There are times in football where the players simply don’t do what they’re instructed to do. Repeatedly.
All of that’s why the loss to San Jose State probably shouldn’t be that surprising and there’s plenty of blame to go all around.
Yes, the players simply didn’t get it done. It happens at all levels, even with championship teams on occasion (and that’s not even implying this is a team that will be in a bowl game).
Coaches will fall on the sword and publicly blame themselves. In this case there were even some high school coaches who have never coached at the college level hollering something needs to be changed in Arkansas’ preparations.
Go sit down, son. You have no idea what you’re talking about. This is big boy football.
Defensively, after re-watching the game a couple of times and looking at some notes, the Razorbacks’ coaches looked like the third base coach at the World Series waving a runner around third base in the ninth inning.
The players didn’t move.
On several possessions, Chad Morris met the offensive line coming off the field and started chewing, then followed them to the bench … still yacking about what they obviously weren’t doing.
Despite what many of The Great Unwashed think, these coaches aren’t complete idiots. Morris didn’t forget offensive football and John Chavis hasn’t forgotten how to coach defense.
Every coach since the beginning of time has had a game or two where the players simply don’t do what they’re supposed to be doing.
And in today’s world, coaches have to handle things differently. Yell too much, players start entering the transfer portal. The NCAA already prohibits them from starting a practice at 6 a.m. and running Oklahoma Drills until half the team is puking or laid out.
Coaches get players for 17 hours a week, plus three hours allotted for games to equal a grand total of 20 hours.
“We used to do that in three days after a bad loss,” one old SEC coach said.
Shoot, when Bobby Bowden took his No. 1 Florida State team to Miami to kick off the 1988 season and promptly got beat 31-0.
Seething on the ride home, Bowden got the team off the bus from the airport and they started scrimmaging. It lasted awhile, but the Seminoles didn’t lose another game that year.
The rules don’t let coaches do it and half the players would quit if they tried it today.
Welcome to the world these coaches live in today.
When a team is playing the number of freshmen and sophomores the Hogs are playing, well, there will be ups and downs expected. The loss Saturday was a serious downer, but, unlike the North Texas game previously, there was a big, big difference.
This team came back in the fourth quarter to tie the score and had a shot do do it again in the final minute.
But quarterback Nick Starkel made a bad decision, then compounded it by underthrowing a pass, it was picked off (his fifth in the game) and that’s how that one shook out.
It happens when you take over a program that was in about as bad of shape as a program can get in the SEC.
Morris and this staff inherited about five years of subpar recruiting that was followed by five years of absolute neglect.
We were all fooling ourselves thinking it was going to get rebuilt to even mediocre in a couple of years. Quite frankly, there is absolutely no baseline in the last 60 years or so to even begin comparisons.
Young players make dumb mistakes. They beat Colorado State and suddenly thought all they had to do was show up against San Jose State and walk away with a win.
It’s a classic mistake that’s happened in football since somebody started putting air in a ball instead of chicken feathers.
But, things have apparently been different this week, at least on the defensive side of the ball.
Coaches have privately said players are either going to start doing what they’re supposed to do or somebody else is going to be put in. Expect to see some fresh faces against Texas A&M.
Even Chavis, who will be going back to the pressbox this week instead of being on the sidelines.
“He definitely brought a lot more intensity to practice today you could say,” linebacker Hayden Henry said after practice Tuesday. “He brought a lot of intensity today and really focused on our fundamentals.”
Coaches apparently have pointed out the problems and you get the idea it wasn’t exactly polite.
“We might have gotten a little lackadaisical last week,” Henry said. “We are not going to let that happen again.”
The wallowing around by the players even caught some of the leaders on the team by surprise.
“I was shocked the way we played and how late we responded,” senior linebacker De’Jon Harris said Tuesday. “I wasn’t expecting it and I know we we weren’t expecting it as as program.”
Everyone talked Tuesday about response, which is what Morris said Monday. In case you’re wondering it’s the same thing Nick Saban said two years in a row when Alabama got thumped by Ole Miss.
Continuing to gripe and moan over a loss won’t accomplish anything … even for fans.
Besides, nothing’s going to change until at least November of 2020. Sorry, folks, whether you agree or not that’s the reality of the situation.
Whether you like it or not.
