Posted by ESPN.com's Chris Low

Coming off back-to-back losses and the worst offensive performance of the season, Arkansas tight end D.J. Williams said earlier this week that it’s time for the Hogs to get their swagger back.

Getting Williams back into the offense could go a long way toward accomplishing that as the Hogs take on Texas A&M this Saturday in the Southwest Classic (ESPN2, 7:30 p.m. ET).

After an All-SEC season a year ago that saw Williams lead the team in receptions (61), receiving yards (723) and receiving touchdowns (3), he’s been quiet through the first three games this season.

Arkansas has struggled to get him the ball, and he enters the Texas A&M game with eight catches for 104 yards and a touchdown.

Where the Hogs have really missed Williams is on third down. They’re 116^th nationally in third-down conversions, converting only 8-of-38 (21.1 percent).

The only FBS team that’s converted fewer third downs thus far is Arkansas State.

“We haven’t been able to get the ball to D.J., who’s a guy last year that converted a lot of third downs for us,” Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino said.

The Hogs also hope senior receiver Lucas Miller will be healthier this week. He played for the first time against Alabama after breaking his collarbone in August, but he wasn’t very effective.

Alabama held Arkansas to 2-of-14 on third down last week. Not counting a pass interference penalty, the Hogs didn’t convert anything longer than third-and-6. They also had more penalty yards (98) than rushing yards (63).

“A lot of the issues are our own, not completing passes when guys are open, not covering up blockers when we have the right protection set, and we’ve had a couple of drops,” Petrino said of the Hogs’ third-down woes.

“It’s one of those things I’m not happy about. We’ve always been a good third-down team. We work hard at it.”

Unlike Alabama’s defense last week, Arkansas will be going up against a Texas A&M defense that’s extremely young. The Aggies have 14 freshmen or sophomores in their two-deep and gave up 30 points to Utah State a couple of weeks ago.

Petrino doesn’t care who the Hogs are going up against on defense. He just wants to see them play their game.

And a big part of that is not being in third-and-long all the time.

“We’ve got to get back to doing what we’re doing,” Petrino said.