In the second part of Monday’s press conference, Arkansas coach Bret Bielema talked about how offensive coordinator Dan Enos has handled a trying week.
Rhoads on problems with big plays, effort in win
Arkansas defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads met with the media Monday and talked about the technical issues on big plays against Ole Miss and Hogs’ effort.
McElwain out, Vols next, then … should Hogs wait?
Jim McElwain didn’t make it three seasons at Florida as head football coach, despite making it to the SEC Championship Game his first two years.
Such is life in the SEC these days.
That’s just the start. Get ready for maybe as many five or six openings in the league this season. It’s the price schools pay for their own mistakes.
McElwain likely won’t get the full $12.9 million reported buyout. As we’ve been told by agents, that number is really often the starting point for negotiations when they get ready to dump a coach.
As we said, that’s the start and usually the first coach to fall starts a domino effect that will begin affecting games all across the country in different conferences.
That’s nothing new. Bear Bryant claimed until his dying day that word leaking out early he was leaving Texas A&M for Alabama in 1957 cost the Aggies a national championship.
The SEC had one opening before the first game. Ole Miss has been in coaching limbo all season long and STILL nearly beat Arkansas after running up a 31-7 lead in the first half.
What no one in Arkansas wants to admit is that the Rebels basically helped the Hogs come back as much as they could without just blatantly switching sides.
Bret Bielema tried to spin it into his players making the comeback, but the reality is Ole Miss relaxed. Sure Santos Ramirez stayed with a play and knocked the ball out of a Rebels’ receiver on a long run, so take that one.
But there wasn’t much extra effort to be made on an interception that was caught by Josh Liddell as much by being in the right place at the right time on a serious overthrow.
Likewise, Kevin Richardson picked up an unforced fumble by the Rebels and took it into the end zone in the fourth quarter.
By then, Ole Miss has basically reverted to playing just to finish the game, which is what tends to happen with teams in the position they are in.
That win, combined with what should be a 50-point win over Coastal Carolina this week should be taken in context.
Bielema may think he’s off the hot seat, but in all probability he’s not. He may have bought himself some time but that’s probably about all. If he wins all four games left on the Hogs’ schedule he’ll be 32-31 after five years and, more importantly, 14-26 in the SEC.
Most Arkansas coaches in the SEC have hovered around .500 in the league, but above that overall. The only one that didn’t was Danny Ford and he was gone after five seasons.
Now the question is what will the powers that be for Arkansas do?
Don’t forget, with the new early signing period, nobody knows what the right thing to do is with a coach you know you’re going to dump at the end of the season.
With all of the openings in the SEC, if Arkansas decides to dump Bielema, where will it fit in the pecking order of jobs? Here’s the list of potential openings:
• Ole Miss (open)
• Florida (open)
• Tennessee (may be open by the time you see this)
• Auburn (expect this if the Tigers don’t win out)
• Texas A&M (losing to Mississippi State at home was likely the final straw for Kevin Sumlin’s tenure)
One of those two at the end will be determined Saturday with Auburn going to Texas A&M. For the second year in a row, Gus Malzahn will be in a winner-gets-fired type of game.
Outside of the Ole Miss job, coaching the Razorbacks is not considered a better gig than those other four.
While fans who love the Hogs and Northwest Arkansas consider it a top-tier job and the talking heads in the national media who don’t look very deep say it is a top job, most will tell you it’s not.
Oh, it has nothing to do with recruiting availability, facilities or any of that.
It’s coming up with an answer to what is becoming the biggest question coaches want the answer to. And you better have a pretty good one with some way to sell it.
The question?
What’s the commitment to winning?
That covers areas most don’t even think about. It’s why Kirby Smart walked out of an interview with Auburn in 2012.
One thing Nick Saban has drilled into folks in the coaching community’s heads is if you don’t have complete control and everybody — from the board of trustees to the janitor — isn’t committed to doing everything possible to win, then move on.
It’s a question Arkansas had better have a good answer for because it will come up.
It’s THE biggest question.
And nobody knows if there is that commitment in Fayetteville these days.
Things I think I know: Week Nine
That was a football game with more twists and turns then an episode of “The Guiding Light.”
It was full of flaws, but nobody cares.
All that matters is that when the game ended, the Razorbacks had more points then the Rebel/Land Shark/Black Bears (never forget).
What does it all mean? That, I am not sure about. It could be the massive turning point that leads the Razorback program under the direction of Bret Bielema to great heights and a division championship in the next few seasons.
However, we have seen amazing things in the Ole Miss game in Oxford before. We all thought the Henry Heave in 2015 was this massive pivot point in the annals of the Bielema era.
Arkansas is now 13-12 since that game, which isn’t exactly awe inspiring.
If you want me to be honest (and if you’re reading this, you probably expect that), I think what we saw was two bad teams in an incredibly expensive pillow fight.
But Arkansas won, so everything is fixed. All the problems are gone. Nothing to see here but rainbows and fairy god princesses.
Let’s relive it again shall we?
Here’s what else happened this weekend in the greatest game in America.
- Ohio State made sure we all know they are still a factor in the playoff picture.
- We got a big reminder that J.T. Barrett is great.
- Florida administrators have some sort of personal beef with Jim McElwain and I cannot figure out what it is. Are they jealous he got to spend time with a shark?
- Miami is still massively overrated.
- Tennessee’s Butch Jones is whistling to the electric chair.
- Connor Limpert has stones. (Do you think Cole Hedlund was rooting for him to miss?)
- Bobby Petrino will not be at Louisville next year (Tennessee maybe?)
- Texas A&M’s annual late season collapse has begun.
- Each of Arkansas’ final SEC opponents (and maybe Coastal Carolina too) will be able to score over 30 points on the Razorbacks. Can Arkansas score 40?
- The Florida-Georgia football game reminds me that Florida-Georgia Line is one of the worst bands of all time.
- Iowa State is simply renting head coach Matt Campbell before a bigger program takes him away this December.
- Comebacks are nice and all, but they also make you forget the 20 minutes or so of the game when your favorite team played like flaming garbage.
- When you have a 6 foot 7 quarterback, just run the sneak on 4th and 1. Don’t get cute!
- Kit Kats are the best Halloween candy there is.
- Notre Dame is for real this season.
- While I was writing this, Florida dumped Jim McElwain. They did this before Tennessee sacked Butch Jones. We live in very interesting times don’t we?
Does comeback outweigh start in final analysis?
However they got it, Arkansas’ 38-37 win over Ole Miss on Saturday was still a desperately-needed victory.
There will be those that nitpick every aspect of it, but they won a game they probably had absolutely no right to win.
That counts, too. Despite the fact both teams appeared at times to be auditioning for a Keystone Kops football movie.
And, despite what Bret Bielema said later, it only proved the Razorbacks aren’t the worst team in the SEC West.
That’s it.
“I know you guys get your panties in a wad with me talking about being close,” he said. “But we have been. We were close against A&M. We were close in the fourth quarter against TCU.”
All that can really be said about that is the Hogs were close in 2014 to Alabama and still finished 6-6 in the regular season.
They were close to Mississippi State in 2015 and had a field goal blocked at the end and finished 7-5 in the regular season.
Last season, they were close to beating Missouri and lost to finish the regular season at 7-5.
Bielema may not like it, and he even admitted close only counts in dancing and hand grenades, but that’s just excuses for being mediocre in the past.
The jury is still out on this season. Mathematically, they can still finish with seven wins. If they do it will create a whole slew of other questions, but we’ll cross that bridge when it comes.
The question for fans — and people making bigger decisions — is if the comeback (the largest in school history) outweighs the disastrous start they had.
The only thing they were close to Saturday in Oxford was avoiding a complete disaster.
Yes, the Rebels are that big of a mess.
Teams in their position usually fold up the tent at the first hint of adversity. The Rebels pretty much did that when Hogs safety Santos Ramirez knocked the ball out of tight end Octavius Cooley’s grasp to kill what was looking like another quick Ole Miss scoring drive.
Arkansas took advantage of one of the worst defenses in the history of the SEC and got a couple of quick scores before halftime to cut the lead to 31-21.
Then the Hogs got the ball first in the third quarter and cut the lead to 31-28 and the game was on.
It came down to Connor Limpert kicking a 34-yard field goal at the end for a one-point win over a team that has the worst defense in college football, particularly against the run.
Opponents have averaged 260 yards a game running the ball on the Rebels this season.
Arkansas’ total?
That same 260 yards. Which is the average.
Whey they kept doing goofy stuff with formations and quarterback Cole Kelley faking dribbling while dropping back on a fourth-down play are mystifying, they somehow found a way to win.
So there is that.
But there are still more questions than good answers with this team.
Yes, they did get a win after trailing at halftime, a first under Bielema. They did finally beat a Power 5 opponent for the first time in nearly a year. They were able to kick a field goal at the end to win a game.
You would probably feel better if it was against an SEC team that wasn’t in the depths of misery of the Ole Miss program.
Bielema, tired of all the problems in the second half, changed things up this week.
“it wasn’t anything magical,” he said later. “It was about making plays.”
It was also having the Rebels as the opponent.
With Coastal Carolina coming up next week, they will be 4-5 headed into the final quarter of the season.
Whether you think they’ll make a bowl from that spot or not depends on how you answer the question: Was the comeback bigger than allowing the hole to be dug requiring it?
