Bret Bielema is now reduced to babbling in double-speak about who Arkansas’ quarterback is going to be against LSU on Saturday.
Yes, apparently it has come to that. It actually looks and sounds like a program run by a guy wearing shorts and flip-flops to work.
He was asked on more than one occasion about who the starter will be and he didn’t have an answer he could settle on … or would settle on.
You can hear the complete press conference here.
Apparently he thinks it matters to LSU.
“Anything that could be a strategic advantage for us, whether it’s the quarterback or how much T.J. (Hammonds) is gonna play or whether or not we’ve done certain things with him, (it’s) better staying in-house and showing up on Saturdays,” he said Monday at his press conference.
Uh, Bret, the Tigers really don’t care who you put at quarterback. Playing a cat-and-mouse game with who you’re going to start under center is hilariously silly.
The truth is he probably doesn’t know.
In over 40 years of doing this whenever a coach starts tap-dancing on who’s going to play quarterback he’s flailing like a drowning man who’s already gone under once.
Bielema is starting to sound like a buffoon in press conferences lately. Monday, at times it sounded like Kelley might be the starter, then he mentioned Allen being able to start and finally he wrapped it up by indicating it might be Kelley again.
Again, Bret it won’t matter.
LSU just finished beating up Alabama everywhere but on the scoreboard. The Tigers held Alabama to just 116 yards rushing for the entire game. The Crimson Tide had 106 on Arkansas in the first quarter.
No, LSU does not care one iota which quarterback is under center. Defensive coordinator Dave Aranda and his defensive line coach, Pete Jenkins (one of the great defensive game planners of all time), are going to do the same thing they’ve been doing lately.
There are a small group of Razorback fans who point to 2014 and 2015 as examples of the Hogs playing well against the Tigers, which are true. But things have changed in Baton Rouge.
And Fayetteville
Les Miles had a tendency to let losses to Alabama get him down and it was reflected in his team’s play.
Ed Orgeron doesn’t care. Aranda and Jenkins don’t care who the opponent is or the personnel they are facing because the game plan is basically the same every single week.
And this Arkansas team couldn’t block LSU’s second team and most of the third team.
Yet Bielema somehow thinks playing these little games will somehow help his team. It would invoke more respect if he just stepped up to the mic and announced a starter.
Instead he tap-danced his way through another press conference where he expressed confidence in both Cole Kelley and Austin Allen.
Offensive coordinator Dan Enos said whoever is the most healthy and gives the Hogs the best chance to win will get the majority of the reps.
Okay. We didn’t realize that.
At Monday’s press conference, it sounded for the most part like a head coach going through the motions of a season that is heading towards the ditch in a hurry.
Oh, they are 4-5, but it’s two points away from being 2-7, which would qualify as a nine-alarm dumpster fire. Instead it’s just your garden variety three-alarm fire.
And the future doesn’t look bright.
LSU is this week. They just got through holding Alabama to under 300 yards of total offense while putting up 306 yards of offense on that Tide defense.
After that is Mississippi State.
They are 7-2 overall and will probably be 7-3 when they come to Fayetteville in a couple of weeks after playing Alabama this week.
Then comes Missouri, who somehow seems to have righted their ship a little and can score points in bunches.
While Bielema is babbling on in Johnny Sunshine coach-speak while looking like a coach ready to go on vacation in shorts and flip-flops (seriously, that’s how he showed up at Monday’s press conference), the fan base wouldn’t particularly mind if he went ahead and left … now if not sooner.
He has lost the Razorback fan base. While the shorts and flip-flops were kinda cute to some fans five years ago, now it just looks like a guy making millions cruising his way to the finish line.
It’s a time where leadership is needed to pull football — the most visible marketing tool the University of Arkansas has — out of the misery it has become.
Yes, misery with back-to-back wins that leave nobody feeling positive about the direction of the program.
And fans wondering where the leadership is.
