Arkansas fans have been in a tizzy the last few days over former Clemson quarterback Kelly Bryant coming to town for an official visit as the graduate transfer is considering coming to town.
From Chad Morris’ perspective, it has to be as much for what he can do mentoring the younger quarterbacks as what he can do on the field.
It’s not because he’s not talented. He is. But let’s face it, counting on a graduate transfer quarterback is a little bit of a crapshoot, based on history.
For every Russell Wilson success story (North Carolina State to Wisconsin), there is the case of Brandon Harris (LSU to North Carolina) and Malik Zaire (Notre Dame to Florida).
For every Trevor Knight story (Oklahoma to Texas A&M), there’s Jeremiah Masoli (Oregon to Ole Miss), Everett Golson (Notre Dame to Florida State) and Max Browne (Southern Cal to Pitt).
What history shows us is the one-year transfer quarterback isn’t going to give your team a tremendous boost in wins or losses. You are what you are, in other words.
Yes, Wilson took the Badgers to the Rose Bowl in 2011, but that was the middle team in Bret Bielema’s three-year run of getting them there … only to lose that bowl game each time.
You can’t say Wilson lifted them higher than what they were.
Knight didn’t want to hang around Norman and back up Baker Mayfield, so he went south to College Station and stabilized a shaky quarterback situation and got the Aggies to an 8-5 season, which was the same record as the previous season.
And those examples are the best-case scenarios of what works out. A one-year graduate transfer can keep you from slipping or stabilize a shaky quarterback situation.
The Razorbacks, unfortunately, can’t slip much more than where they are. A change at quarterback may help a game or two, but it’s not going to get them where Morris or anybody else wants them to be.
Talk shows this week have speculated with how the Hogs would have done this year with Bryant at quarterback and it’s an impossible question to answer because he’d still have the same offensive line in front of him.
And we don’t know what Bryant can do behind a shaky offensive line. Clemson didn’t have a bad one during his one season as a starter.
But what he does bring to the table is something that isn’t dependent on the players around him and that’s experience of being around a winning college football program for four seasons. One that’s won at an extremely high level.
Bryant has said in interviews he wants to go somewhere for him to develop more as a quarterback. The translation on that is he needs somewhere that can put him on the field, which does pretty much fit the description at Arkansas.
Oh, Ty Storey will have a year of eligibility left and there’s a couple of true freshmen on the roster, but none have shown the ability to jump into the starter’s role and start winning ballgames. Of course they haven’t had the chance, so we don’t really know that.
Through seven games, Morris has been doing what he can do to try and win ballgames. With the chance of a bowl game now looking almost out of reach, there has to be a time soon when player development will come into the picture.
With a young group of quarterbacks, Bryant could be a big influence on and off the field.
By all accounts, he was a mentor to Trevor Lawrence at Clemson, but didn’t want to hang around unless he could still be the starter while teaching the youngster the ropes.
Morris is finding some players that came in this year. Rakeem Boyd has shown enough of a spark to be one of the best for the Hogs in a long, long time. His speed breaking away from people is impressive … defensive backs can’t catch him.
There’s help on the way. Arkansas’ recruiting class for 2019 is shaping up to be one of the best in decades, not just years. At least on potential. They still have to be coached up or you end up no better than before they showed up.
That may be the biggest reason Morris wants Bryant to be a Razorback for a year.
The hardest thing for new coaches to do is instill a winning mindset in a group of players that haven’t had a lot of experience in knowing what it takes to win and how to win.
Bryant has been around that. He’s shown a willingness to mentor younger players, based on what we’ve heard about him at Clemson with Lawrence.
And that could help more than anything he does on the field.
