made some plays. The plan for Michael Smith was to take one series and get him out, so we got that accomplished and he made one nice run. I think made some yards after contact. And then I thought Broderick Green showed some power. We ran him when he was tired. We gave him the ball about five, six, seven times in a row, which was good to see because that’s when you got to wear the defense down. I was happy about that.

  “Knile (Davis) is struggling. You can see he missed the early part of camp, doesn’t really know all of his assignments and tracks. He’s just struggling. He’s behind everybody else. Ronnie Wingo showed what he could do in the open field. He’s explosive, very good athlete, does a nice job cutting.”

  On the problems with the quarterback-center exchange:

  “Yeah, there’s some problems out there. We haven’t had them up to this time, but once it gets live, once the centers get tired- The quarterbacks and the centers get to get extra chances in practice Monday and get in better condition. That’s something that we’re not going to stand for. I was really disappointed in the one in shotgun because we haven’t had that one at all. So some of it is the quarterback pulling out. Ryan pulls out sometimes, and some of it is the centers get tired and don’t get the ball up like they need to.”

  On the performance of the wide receivers:

  “We saw guys that can make plays. Jarius Wright has the speed, Joe (Adams) can really run with the ball. The more we can get him the ball, the more he can run with it. I thought (Greg) Childs stood out, had a lot of third-down conversions out of Childs and he ran hard with the ball. I think London got a little bit dinged up, I’m not sure exactly what’s wrong with him. But we got a good receiving corp. It would be nice to get Lucas back. He actually could have went today, but he didn’t deserve to get to scrimmage because he some practices.”

  On how the defense performed:

  “No. 10 (linebacker Wendel Davis) made a lot of tackles. I think he’s come back and ran around, made a lot of tackles. I thought our defensive ends put some pressure on the quarterback. We have to have much better discipline by our rush guys inside. You know, they’re going out of their lanes and that’s why you see the quarterbacks run down the field just about anytime they wanted to. So we need to improve that.”

  On the performance of kicker Alex Tejada:

  “You know, you can’t miss the first one. He came back, which I think is a good thing. Come back and finish strong, but you can’t miss an easy chip shot. Some of that was the snap. The snap was off line, but there’s really no excuse from that far. You got to kick it through the uprights.”

  The past two days have not been good to the Razorbacks. Injuries are beginning to add up, and it has been apparent that several offensive playmakers aren’t at practice.

  I posted a blog earlier about tight end Chris Gragg suffering a likely season-ending ankle injury during Wednesday morning’s practice, but there was some other news to come out of the 2 1/2-hour session. Here is what we learned:

  • For starters, we saw a scene early in practice that I can’t recall seeing before. Safety Elton Ford, who’s returning from cracked vertebrae in his neck, had a scary moment when he went down after colliding with a wide receiver during a pass play in 7-on-7 drills. He took off his helmet, and an Arkansas athletic trainer came out to check on him.

  Here is where it got unusual.

  When Ford stood and walked off the field, a number of players began clapping for him. It’s not often that players clap for one of their teammates, even when one of them gets up after an injury. Ford walked to the sidelines, had a trainer check his neck, and after a few minutes, he returned to practice. He participated in 11-on-11 drills, so he appeared to be fine.

  • Not every Arkansas player, however, was able to come back from an injury. As I mentioned in the previous blog on Gragg, tight end D.J. Williams continued to miss practice with a minor ankle injury. Meanwhile, wide receiver Lucas Miller (knee), offensive tackle DeMarcus Love and offensive guard Grant Cook (knee) were held out of practice.

  • There was some bright spots from practice. In fact, Arkansas spent the last part of practice going through a short full-contact scrimmage. The offense got the best of the defense, and quarterback Ryan Mallett looked good under center. He found freshman wide receiver Cobi Hamilton, who had beaten cornerback Isaac Madison on a deep pass. Hamilton was ruled down at the 1-yard line, though Mallett said it should have been a touchdown.

  Later, Mallett connected with wide receiver Jarius Wright on a 32-yard touchdown pass.

  Second-team quarterback Tyler Wilson drove the offense downfield as well. He found tight end Joseph Henry on a 17-yard touchdown pass, and on the next series, he handed the ball off three straight time to running back Broderick Green. Green gained 40 yards on the first two carries before breaking off a 25-yard score that looked way too easy.

  There was more from practice, but this was just the Cliffnotes version. Check out the blog later today or The Morning News on Thursday for more.