Word broke a little over an hour after Chad Morris’ signing day press conference on sports radio that former Texas A&M defensive coordinator John Chavis was in contract talks for the same post at Arkansas.
Which, if you’ve paid much attention to football the last few years, raises the queston of why?
As recently as five years ago Chavis was a hot commodity. That’s when he was coordinating a defense against offenses that got in a huddle, discussed whatever, clapped, everybody lined up and ran a play.
When teams started running more and more no-huddle offense along with run-pass options, Chavis defenses went from the top to ordinary at best.
Barrett Sallee pointed these facts out in his “SEC: Smothered and Covered” podcast on Razorback Sports Radio.
There are questions why Chavis would be a surprising choice for Morris’ first staff at Arkansas:
• His defenses don’t work well against the hurry-up, no-huddle offenses in vogue today.
• At age 61, he’s considerably older than what is expected on Morris’ staff.
• While the defensive coordinator at Texas A&M, his defenses basically couldn’t stop the scout team when they used tempo and run-pass options.
• This past season, the Aggies allowed Arkansas 457 yards of offense and 43 points, the year before 491 yards (but just 24 points) and in 2015 the Aggies gave up 457 yards of offense.
• His defenses ranked over the last three years at A&M (in order), 59th, 89th, 41st.
• If he is the choice, why has Morris allowed the lack of a defensive coordinator to hurt him so badly in recruiting?
He has been in the conversation since the beginning.
But so has Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables, although no one is predicting him to come to Fayetteville.
At Wikipedia, Chavis was listed Wednesday as the defensive coordinator at Arkansas, but anybody can post just about anything about anybody there.
