Has Morris managed to redshirt whopping number of highly-touted recruits?

Andy Hodges
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Has Morris managed to redshirt whopping number of highly-touted recruits?

It looks now like Chad Morris may have had a plan all along and while you may not like it or agree with it, it was something above hope.

Did he want to redshirt most of the 2019 recruiting class that had a lot of playmakers and recruits that have the potential to be difference-makers?

If that was the case, he has managed to get his plan at least to the point of at least accomplishing the goal of saving a year.

A whopping 71 percent of the 25 signees (17) are qualified for a redshirt with four games remaining. Of that number, 10 are assured of a redshirt and one of them has already entered the transfer portal.

Wide receiver T.Q. Jackson and defensive back Jalen Catalon can play in one more game and keep their redshirt. Defensive tackle Marcus Miller can play in half of the remaining games.

Eric Gregory, Beaux Limmer and Brady Latham can play in three of the remaining games.

Quarterback K.J. Jefferson leads a pack of talented high school recruits that can play in all four of the remaining games and still have four years of eligibility left.

Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek leans against a door frame during Chad Morris’ press conference after a 48-7 loss to Alabama on Saturday night. PHOTO BY CRAVEN WHITLOW | HITTHATLINE.COM

That list includes:

• Quarterback K.J. Jefferson
• Running back A’Monte Spivey
• Wide receiver Shamar Nash
• Tight end Hudson Henry
• Offensive lineman Dylan Rathcke
• Offensive lineman Chibueze Nwanna
• Defensive lineman Enoch Jackson
• Defensive lineman Taurean Carter
• Linebacker Zach Zimos
• Defensive back Malik Chavis

Only coaches who have had a plan like this with at least a nod of the head from the folks higher up the food chain even attempt something along these lines.

There have been whispers that started a few months ago that was the plan.

Did Morris tell athletics director Hunter Yurachek over a year ago that many of the holdovers from the Bret Bielema era hadn’t bought into the new way of doing things and he was going to have to clear out the riff-raff and build Arkansas football from the ground up?

Coaches so rarely attempt something like that it was kinda hard to imagine one having the fortitude to pull it off. If he didn’t have to win immediately it’s likely Morris wouldn’t have done it exactly that way.

Or was that the deal he negotiated back in December 2017?

Morris and this coaching staff hasn’t exactly acted like one that thought it was on the hot seat.

And, in case you were wondering, there are a good number of second-year coaches struggling at their positions this year.

Jeremy Pruitt seems to have finally at least broken the fall at Tennessee. Scott Frost at Nebraska is still in a downward spiral. Chip Kelly at UCLA may have the Bruins heading back around on an upward swing.

The Razorbacks have the roughest stretch of their schedule in the rear-view mirror and if Morris is going to at least show signs of progress, he’s got one-third of the season left to do it.

Only LSU in a few weeks is a game you look at and say, “no way” right now. Okay, some of you bailed on things back at the end of September, but maybe none of us knew the plan then.

We’ll find out over the final month of the season if this coaching staff has actually been able to develop the young talent. Again, we have no idea about those guys.

Morris is in the second year of a five-year contract and may have had a five-year plan all along. And, remember, when Yurachek was asked about Morris’ hiring when he got the job, he heartily and without reservation supported it.

It may not be the way a lot of fans would have done it (or wanted it done).

That’s not relevant.

It’s apparent that may have been Morris’ plan all along.

Now he’s just got to figure out a way to take advantage of pulling off a roster juggling act through the first two-thirds of the season.

 

Is Morris getting to most interesting part of plan we don’t know about?

Andy Hodges
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Is Morris getting to most interesting part of plan we don’t know about?

Through the first two-thirds of a season that is shaping up to be another historic failure, it’s looked as though Chad Morris has been afraid of having success.

Or else he thinks he knows how to do things better than a lot of other folks.

The questions all start at the quarterback position on offense, which has been a revolving door for two seasons now. Five different people have started and three of them aren’t on the team anymore.

The logic back in August at least made sense. Morris and offensive coordinator Joe Craddock apparently invoked some sort of logic that experience would be better than the quarterback they both said — repeatedly — got the team into the end zone in fall camp scrimmages.

Which is why that quarterback didn’t see the field in a game until October 26.

You wonder if they kept expecting the mistakes to go away with more experience from Ben Hicks and Nick Starkel. The only thing that appeared to improve was hitting defensive backs with more precision.

John Stephen Jones might not have all the measurables or even look like an SEC quarterback out there, but it became clear Saturday night against the No. 1 team in the country he knows how to play football better than either one of them.

“The moment was not too big for him,” Morris said in yet another post-mortem after getting throttled again by the Crimson Tide. “He did some really good things and just his spark, his confidence on the sidelines and when he would step into the huddle with those guys, I was proud of how he responded tonight.”

It became pretty clear, though, there were some packages that limited what they were going to try with Jones.

“We started putting in a few packages this week, I practiced those a little bit, and I was ready to go in,” Jones said later.

Jones at least does have a clue how to run an option. Hicks has shown he’s really only capable of running when the pocket collapses and he takes off on a scramble up the middle. Starkel looks like a lost stork when he tries it.

The biggest problems have looked all year like they are slow to make bad decisions.

“We’ve got to go back and study why we’re making some bad decisions with the football,” Morris said Saturday night.

Too often it looks like Morris is afraid to try something to win the game. Now, to be fair, I don’t think Morris is trying to tank games.

But either he knows something the rest of us don’t and hasn’t got a clue what to do.

What Morris might know the rest of us don’t is that the numbers in the win-loss column don’t matter … this year. Nobody can afford three straight years of abject failure.

Did Morris tell athletics director Hunter Yurachek shortly after being hired he was going to have to basically burn the thing to the ground and rebuild literally from the ground up?

More importantly, did Yurachek agree to that?

Surely both of them knew the public relations fallout that would result from that.

Oh, I hear constantly that this booster or that one is going to stop writing checks if Morris doesn’t win their own specific number of games, including one in the SEC.

No, they won’t. Their egos won’t let them quit writing those checks.

It might be a case where writing those checks gives them a chance to bend Yurachek’s ear occasionally and vent their frustrations. That’s been the case for 60 or 70 years.

But it usually doesn’t give them a vote unless they are in a position where they get to do that. All of that’s done in Little Rock by people who really have a lot of other factors to consider.

Could that be the reason we get the same explanations after the same results without a lot of changes?

These last four games could give some insight.

After a signing class that produced some pretty good results, 10 of them have stayed on the bench. Another seven still have that redshirt available after seeing limited time in a game or two.

That might just be the biggest indicator that Morris pitched a plan to Yurachek that he got the go-ahead to implement.

But we won’t know until after Thanksgiving.

Hog Reaction: Alabama

Tye Richardson
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Hog Reaction: Alabama

Phil, Tye, and callers on the 48-7 loss to Alabama

Sooner or later, Morris is going to have to answer to folks that matter

Andy Hodges
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Sooner or later, Morris is going to have to answer to folks that matter

It’s clear after the 48-7 debacle in Tuscaloosa on Saturday night there is an issue with Arkansas’ football program that starts maybe even above Chad Morris’ level.

In case you’re wondering, the game was nowhere nearly as close as that final score indicates. Yes, that’s how bad things have gotten.

What is becoming crystal clear is that winning football games for the Razorbacks is not a high priority at the very, very top.

Sorry, that’s not personal. There are some very intelligent folks at that level, but they need to just come out and say their main interest isn’t whether 22 players that attend classes in Fayetteville can win a football game or not.

Nobody else is going to say it, but Morris is clearly over his head. I was wrong. I bought into what a lot of people who have made a living that said Morris was ready for the SEC.

Hey, nobody said they were getting paid to be right with their free opinions.

But hiring an admitted “high school coach” that had never coached a game in the SEC to head up a program in the most competitive division of the best conference in all of college football was a mistake.

Have we reached the point to where the folks who make that decision either do it or just admit they fouled up replacing the previous coach, it’s burned to the ground and time to bring in somebody that knows what they’re doing at this level?

Or do you give Morris the final four games of the season to save himself?

Go ahead and giggle, but this team could get bowl eligible. Okay, they could finish with a 5-7 record, which would match his level of progress at SMU.

Two-thirds of the way through a second season that has now seen Morris start five different quarterbacks, he either can’t develop one or even recognize one he inherits.

Charleston’s Ty Storey, who was either run off or left of his own accord (take your pick on your favorite version), is 5-2 as a starter at Western Kentucky this year.

It’s a legitimate question to ask if Morris really knows how to recognize or develop a quarterback at this level.

The thing people at every level say is you figure out what you feel is the best you got and stick with him through thick and thin. Having a flavor of the week seldom turns into wins.

No, nobody expected the Hogs to win against the Crimson Tide, even with them starting a backup quarterback.

But they didn’t expect the starting quarterback to be Nick Starkel with three interceptions and whiffing on a good snap from center. All of that led to 24 of Alabama’s points.

Throw in a bad decision by Nathan Parodi to catch a kickoff and step out of bounds at the 2 leading to another score and there’s 31 of the Tide’s 48 points.

The defense didn’t play well enough to win the game, but it wouldn’t have been as bad as it was if the offense hadn’t quit setting them up on a short field repeatedly in the first half.

But all of that leads to the questions about Morris and if he understands the problem or has a clue how to fix it.

Let’s face it, Arkansas has never been a consistent Top 20 finishing in recruiting and has only been successful in the history of the program with coaches who can develop average players to a better level and have them over-achieving.

On top of that, you have to be able to motivate a team and put them in position to win games.

Right now Morris is failing on all of the important questions.

And you get the idea he better get it fixed … fast.

Sooner or later, the folks that matter will start to care. Or get tired of getting the same questions whenever they go in public.

The guess is those questions have started.

KNWA VIDEO: Foucha said Hogs felt good about game plan against Tide

ESPN Arkansas News Services
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VIDEO COURTESY OF KNWA

KNWA VIDEO: Jones says ‘job not complete, we didn’t get win’

ESPN Arkansas News Services
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KNWA VIDEO: Jones says ‘job not complete, we didn’t get win’

VIDEO COURTESY OF KNWA

KNWA VIDEO: Boyd on Jones’ coming in, giving Hogs’ offense spark

ESPN Arkansas News Services
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KNWA VIDEO: Boyd on Jones’ coming in, giving Hogs’ offense spark

VIDEO COURTESY OF KNWA

KNWA VIDEO: Morris on decision to go with Jones, ‘spark’ he provided

ESPN Arkansas News Services
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KNWA VIDEO: Morris on decision to go with Jones, ‘spark’ he provided

VIDEO COURTESY OF KNWA

KNWA VIDEO: O’Grady after Razorbacks’ loss to Alabama

ESPN Arkansas News Services
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KNWA VIDEO: O’Grady after Razorbacks’ loss to Alabama

VIDEO COURTESY OF KNWA

BAMA GAME: Hogs still stumbling, bumbling in 48-7 loss to Tide

Andy Hodges
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3
BAMA GAME: Hogs still stumbling, bumbling in 48-7 loss to Tide

Nobody expected Arkansas to come out on top against another No. 1 Alabama team on Saturday night, but Nick Saban self-imposed a mercy rule in the second half in a 48-7 win.

It was 41-0 at halftime with three interceptions thrown by Razorback quarterback Nick Starkel, who also threw in a fumble leading to 24 of those points.

Yes, it was that bad.

The Hogs couldn’t sustain any momentum offensively again, primarily because Starkel kept giving the top-ranked team gifts. It didn’t help when Nathan Parodi fielded a kickoff and stepped out of bounds on the 2.

If there was a positive in the carnage of an Arkansas team that is now 2-6 on the season and an 0-15 start for Chad Morris in SEC games, it was John Stephen Jones, who made a couple of cameo appearances in the first half of this one before somebody finally sat Starkel down.

Starkel finished 5-of-19 passing for 58 yards with three interceptions (one returned for a score) and a fumble when he couldn’t field the snap from center (which was fine) and it sailed downfield before Alabama fell on it.

By the time Jones got into any sort of rhythm, it was 41-0, but he did lead a 13-play, 85-yard drive that consumed 7:34 and ended with an 8-yard scoring pass to C.J. O’Grady.

About all it did was avoid a shutout, but it did show what the coaches talked about all August: Jones could get the team into the end zone more than the other quarterbacks.

He finished 6-of-7 for 49 yards and the scoring pass, but no interceptions and he also seemed more adept at the run-pass options this offense needs to have any shot at being successful.

It’s not important how far the quarterback runs, but that he can turn sacks into any kind of positive yardage and avoid turning the ball over.

Jones accomplished that.

The Hogs fell to 2-6 on the season with the loss and 0-5 in the SEC. They will host Mississippi State next Saturday on homecoming in a 3 p.m. game.

Another backup quarterback will keep Morris, Hogs winless in SEC play

Andy Hodges
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0
Another backup quarterback will keep Morris, Hogs winless in SEC play

It’s Arkansas’ luck the last few years that Alabama loses it’s star quarterback a week ahead of their matchup and it doesn’t appear there’s a thing the Razorbacks can do to take advantage.

Yeah, that may just about perfectly sum up the state of things for the Hogs these days. They are creating a new depth of bad for the SEC, not getting a league win now for a year and a half.

Tua Tagovailoa won’t be suiting up for the top-ranked Crimson Tide with an ankle injury similar to what he suffered last year in the SEC Championship game.

He really wasn’t back at full speed for the title game blowout, but Nick Saban didn’t go with Jalen Hurts in that game, which may or may not played a role in Hurts now becoming one of the leaders in the race for the Heisman Trophy this year … playing for Oklahoma.

Mac Jones will be the starter for the Tide and it will be his first start after a fine career with little pressure and less playing time.

But there’s probably nothing Arkansas can do to take advantage of it.

Alabama has enough everywhere else that it shouldn’t be close, but then again I didn’t think the game between Missouri and Vanderbilt last week would be, either … which promptly led to the Commodores winning the game going away.

Yes, it’s been that kind of year. Let’s face it, Tennessee actually made things interesting against the Tide last week until, well, they reverted to form. Let’s face it, if there’s a team that can mess up as spectacular as the Hogs’ offense it’s the Vols.

They were headed for a score to make it a one-score game midway through the fourth quarter, fumbled into the end zone and watched Bama’s Trevon Diggs take it over 100 yards to the other end zone and blow it open.

The Hogs were busy getting steamrolled by Auburn.

Alabama fans are nervous. Razorback fans are just glad this one’s in Tuscaloosa so they don’t have to make up excuses for not going to the game.

While Chad Morris, who promised fans he wouldn’t let them down if they would give him a chance when he was hired, has a large percentage who want to run him out of town.

Hey, at least when John L. Smith was filling in after Bobby Petrino flew through the handlebars the offense could move up and down the field pretty well and actually won a couple of SEC games.

Morris has coached a team last year that probably should have been at least 5-7 into a 2-10 disaster. They may be headed into that territory again.

There are some that are floating the story that Morris convinced athletics director Hunter Yurachek last year he was going to have to basically get rid of a bunch of holdover players and completely rebuild.

Apparently Yurachek agreed. Morris is coaching like someone who knows he’s safe this year. Whether his staff is or not isn’t known at this point.

A close road game in Tuscaloosa might buy Morris some breathing room, but only a week because right now the Mississippi State game on homecoming weekend looks like it should be competitive.

Whether Morris is in a position where he has to win an SEC game to keep his job or not is something I’m not sure even Yurachek even knows at this point.

What we do know is they won’t win against Alabama this week … but it might not be the blowout folks expect.

Alabama 31, Arkansas 20

Last week, Peter Morgan and I were both 5-1 (thanks to Missouri for messing up a perfect weekend), so he continues to plod along two games behind.

Mississippi State at Texas A&M (-11.5)

If there’s a team in the SEC that has a fan base that is on par with the Hogs’ bi-polar Lunatic Fringe, it’s the Bulldogs. They are ready to run Joe Moorhead out of town, mainly because they can’t figure out how they put four of the first 44 players into the NFL Draft back in April and still manage to go 7-5 in the regular season. At least the ‘Dawgs have a league win, but they won’t get another one this weekend.

Texas A&M 31, Mississippi State 21

Auburn at LSU (-10.5)

Back in August, nobody figured this game would see LSU with this big of a favorite position, even at home. Auburn somehow managed to not impress many people with a 51-10 win over Arkansas last week, but that probably says more about the Hogs than Gus Malzahn’s team. How crazy is this year? LSU quarterback Joe Burrow is the leader for the Heisman.

LSU 34, Auburn 27

South Carolina (-4.5) at Tennessee

Good grief, even the Vols have managed to win an SEC game this year and they are terrible. Of course, they are in the East, which helps there. South Carolina beat Georgia, somehow. Now they will go to 3-3 on the season. None of this is helping Morris’ case at Arkansas, by the way, because most fans figure being as good as the bottom feeders in the East isn’t THAT hard to accomplish.

South Carolina 27, Tennessee 24

Missouri (-10) at Kentucky

Well, two weeks ago you figured this game was a leading contender to go into the Easy Pickings section, but not after Kelly Bryant led the Tigers to a loss against Vandy. The Wildcats even have a league win, beating Arkansas using a wide receiver at quarterback, but he won’t win this week … unless Missouri is really that bad.

Missouri 31, Kentucky 20

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