After spring practice ends, expectations not high for Razorback fans

One thing a 2-10 season does is lower the expectations of the fan base for the next year.

For Arkansas fans that means you will find few that can see a bowl trip coming in December, but getting more than two is a bar they can all leap over.

Spring practice finishing didn’t do much to raise the hopes.

Chad Morris doesn’t appear too concerned as he stumps across the state at the various Razorback Club meetings. He knows the Hogs aren’t where they need to be, but you get the idea that’s going to be the same theme every year.

Looking ahead, the schedule has four games Arkansas should win. It’s the spring and we can be optimistic, but Portland State, Colorado State, San Jose and Western Kentucky are games that should be winnable.

If the Hogs don’t win those four games, well, it’s going to be a long year.

That leaves an SEC schedule that proved winless last year. They were in games against Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Vanderbilt and LSU. You never really got the feeling Arkansas was going to win those games, but they were in position to win.

The SEC West, of course, is going to be brutal. That’s not unusual.

Last year, though, the Hogs were only blown out in the West by Alabama, Auburn and Mississippi State.

This year there are more questions than answers surrounding the Tigers and the Bulldogs. Gus Malzahn is drawing fire from within and there are some down in Starkville not entirely optimistic about Joe Moorhead in his second season with all the players who left.

Ole Miss, the second week of the season, is another team that has to replace the playmakers from a team that shouldn’t have beaten the Hogs last year in Little Rock.

Who knows what the two teams in the East — Kentucky and Missouri — are going to be.

That is the whole point of why so few preseason predictions are anywhere close to correct by November. It’s easy to pick the top few teams (Clemson, Alabama), but then it gets rather dicey.

Last year’s preseason Top 10 saw half not finish there, two others were still in the Top 25 and three were not ranked at all at the end.

There were 10 teams last season not ranked in the Top 25 before opening weekend that finished there in the final poll. On the flip side that means 10 were ranked, but fell out of sight by the end of November.

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Treat preseason picks as a complete guess usually featuring a pick or two based on hope, which usually isn’t a good plan, but is required for fans.

At Arkansas hope is about all they have right now.

We didn’t find out anything in the spring. Too many players were not there, especially on offense at every position.

None of the injuries are remotely serious (every one is expected to be 100% by August), but it also meant we only saw about 10-15% of the Hogs have on offense.

“That’s by design,” Morris said after the Red-White game.

As an aside, these spring games won’t give you a clue of what to expect in the fall. They are simply opportunities to let fans see their heroes on the field in uniform, but you can’t draw many conclusions from it.

When the game started I noted there were as many game one starters standing on the sideline as on the field for the offense.

Ben Hicks will start against Portland State at quarterback. He may not still be there by the Texas A&M game on September 29. I’m old enough to remember Barry Lunney losing the starting job in spring while he was playing baseball, then being the starter by the fourth game of the year.

That’s not a prediction to start a Connor Noland discussion but just pointing out the starter in the first game may not be there long. There will be three newcomers by August — Nick Starkel and KJ Jefferson along with Noland.

The quarterback room will have Hicks, John Stephen Jones, Jack Lindsey and Daulton Hyatt with the three newbies. It will be surprising if only one out of the seven stars every game, regardless of injury situations.

If you’re looking for a season win total, check back in August. It’s too early now to start that speculation, but this team will be better. Everybody is hoping that translates to more wins.

When Sylvester Croom was coaching at Mississippi State, he told me in August, “we may be a better team, but not win as many games.” At the time, I thought that was an odd statement for a coach to make on a radio show.

He was right, though, about the number of wins. He got fired.

Somehow I’m not expecting any statements like that from Morris. He was a math major in college, remember.

And he knows as well as anyone two wins is a low bar.

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