Razorbacks looking for any positives while fans looking for new coach

Ed Orgeron can’t win Saturday night and he knows it while Barry Lunney, Jr., can’t lose, but he knows any positives makes him a winner while Arkansas fans are more worried about who is going to be the new coach.

Relax. Nobody knows who the new coach is going to be for the Razorbacks.

For LSU tonight it’ll be Lunney.

You can listen to the game right here on HitThatLine.com if you live in the River Valley and Northwest Arkansas or over the air at ESPN Arkansas 95.3 in the River Valley, 96.3 in Hot Springs and 104.3 in Harrison-Mountain Home.

Arkansas GameDay starts at 1 p.m. with the Hogs’ broadcast starting at 3 p.m. ahead of the 6 p.m. kickoff.

One positive thing about Hunter Yurachek is he’s basically plugged up leaks coming in the search and the only thing that’s really come out lately is Memphis’ Mike Norvell is apparently more interested in the Florida State job than coming to Fayetteville.

It’s highly doubtful this job is the hot commodity fans are trying to convince themselves it is, as I pointed out on Friday.

Lunney got appointed as the interim coach when Yurachek finally threw in the towel on an 18-game tenure that was continuing to show each week how everybody tried an experiment with a coach who ultimately couldn’t even handle the basic press conference like an SEC coach.

You won’t hear from this corner that Morris took a team that should be contending for the SEC West title and managed to coach them to a 4-18 record.

The Hogs should have won six last season and be sitting on at least seven right now.

You wonder now if Morris actually lost the team after his first game when a starter went into the transfer portal and upperclassmen basically lost interest.

New coaches have to show some form of improvement and the only thing that improved was Morris’ complete inability to coach at the SEC level. He was about perfect in that, being unable to prepare, motivate or develop players.

About the only positive thing he managed to do was set up the next coach with some pretty good players on campus with 17 redshirt freshmen coming back from one of the better recruiting classes in recent years.

Lunney will get to play a lot of those guys against LSU on Saturday night.

But they won’t be enough to win. I’m not even sure they’re enough to still be within a range to keep the Tigers’ starters in the game in the second half.

They might be able to stay within the spread, however, which is a whopping 42.5 points at the ESPN Pick Center.

While he refused to say it, Lunney will likely start freshman K.J. Jefferson at quarterback, making it a full seven different starters behind center over the last two years.

Morris couldn’t make up his mind at the most important position on the field, so Yurachek took away that torment for him.

If Jefferson manages anything offensively early against a top-ranked LSU team that’s weak point is the defense. Yeah, I’m as surprised to type that as you are to read it.

This may be like the Alabama game in 2018. The Hogs put up the most amount of yards and points on Crimson Tide before they were demolished in the national title game.

Orgeron will get no credit from the fans or the college football playoff committee for this game, regardless of the score.

LSU 58, Arkansas 34

Easy pickings

Alabama over Western Carolina, Auburn over Samford, Kentucky over Tennessee-Martin, Vanderbilt over East Tennessee State and Mississippi State over Abilene Christian.

Seriously, you still think playing nine SEC games in a year is ridiculous when you look at that lineup of games?

Texas A&M at Georgia (-13)

Jimbo Fisher is in his second season in College Station and things are not going as planned.

Being a 13-point underdog is not what the Aggies faithful had in mind when they committed $75 million to Fisher last year.

This was almost in the Easy Pickings category, but then this whole exercise would have been far too short.

Look for the Bulldogs to cover in this game, mainly because they didn’t have a particularly good game against Auburn in last week’s win.

Georgia 31, Texas A&M 10

Tennessee at Misouri (-3.5)

No, seriously, the Tigers are favored at home in this one, which means the general public hasn’t accepted that the Vols are improving every week while Mizzou is positioning for a season-ending pillow fight in War Memorial Stadium.

For a team that’s not eligible to go to a bowl game this season, if they can get up for this game there might be a different outcome, but I think they have cratered for the year.

Tennessee has made rapid improvement this year … in the second year of the Jeremy Pruitt coaching tenure.

They keep getting better.

Tennessee 28, Missouri 14