After yet another fourth-quarter meltdown by Arkansas there will be questions about the quarterback position which at times lately has resembled a schoolyard volunteer position.
The numbers aren’t that bad and we’ve all heard about how Chad Morris likes his numbers. Being a math major with a statistics minor at Texas A&M tends to indicate someone’s going to lean in that direction.
But sometimes a coach just has to go with the feel.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen it blow up both ways.
When Tom Landry coached the Dallas Cowboys he always referred to his “feel” for which quarterback to use. Folks tend to forget there always seemed to be some sort of quarterback controversy there. It was basically a revolving door most of his 29 years there.
After a particularly inept offensive performance one time in the 1980’s when the Cowboys couldn’t find a quarterback, Landry was asked why he didn’t make a change at the position when they couldn’t get close enough to a first down most of the day to even have a lot of debate over what to do.
“We weren’t moving the ball,” Landry said. He was serious and pretty much ignored the snickering and wide-eyed looks from the media. “If we’d been moving the ball and not scoring I might have made a change.”
That was Landry Code for his game plan blew up in his face (and he did the game plan for the offense, defense and special teams himself), so he wasn’t about to start trying to juggle quarterbacks to see if it would make a difference. He was convinced it didn’t matter.
Two games into this season, Morris hasn’t even looked at freshmen Connor Noland or John Stephen Jones. He’s already said there’s a package for Daulton Hyatt, which is code for there’s only a certain kind of plays he can do.
But could Noland or Jones actually do worse than the struggling Ty Storey and Cole Kelley have done through two games the Hogs should have won handily?
We’re seeing on the field what Morris and offensive coordinator Joe Craddock have talked about since the spring. Both quarterbacks do some good things, but nothing consistently enough for this team to hang it’s hat on.
Which begs the question why not see what the freshmen can do?
With the new redshirt rule, you can put them out there the next four weeks and if they don’t work out, well, they will have a redshirt available.
Could it get worse? Probably, but not much worse.
Both Storey and Kelley have rather unimpressive numbers.
Storey is 17-of-30 passing with two interceptions against Colorado State, three touchdowns for 297 yards. Kelley is 15-of-21 for 194 yards.
Add both of them together and you’ve got a routine single game for Ryan Mallett or Tyler Wilson.
This is a case where Morris’ numbers aren’t telling the whole storey. Neither one of them have looked completely comfortable at times. At other times they both appeared completely lost.
For a position that often sets the tone for the entire offense, well, it seems to be a problem.
Coaches want consistency. If things are consistent, they can figure out what to fix, but when you fix one thing and two other fall apart, well, you’ve got one of those situations that causes migraine headaches.
Is it time to put the two freshmen in the game that each quarterbacked a team to a championship less than 12 months ago?
Winning is a habit.
So is losing.
Both have been on Razorback teams that made falling apart late a habit. Neither one of them likes it, but it appears neither have the ability or leadership to change it.
Neither freshman may be able to change it, either.
But you wonder if Morris and Craddock are ready to find out.
