Just a couple of days away from the start of fall camp for Arkansas, Tommy Craft and Clay Henry talk about expectations.
Quarterback battles across SEC is what SDS’ O’Gara looking to see
With double-digit schools starting new QBs, Connor O’Gara said on Halftime he’s interested to see them play out.
Halftime Pod Presented by Eastside Liquor: O’Gara, Smith
College football; NFL; NBA; Olympics; 3 up 3 down
Guests- Connor O’Gara & Keith Smith
Halftime is LIVE! College football, NBA, Razorbacks, Olympics and more
Call or text into Halftime, at 877-377-6963. Today’s guests are Connor O’Gara at 11:30, Keith Smith at 12:30, 3 up 3 down.
Murphy on how big season will be for Pittman’s direction with Hogs
Democrat-Gazette writer Tom Murphy with Tommy Craft and Clay Henry on The Morning Rush about this year being critical.
Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast -Hot Take Monday
Tommy Craft and Clay Henry talk the beginning of Hogs football practice, basketball recruiting, talk with Tom Murphy and more!
Morning Rush LIVE! With Clay Henry, talking Hogs with Tom Murphy
Hawgs Illustrated’s Clay Henry, Tommy Craft preview start of fall camp Thursday with guest Tom Murphy of the Democrat-Gazette.
Biggest questions facing Hogs heading into another season
Just a few days from the start of fall camp, everybody is playing the guessing game around Arkansas football … which is normal.
About the only thing certain in August is we don’t know how things will be in November.
Facing the toughest schedule in the conference (primarily because the Razorbacks aren’t on their own schedule), some think they will win enough to get to a bowl game, others aren’t even sure they’ll win a game in the SEC.
One thing we do know is the Hogs might not be sneaking up on anybody this year because Sam Pittman showed in last year’s 3-7 season he can get players to give a good effort. He just ran out of players in a crazy November where they could have picked up two or three more wins.
But there are questions, though. How those are answered through the course of a dozen games will be in direct proportion to the record.
Can KJ get the job done at quarterback?
It’s the most important position on the field these days and Arkansas is going with a guy that looked good in his only real appearance and that didn’t end up as a win.
The Missouri loss wasn’t his fault. He got them within 43 seconds of a win.
But the facts are the facts and last year has absolutely nothing to do with this season. Lou Holtz used to harp on that for years and it turned out to be pretty accurate.
Jefferson showed flashes against the Tigers, but the Hogs prepared him the week of the game while ducking every possible question about Feleipe Franks’ availability.
The Tigers didn’t have a lot of preparation for him.
Now teams have one entire game to study and you learn over decades of watching it don’t base anything on one semi-surprising appearance by a quarterback because defensive preparation can change things.
Will another wide receiver take the pressure off Burks?
Fellow former Warren Lumberjack Treylon Burks is the marquee wide receiver on this team but opponents can shut down an offense with only one option to catch passes.
De’Vion Warren has made plays before, but Burks had nearly twice as many catches as everybody else combined. Trey Knox all but disappeared last season after a promising freshman year and that has to change.
The tight ends, Blake Kern and Hudson Henry, could help some. But they’ve got to do. They had just 36 catches between them all year.
Has the defensive line improved pass rush this year?
Too often last season the Hogs’ defensive pass rush required bringing everybody except the cheerleaders to pressure passers.
The front couldn’t get any sort of consistent rush. Given enough time any quarterback is going to complete passes because there’s not enough defensive backs who can stay with every possible receiver forever.
New faces bring hope there will be some new pass rush up front.
Is it possible the special teams can really be special?
We’re not talking about the kickers and punters here because they are just one part in the entire process. Much like the quarterback, they get the blame when one of the other 10 on the field don’t do their job.
Punt returns were virtually non-existent. The Hogs only returned four and it was clear the theory was fair catch as many as possible and reduce mistakes. It also reduced the possibilities of big plays and there were none.
The Hogs had as many interceptions as returns and turned that into 190 yards compared to just 175 yards in kick returns. Opponents had 608 yards in kick returns, an average over 4 first downs every game (43.3 yards).
Problems last year weren’t easy to pinpoint but it was a complete team failure on too many occasions. Blocking on returns and avoiding blocks on kicks happened with too much frequency.
We’ll see how it plays out.
Has this team developed the depth necessary?
Teams in the SEC don’t win just on the 22 starters, but how good are the backups?
That’s a huge question for the Hogs and there’s no way to know how that plays out, despite Pittman’s assurances. He’s not going to tell us this team doesn’t have any depth.
Arkansas’ starters can compete with anybody or they wouldn’t be on the team.
How good is everybody else because we’re going to find out. Injuries, someone suddenly developing into a much better play and even the transfer portal play a role nobody can predict.
Which is why we don’t have the answers now.
Check back about Halloween … at the earliest.
For Hogs, adding teams in SEC about $$$ because it’s not football wins
Since Arkansas came into the SEC in 1992, four teams have now been added and it hasn’t exactly been the success fans hoped for when initially announced.
The past week’s drama surrounding Texas and Oklahoma being admitted in about a week’s time won’t help that.
In 2012 before Missouri and Texas A&M’s first year in the league, the talking heads on sports radio in Arkansas were counting those as extra wins for the Razorbacks.
One sports radio host went so far as to say it would take the Tigers a decade to get enough SEC-quality linemen to do much in football. It took them two years to win a division title in back-to-back years.
Oh, and the Hogs are 1-5 against them in SEC games.
Maybe the Aggies were a bigger surprise. The Hogs had just beaten them three times in a row in games that were not league games and now they are on the downside of an eight-game losing streak.
Do the math. The Hogs are 1-13 against the last two teams to join the SEC.
Now Texas and Oklahoma are coming into the league. Folks are wagging on and on about how they are going to not have the same success they had in the Big 12 because, well, it’s the SEC.
It will be harder, but somehow you just get the idea coming into the league is going to force the Longhorns and Sooners to pick up their games. OU has been at a pretty high level and will likely continue at that pace. Texas has been a mess for most of the last 45 years being just good enough to be close to a title, but only getting one.
As a side note, the Longhorns have historically under-achieved compared to their talent level. They have one national title with a coach other than Darrell Royal, who won three in the 1960’s.
The guess is Steve Sarkisian might be the guy that changes that. He walked into a team filled with talent on the par with the best teams in the SEC (Tom Herman wasn’t fired because he couldn’t recruit).
Arkansas has won 29.3% of their matchups all time with Texas. When they were in the same conference it was 27.1% of the time. The Hogs took advantage of some bowl matchups later where the Longhorns weren’t too interested in even being at the game (which has always been a bigger deal for Arkansas fans).
It’s the same story against the Sooners. The Hogs have won 29.2% of the all-time matchups. There will always be the 31-6 win in the Orange Bowl after the 1977 season (which is still, for my money, the best Razorback team of all time).
The vote to let those two into the SEC where they will almost certainly be in the same division and an annual matchup for the Hogs had nothing to do with expecting more wins in football.
Every sport at the UA is going to have two more opponents in the league in all sports.
More importantly, it’s about money and the coming arms race and that’s going to be about online streaming, which is how more and more people consume their sports, news and entertainment.
Texas and Oklahoma help deliver that, creating more interest and, at least for everybody at the UA, opponents fans can be passionate about.
But the bottom line in the Hogs’ vote for expansion is, well, the bottom line looking into the future.
And not letting the past affect that decision.
Keeping running quarterbacks healthy key at most important position
Since spring practice, Sam Pittman has left no wiggle room saying KJ Jefferson will be the starting quarterback.
“Does he have competition?” he said at SEC Media Days and it wasn’t really a question. “You’re dang right he’s got competition, but he has proven that he can play well in the Southeastern Conference in a game. He started one game, but he played well during that game.”
There’s a lot of hope among coaches and fans that Missouri game to end the 2020 season that was “almost” a win was enough to be the basis for a guy ready to take over the team.
The problem is you can’t measure “almost” because almost doesn’t really matter.
Jefferson was 18-of-33 for 274 yards with three touchdowns plus 32 yards rushing with another touchdown. He put 48 points on the board. Missouri’s game-winning field goal as time ran out wasn’t his fault.
The two-point conversion pass he threw would have given the Razorbacks their fourth win of the season, but it came with 43 seconds left and Missouri managed to kick a game-winning field goal as time expired.
His mobility is what has everybody excited.
“We just have to have that in the back of our mind whenever we do drop back to pass the ball,” offensive tackle Myron Cunningham said. “We just have to have that in our mind that he could be scrambling. So we just have to be ready for it.”
Jefferson was a highly-rated four-star coming out of North Panola, Mississippi, but hadn’t really done anything against the type of players he would face in the SEC.
Without much high-level coaching, he didn’t progress in a freshman season where he got beat up in appearances against Mississippi State and LSU. If nothing else, Jefferson found out he couldn’t run over SEC defenders like he did in high school.
Now everybody is hoping their confidence shows up on the field on Saturdays this fall.
“KJ’s matured a lot,” super senior Grant Morgan said at Media Days. “He’s stepped up and he’s being the leader he needs to be.”
All of that confidence in him is really positive hope. Nobody knows how it’s going to play out over a season, but a lot of fans are hanging their hats on his ability to avoid pass rushers and make something out of nothing pays big dividends.
The problem with hanging your hopes on a mobile quarterback these days is the athleticism of defenses in the league. They will get to quarterbacks that don’t get away from them.
Behind Jefferson is Malik Hornsby, who has less time on the field, but maybe more athleticism.
How this season plays out is going to be in direct proportion to how the quarterback position performs. The talent at wide receiver is there, the offensive line is going to be more experienced but there are questions.
A lot of questions.
But not a lot of answers.
How conference future shuffling will be based on brands, says Torres
Aaron Torres said on Halftime the future movement of teams is going to be how big their brand is.
