Don’t expect anything to be settled soon at quarterback for Hogs

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We’ll find out this year with Arkansas if players can make enough dramatic improvements from one year to the next to make a difference.

Sam Pittman is talking positive about this team making off-season improvements, but even he acknowledged Monday that’s kinda normal.

“Everybody says they’ve had a good off-season, but we have,” he said.

He does have a lot of returning starters coming back from a team that was 3-7. Considering the covid issues, you can try to translate that to a normal year any way you want.

The hope for Razorback fans is that Bear Bryant was wrong in 1971 before the season when it was pointed out to him he didn’t have a lot of starters coming back from back-to-back 6-5 teams.

“Worst damn thing in the world is to have a bunch of guys coming back from a bad team,” he grumbled.

The Hogs have a bunch of guys returning, but the most important player from last year had a pro day for NFL scouts earlier this week and Feleipe Franks will get a shot to be playing on Sundays.

He won’t be back and that’s the biggest question mark.

KJ Jefferson has the job right now and, apparently, he’s going to have to lose it. In the 50 minutes or so the media got to watch practice Thursday he was inconsistent, to be polite.

It’s clear he’s got the arm strength to throw the ball through a brick wall but the question is, well, which wall was he aiming for? Especially on deep passes (at one point he overthrew four fade routes … 40 yards downfield).

He’s good running the ball and better throwing on the run, but in the SEC sooner or later you’ve got to hit the deep passes or you’re going to have a problem.

Against Missouri in his only start, he threw enough that he finally hit a deep one to Treylon Burks.

It’s spring and it’s early, though. There are no warning bells … yet. Way too early for that based on a very limited number of displays.

What Jefferson has is teammates and coaches pulling for him.

“He’s getting better every day and our timing is getting better every day,” wide receiver Mike Woods said Thursday after practice.

Things are also different off the field, too.

“He’s being a lot more vocal,” Woods said. “We have a lot more communication with him. Even when we come off the field and shoot him a text, or whatever, we just have a lot more communication between him and the receivers.”

Pittman made it clear Monday that Jefferson is No. 1. The media hasn’t had Jefferson for interviews since he’s been here, but we were told Thursday after Zooms with Woods and linebacker Bumper Pool that was coming soon.

The guy that is the most intriguing at quarterback is Malik Hornsby, who threw a nice, deep fade pass on the money to John David White.

That is a tough route that requires arm strength, touch and accuracy because the only way to describe it is take a trash can 40 yards away and try to drop the ball into it.

“Malik looks great,” Woods said. “We all know he’s a speedster. He’s got a rocket for an arm. It will be a great battle this season.”

All of which is why you have to wonder if Jefferson being named No. 1 right now is as much trying to boost his confidence as anything else.

The guess is there’s a lot of time before the season kicks off.

And Jefferson still has to earn the job.

Missouri’s Martin after downing Georgia to advance to face Hogs

The Tigers downed Georgia on Thursday night and move ahead in the SEC Tournament against Arkansas for third time this year.

Pool on having new position coach, defense making strides

Arkansas linebacker Bumper Pool talked Thursday about new position coach Michael Sherer and some tweaks to defense.

Woods working on technique, how Jefferson is progressing

Mike Woods talked with the media after Thursday’s spring practice about improving, quarterback KJ Jefferson taking leadership role.

Holt: No update on Williams’ status; previews NCAA track meet

Bob Holt didn’t have an update on Jaylin Williams’ status for SEC Tournament on Halftime plus talked about the NCAA indoor track meet.

Moody named second team on Katz’s All-American lineup

Arkansas guard Moses Moody was named second team All-American on the Andy Katz NCAA March Madness squad.

Moody ranks third in the SEC and third among NCAA freshmen in scoring (17.5 points). Moody and fellow All-American honorees Cade Cunningham (Oklahoma State) and Evan Mobley (Southern Cal) were the only freshmen in the NCAA to average at least 16.0 points and 5.0 rebounds this season.

Moody was the only SEC player represented on the 15-player squad and is the first Razorback since Bobby Portis (2015) to earn second team All-America.

Overall, Moody is the 32nd Razorback to earn an All-American honor and gives Arkansas an All-American for the third consecutive year, joining AP honorable mention All-Americans Mason Jones (2020) and Daniel Gafford (2019).

Moses Moody Season Honors

• Second team All-American (Andy Katz NCAA March Madness)

• SEC Freshman of the Year (Coaches)

• SEC Newcomer of the Year (Media)

• First team All-SEC (Coaches)

• First team All-SEC (AP)

• First team All-SEC (USA TODAY Sports Network)

• SEC All-Freshman Team

• 3x SEC Freshman of the Week

• SEC Men’s Basketball Community Service Team

2021 Andy Katz NCAA March Madness All-Americans

First Team
Luka Garza, Iowa
Ayo Dosunmu, Illinois
Jared Butler, Baylor
Cade Cunningham, Oklahoma State
Corey Kispert, Gonzaga

Second Team
Evan Mobley, Southern California
Hunter Dickinson, Michigan
Kofi Cockburn, Illinois
Drew Timme, Gonzaga
Moses Moody, Arkansas

Third Team
James Bouknight, UConn
Miles “Deuce” McBride, West Virginia
Jalen Suggs, Gonzaga
MaCio Teague, Baylor
Moses Wright, Georgia Tech

RECRUITING THURSDAY: Davenport on pair of LR commits

Democrat-Gazette recruiting writer Richard Davenport said on The Morning Rush getting key in-state players key for Sam Pittman.

Murphy says people should not assume Tigers have auto win

Democrat-Gazette writer Tom Murphy said Thursday morning that it’s not automatic Missouri downs Georgia to advance to face Arkansas.

Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast: Next recruiting photo?

Tye & Tommy on the Muss recruiting photos, Richard Davenport joins, plus capacity increases with Arkansas baseball!

 

Long’s incompetence + arrogance costs Kansas to unload

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The description of Jeffrey P. Long is pretty simple because it’s what you get when you combine incompetence with arrogance.

Kansas discovered it about 30 months into dealing with him. Arkansas needed a decade to figure out his destructive combination.

Of course, at Arkansas he had some people (including a few media folks who created an entire additional source of revenue) publicly making excuses for his incompetence allowing him to continue with his ways.

And the Jayhawks get out cheap by comparison, paying him $125,000 a month for a year. He got considerably more from the Razorbacks, thanks to a contract he was awarded through hard-nosed negotiations with himself.

That last one is on others within the University system who didn’t appear to be too bothered with providing Long with a lot of adult supervision.

Once again, it was a football coach that brought him down.

When Les Miles’ problems surfaced a few weeks ago, the question for some was how he got fired in the first place. People around LSU have told me they knew what was going on with Miles and it wasn’t exactly a well-kept secret.

The reason Long didn’t know is because he may be the most incompetent athletics director in the history of big-time college athletics.

The first I heard about this was when he got the job in Fayetteville back in 2007. People I know close to Pittsburgh told me about him, but nobody in Arkansas didn’t appear too concerned about hearing any of that. Identical stories came from more than one person.

Long managed to escape any responsibility in the Bobby Petrino fiasco by managing to act surprised. If he didn’t know he was either blindly stupid or lying. A lot of other people knew what was happening.

His best two hires were Mike Anderson and Mike Neighbors. They were easy. Bret Bielema was hired because he wrote a love letter to Long kissing his backside with sincerity and feeling.

Long didn’t bother going behind looking at the resume, which is pretty much what he did with Miles at Kansas. With Bielema, he would have figured out Barry Alvarez built and Bielema just kept it on the tracks.

It appeared early at Arkansas Long either doesn’t network very well, doesn’t know the right questions to ask or lacks the guts to ask the right questions. He’s a political flunky, in other words.

Long had said during a virtual news conference on Tuesday that he asked Miles directly during the interview process in 2018 if there was anything in the past that could potentially embarrass the university or Kansas.

“He said no,” Long said. “We also did our due diligence by talking to individuals within the LSU athletics department to see if there was anything we should be aware of regarding Coach Miles’ tenure at LSU and received no indications of any issues.”

Of course, he did get Miles nearly $2 million to mutally part ways and managed to pocket about $1.35 million for himself.

Long seems really good at making money for other people and somehow getting a finder’s fee for doing so.

We heard from multiple people that covered Kansas athletics and were close to the athletic department there Long wasn’t basketball coach Bill Self’s boss. Self answered to folks above him, kinda like Nick Saban at Alabama answers only to Paul Bryant, Jr.

Somebody at Kansas at least knew which sport was important there.

Meanwhile, here at Arkansas, the athletic department has made a remarkable turnaround in just three years after Jeffrey got kicked to the curb.

That says more about his replacement, Hunter Yurachek, who has brought a culture of winning to a department that seemed to put that on the backburner.

Winning was something Jeffrey enjoyed, but it wasn’t a requirement. You can get away with that if you’re not an arrogant jerk, especially with the media.

In the end at Arkansas and apparently in Kansas, nobody was too concerned with stepping up to defend Long.

Now he’s out of a job again, getting paid over a million bucks (again) to go away.

It will probably help Kansas because it’s addition by subtraction.

Just like it’s been at Arkansas.