The ‘Starkel Sparkel’ fades on ‘unacceptable’ night in Hogs’ loss

In one night, Arkansas managed to lose any momentum from a struggle win last week, the shine faded on the Starkel Sparkel and, as one writer said, “Club Dub” turned into “Club Flub.”

Yep, that’s what happens when lowly San Jose State strolls into town and thoroughly dominates what is supposed to be an SEC team, 31-24.

“This performance is completely unacceptable,” Chad Morris said in the post mortem on this one. “We did not deserve to win this football game.”

PHOTO BY CRANT OSBORNE | HITTHATLINE.COM

Quarterback Nick Starkel is just going to have to shoulder his share of the blame on this one, too, despite throwing for 356 yards. It could have been well over 400 except five times he hit open guys who happened to be wearing white jerseys.

“It was just bad quarterback play,” he said later. “I feel like I let everybody down.”

While some will, as usual, be quick to put it off on playcalling, this offense requires decisions from the quarterback on every snap that determines whether it’s a pass or run and where the ball is going.

That is on Starkel.

“Yeah, I know, I felt like I tried to force the ball a little bit,” he said. “It definitely wasn’t just take what the defense was giving us.”

You have to give Starkel a lot of credit for even facing the media. In today’s world, there are a lot of players who would have ducked out of that one after chunking five interceptions in a game.

“I just let them down,” he said, referring to the team, coaches and his family.

Facing the media the way he did showed an awful lot. As I said, a lot of players would have ducked out after a game like that, but he handled it with a lot of maturity.

“Yeah, at the end of the day, I wasn’t good enough tonight,” he said.

Morris was, well, highly ticked off. Maybe more than last year’s debacle against North Texas.

“Everyone’s going to be held accountable, from me down,” he said. “I am going to hold every coach, every player, every staff member accountable.”

When Morris was hired, he asked for a chance and vowed he wouldn’t let the fans down.

A lot of them are feeling let down after Saturday night.

Especially when a team that hasn’t shown much inclination to be very good goes on the road and thoroughly dominates an SEC team.

“For three quarters, they were the SEC football team,” Morris said of the Spartans. “They took it to us and from the very first play they had us on our heels. It was very disappointing, extremely disappointing.”

The Hogs were playing without three starters.

PHOTO BY CRANT OSBORNE | HITTHATLINE.COM

Freshman wide receiver Treylon Burks, offensive lineman Colton Jackson and cornerback Montaric Brown were out. Morris said later they were in concussion protocol, but may have gotten his players mixed up because Jackson had a boot on while on the sidelines and there wasn’t much explanation about Brown.

Burks reportedly had a hand injury, but those reports apparently were false.

Morris wasn’t offering any excuses, either.

“Anytime you have five turnovers and you allow a guy to throw for over 400 yards on you and go down the field on you like nothing, you lose,” he said. “Missed tackles, unacceptable, completely unacceptable.”

Despite all of the complete disaster, the Hogs had a real shot at winning the game in the fourth quarter after a furious comeback that tied the game at 24 late.

“As bad as we played, I thought we were fixing to win it,” Morris said later. “We couldn’t finish it.”

Instead, San Jose State finished it and then Starkel couldn’t make a play to tie the game again.

“We had an opportunity,” Morris said. “I thought we had a chance to get the ball over the top, but we just didn’t make it happen.”

And it won’t get any easier for the Hogs. They won’t be home again for nearly a month (against Auburn on Oct. 19). It starts with the annual trip to Arlington to face Texas A&M.

“It’s a gut check time now,” Morris said. “We are going to find out a lot about ourselves this week.”

It’s going to be a long week with a lot of despair.

And that’s going to be coming from the fans.