If Chad Morris had many folks left trying to make a case for him to remain coach of Arkansas’ football program, most of them had left the general vicinity of the stadium before the end of the third quarter.
The players don’t appear particularly interested. The fans are past the frustration level. It’s so bad Arkansas State Police had a very visible presence at the end of the latest debacle Saturday, a 45-19 loss to Western Kentucky.
This team has gone backwards from the first game Morris coached here. There have been complete collapses as the season has dragged on.
Even folks on the SEC Network have noted it.
“I see no improvement,” former Auburn coach Gene Chizik said Saturday night.
Chizik also noted there may be lockerroom issues based on the lack of development or improvement.
Those issues have been whispered for awhile.
In the post-mortem following Saturday’s loss where a former Arkansas quarterback came into Fayetteville less than a year after starting here and looked like an All-American candidate, Morris blamed the players.
Former players are sick and tired of hearing that.
AMEN! This is NOT a player problem. 4 out of the 5 years I was at the UofA. I honestly felt like I improved my game in 1 or more areas. Year 5 that wasn’t the case. These coaches are good guys just not sure if they know how to develops players and come up with game plans. https://t.co/ChBtObATrZ
— Jared Cornelius (@officialjred) November 9, 2019
Jared Cornelius basically disappeared from the Razorbacks’ offense last year. He wasn’t the only one.
As a guy who played at 18 stop blaming the kids you have and start developing them. The recruiting blame game isn’t the answer: coaching them up is. Today should be about the seniors either way. #wps
— Dan Skipper (@DanSkipper70) November 9, 2019
Morris said he’s the man to get it fixed, but he’s done nothing to offer any evidence that he even has a clue what to fix or how to handle it.
I’ll admit it, I was wrong about Morris. When he was hired in December 2017, I thought he had the right plan at the right time to pull the wagon out of the ditch.
Lately, it appears Morris can’t even find the ditch where the wagon is and has somehow managed to lie enough to convince himself he has a clue what he’s doing.
His solution is to recruit his way out of it. That’s always a critical component, but new coaches who have any degree of success are able to motivate, develop and coach up the players they inherited.
The Hogs have now had two coaches in a row that simply didn’t appear to have much interest in doing that and were hell-bent on building something they watched somebody else build … that wasn’t in the SEC.
Morris has one of the best running backs in the SEC in Rakeem Boyd and he averages 23.1 yards every time he touched the ball on Saturday against the Hilltoppers.
And he got the ball just eight times.
Morris didn’t really have an acceptable answer, either. All it did was make it look like he’s looking at the band or something during the game and not paying attention.
“Well, I think a lot of it had to do with … we had four possessions in the first half,” Morris stumbled through saying later. “The time of possession, we fell behind. Tried to mix it up a little bit, tried to throw the ball a little bit, but I think time of possession had a little bit to do with that.”
Part of that was because Western Kentucky didn’t have much of an answer for Boyd just like Arkansas’ defense didn’t have much of an answer for Storey.
Morris has managed to coach a team his first season to 2-10 that should have been 5-7. That’s not even taking into account a couple of other games that could have been won.
This team this year should be sitting with at least six wins today. Instead, they are staring another 2-10 season in the face and a coach who is drowning in the deep water of the SEC and can’t even find the shore to start swimming to it.
Morris has a team that is unmotivated and trying to win games without a clue of what to do or how to do it.
As Chizik said, there’s no chemistry and no consistency and no improvement anywhere.
He’s right when he says all fans want is hope.
All Morris is offering is a bunch of coach-speak doubletalk.
