Arkansas coach Bret Bielema met with the media Wednesday and talked about the TCU game, getting ready for preparations to start for Texas A&M.
DC Paul Rhoads: ‘Third-and-1, third-and-1, third-and-1’
Arkansas defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads talked about the number of times the defense couldn’t get off the field on short yardage.
Enos on disappointment with Allen’s play, offense
Arkansas offensive coordinator Dan Enos met with the media for the first time since the TCU loss and covered a wide range of issues.
Long in LR: Arkansas not ‘win at all cost program’
For fans upset with the direction of the Arkansas football program, Jeff Long made it clear Monday at the Little Rock Touchdown Club that winning games isn’t the only goal.
Oh, he would like to win and he said repeatedly “it’s important,” but he made it clear that wasn’t all.
“Yes, winning is important,” he said. “Now contrast that if you’re a win-at-all-cost program which we’re not and I’ve said many, many times we’re not, then you don’t worry about the academics, you don’t worry about the conduct, you just win.
“And you know what? When I arrived here 10 years ago, that’s not what the leaders wanted at the time and certainly that’s certainly not what we’ve delivered.
“Yes, we want to win. Yes, it’s a priority. Yes, it eats us up from the inside that we don’t win more.”
So, apparently, for those fans that want to win the way the Razorbacks used to win, the problem starts at the top. Even above Long.
Based on what Long said Monday, the upper echelon wants Arkansas to be more like Vanderbilt than Alabama.
That’s not a knock on anybody. But apparently winning and losing football games is not as important as Long says it is. If it was, there wouldn’t be comments about not being a win-at-all-cost program.
There’s no way of knowing what Long’s expectations to the coaches are.
Is there a number of wins or is it, “do your best to get a few wins, keep ’em out of jail and make sure they go to class?”
We don’t know the answer to those questions. That’s between Long and the coaches and probably should be.
One thing is becoming clear, though: The rank-and-file fan base is not happy. Whether Long or the powers that be really care about that remains to be seen.
Naturally they’ll say they care, but those inside the athletic department and foundation have said privately for a few years the only things that really matter are “selling premium seats and ESPN.”
For Long, a former football coach, I’m sure the lack of wins and the way this program has fallen is not what he wants. He said it eats them up inside by not winning which means he and others may be in danger of an ulcer soon.
It’s only two games into the season. Like a lot of others I really, really want Bret Bielema to be wildly successful.
But I don’t think it’s going to happen. To make it really simple, Bielema’s offensive philosophy is playing 10 guys against 11 while most teams the Hogs play has 11 on 11. When your quarterback isn’t at least a threat to run, you’re handicapping yourself these days.
Pro style power offenses work when you have pro style offensive linemen and running backs, which Arkansas doesn’t appear to have many of. There have been a few guys drafted low by NFL teams, but not many are making it past a season or two.
The trend isn’t looking good and appears to be getting worse. The best Bielema team running the ball was his first one. Yes, the 2013 team that was 3-8 accounted for 58.4 percent of the offense by running.
It’s gone downhill since, falling to 53.7 percent in 2014, 42.4 percent in his best season of 2015 and to 38.3 percent in 2016.
By comparison, Bobby Petrino’s 11-win team of 2011 had 31.4 percent of the offensive yardage by running the ball. They TRIED to run the ball 46.6 percent of the time, but just weren’t that good at it.
Bielema’s teams have TRIED to run the ball progressively more and more. In 2013, it was just 56 percent of the time increasing each year to 61.2 percent.
It’s just flat not working for whatever reason. The running game has actually gotten worse each year if you look at the metrics.
There are still 10 games for it to improve.
But don’t look for any midseason firing. That’s not Long’s style. He does an “evaluation” at the end of every season.
It was the evaluation after the “almost orgasmic” win over Texas in the Texas Bowl that got him in the financial pickle he finds himself in now. The guess here is the excitement of beating a bad Longhorns team on the edge of chaos got everybody a little too pumped.
Long rolled the dice in January 2015. How they come up won’t be known for a bit longer.
But right now it looks more like snake-eyes than 7’s.
Will Bielema agree about not being ‘win-at-all-cost?’
Bret Bielema will be in front of the media Wednesday morning for the first time since a brief post-mortem following Arkansas’ loss to TCU last Saturday.
How he handles it will be the next news cycle.
But the guess here is he will avoid the mess Jeff Long created by dumping it all in the laps of the Board of Trustees.
When Long said “we are not a win-at-all-cost program,” it blew up on social media the websites.
HitThatLine.com had over 10,000 views of that single story in less than a day. Considering we just launched the site about 3 weeks ago, that’s pretty rapid growth considering there hasn’t been a lot of advertising bought.
Bielema could jump in with both feet, however. Let’s face it, that would not be totally out of character for him.
The only way he could win the fan base back before going to Arlington is say the not having an emphasis on winning hurts the football program. It has a trickle-down effect and does affect recruiting.
If you’re a top recruit you really interested in going somewhere that doesn’t consider winning that big of a deal? You can get that at several other places.
As I said, though, I doubt he will want to venture into those waters. He might come out and say he agrees with that philosophy, but that is either what he feels he has to say to keep his job or he truly agrees with it.
If it is the latter, the volume of discontent in the fan base will rise.
But it is the only way he can truly have a believable excuse for the mess this football program has become.
While some would content it’s not a mess, there is the argument to the contrary.
All offseason, Bielema kept repeating this was his fifth year and he knows that’s when the full responsibility of the program falls to him.
We were told since the start of fall camp how the offensive line was making improvement and the young wide receivers were going to be in great shape.
I didn’t believe it then after seeing a couple of scrimmages. Derek Ruscin and I began wondering if we were the only two people that saw an offensive line that was, at best, not an improvement over last year and often appeared to take a step back.
And I knew the receivers had a problem when they kept lining up offsides with officials telling them to get back. Then offsetting big catches with equally impressive drops.
Florida A&M, an FCS school that plays in a very weak league, pressured quarterback Austin Allen on numerous occasions. The Razorbacks had a big win because, well, their second and third teams are better than the Rattlers.
In the spin control after the TCU game, several in the media have projected the Horned Frogs as title contenders in the Big 12 along with Oklahoma.
No, they’re not. TCU will likely finish no higher than third in that league.
After wins and losses, coaches talk about how good the previous opponent was and how great the next one is.
Bielema won’t have the luxury of that second one at Wednesday’s press conference.
With an open date before the Texas A&M game, this one will be all about TCU and the status of this football team now.
Here’s a primer on what we’ll hear:
• The coaching staff has to self-assess everything they are doing.
• They will have asked if they are trying to get players to do things they can’t do. That’s coach-speak for we seriously over-estimated their talent.
• The players have had at least one meeting to address concerns about their play.
• They are working hard to be the most improved team in the country before playing the Aggies. One of the truisms in football is the most improvement a team makes is between the first and second games so this should be interesting.
• They are holding open tryouts at kicker. Bielema said after the TCU game you expect to get in a game what you see in practice, so there’s another trend that will have to be broken. At this point they’re going on by-guess and by-golly.
To summarize, the guess here is we’re going to get a great deal of coach-speak.
And, honestly, that’s probably the only thing he can do at this point.
Potential walk-on gets message across creatively
If nothing else, Arkansas coach Bret Bielema will have to give Samson Tamijani points for creativeness.
The UA student was in the stands when Cole Hedlund clanged a 20-yard field goal off the left upright Saturday against TCU.
A former kicker at an NAIA school, acting on a suggestion from his roommate, printed up 36 QR codes linking to a YouTube account of him kicking and put them at key places around the football offices.
Reader working for Arkansas parking enforcement noticed a QR code on Coach Bielema's—it goes to a walk-on kicker's ???? https://t.co/gRmJ1GnkKu pic.twitter.com/tSgzQLiooa
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) September 12, 2017
Our friend Andrew Hutchinson at Hawgs247.com tracked down Tamijani for their story:
“I don’t want fame or a statement,” Tamijani said. “I just want a chance from them going into the spring so they know I’m useful.
“The only eyes I wanted to see my stuff are the coaching staff. That’s all I’m trying to do.”
He was initially hesitant to speak with Hawgs247 because he didn’t make the QR codes for media attention and doesn’t want to hurt his chances of getting a shot with the team, but reluctantly agreed to share his story.
You can read the complete story here.
