Every single year at this time we hear all about how many returning starters and lettermen a team has coming back and that is, to an large extent, what some use to predict what’s going to happen.
For predicting the top of the heap, well, that’s a sound theory.
If you’re coming off a 2-10 season, having a lot of starters coming back would be the biggest nightmare Arkansas fans could hear.
The good news is there’s not a lot.
At SEC Media Days in 2008, the prevailing thought among the experts was Alabama was going to be a littler better than Nick Saban’s 2007 debut of 7-6 … but not a lot.
For Crimson Tide fans, that’s bad enough, but just seven years before they were 3-8 and a mere three years previously they were 4-9.
I picked the Tide to win the SEC West on an Alabama radio show and they were aghast. Calling me crazy was one of the milder comments.
My reasons were simple. They had an unbelievable cast of incoming freshmen and some sophomores that looked very, very good but struggled to get the grasp of a new coaching staff.
“Talent will beat the daylights out of less talented experience,” I said at the time.
The Tide won the West, but lost to Florida in the SEC Championship.
Fast-forward to 2016 and Urban Meyer at the Big 10 media gathering.
“I’ll take talent over experience every time,” he said. “I don’t recruit players to redshirt ’em.”
Chad Morris isn’t recruiting players for them to sit on the sidelines for a year. Maybe there were a couple last year, but not anymore.
That’s why there’s reason for optimism this year for all but the Hogs’ Lunatic Fringe of the fan base. There won’t be many guys back off last year’s team … and that’s the biggest reason for optimism.
For a young team, the schedule sets up about as well as it can. Three non-conference opponents they should be able to handle, an SEC matchup in the second week against an Ole Miss team that hasn’t got any more experience and may not be as good defensively as last season.
It’s not out of the realm of possibility for the Hogs to be 4-0 headed to Arlington to play a Texas A&M team coming off an opening lineup that includes a road game at Clemson and a home matchup against Auburn the week before.
If the Aggies are 4-0 at that point, well, all bets are off, but here’s a guess they won’t be.
Arkansas’ youngsters might not realize they aren’t supposed to be any good.
The upperclassmen coming back appeared to have changed their attitude in the spring. The guess here is that he won’t say it, but Morris invited any of them that weren’t buying into the new way 100 percent, they were welcome to leave.
Some did. A few didn’t.
You need every position to be outstanding to win a title, but you can win some games if you have playmakers at the skill position.
Right now, Morris and his staff need wins. They needed new faces to get those.
Now they have them.
And it’s better to have good youngsters than bad old-timers.
