No desperation for Hogs, Morris, despite historically rocky beginning

Whether you want to hear it or not, Chad Morris keeps telling fans he’s trying to build a program at Arkansas and he never expected it to be a fast or easy process.

It’s a good bet he didn’t think he’d be sitting at 4-13 at roughly the halfway point of his second season, but he’s not losing sight of here he’s trying to go.

By the way, that’s the worst start for a coach in program history, but Morris didn’t exactly inherit a situation poised for immediate success.

“We have to keep pushing this program forward,” Morris said on his radio show Wednesday evening.

Don’t misunderstand all of this. Morris wants to get wins as badly as any fan and he knows that’s the ultimate thing that will measure his tenure.

By the same token, you might as well settle in and wait for it to play out because he’s not going anywhere anytime soon, despite what message boards and fans may think is best.

Morris doesn’t appear to be distracted by it. Seeing him on his daily runs around campus with director of operations Randy Ross is always a positive sign. At least fans aren’t running over the curb trying to get at him.

It appears he has this team focused on at least talking about fixing the details.

Listening to quarterback Nick Starkel talk about how his interception against Texas A&M started bad when the play blew up, then got worse with him being injured was just one sign.

“You practice one way the whole week always getting it,” he said after practice Tuesday. “You’re always getting a look, always getting guys blocked where we have [Rakeem Boyd] running wide open.”

The problem was, the Aggies kinda threw a wrench into the whole thing.

“We get in the game and the guy kinda plays in between us so the shovel pass turns into a real throw with the guy on him,” Starkel said. “I’ve just got to know sometimes they get us. Sometimes they beat us on a play. I’ve got to throw the ball away. I’ve got to do a better job of throwing the ball away or holding onto it and just run out there. Protect points in the red zone.”

It’s a point the coaches have been hammering into the quarterbacks for awhile. The problem is the only real way to “get it” is experience it in a game.

Fans want to blame the coaches, but there is no way to simulate an actual game. Before you say they should practice what to do when it all goes sideways, remember there’s only a limited number of hours they can practice every day.

In case you don’t know, they can only have 17 hours a week on a game week, plus three hours for the game. The days of scrimmaging and having to turn the lights on are gone.

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Experience is a tough teacher. You get the test first, then the lesson.

“Every possession has got to end with a kick,” Starkel said. “We’ve always got to reserve the right to punt, and also we’re not bad playing with a field goal instead of an interception.”

It’s frustrating for fans. They blame the coach, the quarterback and the athletic director in the time-honored Razorback tradition.

Morris either doesn’t pay attention or isn’t letting a soul know he does.

And he’s not losing sight of his goals, which is for a program, not a single game. He’s said a couple of times the game against A&M was the best since he’s been here, despite it being a loss.

“We’ve set the bar,” he said on his radio show this week. “Now nothing less than that is acceptable.”

Now he’s got to figure out how to get a win with that.