FAYETTEVILLE -- Alabama’s offense ran only 20 plays in the first half on Saturday.

The Crimson Tide made up for its lack of quantity with quality in the 49-14 win in Reynolds Razorback Stadium.

Sparked by Glen Coffee’s 87-yard first-quarter touchdown run, Alabama averaged 11.3 yards per play in the first half — 14.1 yards per play on the ground. Coffee finished with 162 yards rushing on 10 carries, adding a 31-yard touchdown run early in the second half that put Alabama up 42-7.

“When it’s that easy, you just gotta run,” Coffee said. “You just make it simple and just run with the ball.

“The holes were that big, and it just makes it that much easier for us running backs when the line is blocking like that.”

Alabama finished with 328 yards rushing on 35 carries, an average of 9.4 yards per carry. It also had six plays of 25 yards or more.

“Really disappointing against the run today, obviously,” Arkansas defensive coordinator Willy Robinson said. “A lot of yards, big plays. I’m not going to point out what the issues were there.

“I thought we would be better at what we were doing. We just did not operate and execute.”

Alabama coach Nick Saban credited the Crimson Tide offense for its play in the first half, but he also was frustrated afterward at the team’s defense for not forcing Arkansas’ offense off the field. Arkansas ran 47 offensive plays in the first half, holding the ball for 21 minutes, 52 seconds, while Alabama’s 20 plays took just 8:08.

In the second quarter, the Razorbacks held a 12:34-2:26 time of possession advantage — though Alabama’s defense played a role in that with two interceptions of Arkansas quarterback Casey Dick that were returned for touchdowns.

“That was the one thing we really thought we could do in this game was control the line of scrimmage with our line and hold the ball,” Saban said. “But we didn’t hold the ball. They had the ball more than we had the ball because we couldn’t get off the field on third down and stop them on defense.

“We made a lot of big plays that ended up being relatively short drives, and we’ll take those as much as we can.”

The Alabama running game was so effective throughout the game that senior quarterback John Parker Wilson, who had thrown for a combined 570 yards in the last two years against Arkansas, finished with just 74 yards through the air on 6 of 14 passing.

“We came out and really dominated,” Wilson said. “It really wasn’t much of a game. We just pounded the ball and let the clock run, that’s just how it was working for us.

“We could have scored more, but hey, we beat (Arkansas) that bad, so we just kept running it.”