Just accept Hogs got a win, then move ahead to important game

First things first, Chad Morris really doesn’t care what the fans think about how big Arkansas’ margin of victory was over lightly-regarded Portland State on Saturday.

He ain’t paid based on point spreads.

But his future does rest on this season and this game pointed out some of the negatives we heard from people throughout fall camp. A couple with more than a passing knowledge of football have said this team won’t be much better than last year … if that.

They should know better. Razorback fans should really be able to remember a worse situation. Anybody recall Toledo in 2015?

That team waddled behind a coach that got a ridiculous raise off a 6-6 season to a 1-3 start, went 7-2 the rest of the way and fans were convinced things were back on track until the following year when the wagon wobbled a bit in Columbia, Mo., in the last game of the season and careened off into a ditch in Charlotte, N.C.

The wagon broke apart over the following year, leaving a bunch of uninspired players that quit on a coach who didn’t do things the way they wanted and you have the current situation.

In looking at the game twice with no distractions, that was, in many respects, the Beanie Bowl against a team they didn’t see every day. Morris called that game a glorified game of moving on and off the field.

At least that’s what it appeared Morris wanted to do. The offense looked extremely basic and more like less than what was installed last season, but the guess is that was intentional.

Same goes for the defense, which did look vastly improved. We heard all through camp about how they were much better at creating turnovers and we saw that against the Vikings with three interceptions and six sacks … all with some pretty basic sets and the occasional blitz just to give Ole Miss something to think about.

In retrospect, did anybody think Morris was going to open everything up against Portland State? Especially with an early SEC opener the next week?

The Hogs squandered chances to make this a score somewhere between 35-6 and 51-6. The score at the end was one of those things that simply happens in football … too many people trying to make a play and the wrong guy DOES make the play.

This could have been Morris simply wanting to get a win and some teaching film.

We’ve heard from highly successful coaches for nearly a century about the most improvement a team usually makes in a season is from the first game to the second.

Fans often lose sight of that. So do some of the so-called experts, who live in the moment without thinking a whole lot about the overall picture of the future.

The Razorbacks won’t play the same way against an Ole Miss team that maybe looked worse than the Hogs in their loss to Memphis.

Redshirt freshman Matt Corral was 9-of-19 (with an interception) in their opener for 93 yards. Ben Hicks was 14-of-29 (no interceptions, but some notable drops).

The guess here is Morris feels that stuff is something that can be fixed and seemed fairly confident it will be. You get the idea he’s more directly involved with the offense this year.

In the end, though, this is all going to sort itself out over the course of the next month.

By October we’ll know whether it’s enough to keep fans interested for the final two months or if Eric Musselman gets the spotlight before practices start.

But basing any longterm assessments on what we saw Saturday is jumping the gun.

It was a win, just accept it and move on.

A few other SEC teams would do that gladly today.