After a season last year of watching Arkansas blow second-half leads, fans had hopes it was over with a new coaching staff.
Apparently not.
Colorado State found themselves down 27-9 in the third quarter against the Razorbacks and came all the way back to a 34-27 win in Fort Collins, Colorado, on Saturday night.
It’s an epic collapse for a team — and fan base — that thought all of that was behind them with Chad Morris coming in as the coach.
This game shows the name at the top may have changed, but not enough players did … so here we go again.
Put this one directly on Morris’ shoulders. Well, you can also throw a lot of it on John Chavis and the defense, too.
Yes, there was plenty of blame to go around on this one.
What will hurt worse than anything is that the Hogs were dominating the game through three quarters. They had 421 yards of offense at the end of the third period, then managed just 16 total offensive yards for the final frame.
Colorado State, on the other hand, had 234 yards going into a fourth quarter where they had 195 yards. Yes, you’re following correctly … the Rams put up 195 of their 429 yards in the game in the fourth quarter. Yes, 45 percent of their total offense in the game came in the final period.
That’s why Chavis has as many questions in this one as Morris and offensive coordinator Joe Craddock will have to answer Monday at high noon in their press conference.
Welcome to Arkansas, guys, because the honeymoon is officially over two weeks into the season.
If anything, the loss to Colorado State should give Morris and Craddock enough information to realize their quarterback is either going to be one of two true freshmen or he’s not on campus yet.
Ty Storey got the start based on his performance last week against Eastern Illinois. He didn’t play as well against the Rams. Cole Kelley came on in the second half and played like, well, Cole Kelley.
Storey completed just 5-of-13 for 36 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions. Kelley was 6-of-9 for 102 yards and two touchdowns.
In a game where Colorado State wasn’t consistently stopping the running game (299 yards for the game), they got into the red zone and tried to pass. Devwah Whaley had 165 yards on 26 carries. Rakeem Boyd put up another 67 yards on seven carries and Chase Hayden had 55 yards on 11 carries.
But in the red zone, the Hogs couldn’t run and tried to throw, which didn’t work, either.
A lot will be made of a decision to punt at the end of the third quarter. Facing fourth-and-1 at midfield, Morris made the decision to punt.
After that the Hogs just collapsed on both sides of the ball.
This is one that will be re-hashed for a week.
And for a new look, starting at the top, it looked an awful lot like what we saw in the old look for the previous two seasons.
