The question came about on ESPN Arkansas’ The Morning Rush this week:
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What are the odds that there is actually a lot of talent on his football team but guys weren’t put in position to have success?
The simple answer is extremely high and it’s in the details.
That was my initial opinion after watching the first couple of fall practices we were allowed to see. It was strengthened with what we saw in games and confirmed by former assistant coaches who were out of a job by December.
Part of it was Bret Bielema simply being stubborn. He’s not a complete idiot, despite what some of the Great Unwashed say now. He was going to build at Arkansas what they had at Wisconsin.
He was completely wrong. That was never going to work at Arkansas. Bielema’s former boss, Barry Alvarez, basically said that in early September at the Little Rock Touchdown Club:
“If I were coaching in the southwest or the southeast where I had access to a lot of skill players I’d probably run some things different than I do at Wisconsin.”
He likely would have told Bielema that back in December 2012 when Jeff Long finally answered the love letter he got from Bret after letting Bobby Petrino go earlier that year.
The only problem was Bret learned a great deal of what he wanted to know from Alvarez, but he didn’t learn everything Alvarez knew. That was the root problem all along.
As a result, Bielema discovered that in the South nobody coached a system like he wanted to install. He was taking players to perform at an SEC championship level and having to go 180 degrees with them.
That was never going to work.
But the feeling here is it will work in Chad Morris’ system.
Part of it is Morris’ background, part of it is the talent on the Razorbacks isn’t that bad. Yes, I know they were 4-8 last year, but that record should have been at least 7-5 because it was just bad coaching that lost the TCU, Mississippi State and Missouri games.
Starting with the Rutgers loss in Bielema’s first season back in 2013, his teams had a nasty habit of falling short in the second half. It appeared they simply weren’t conditioned correctly … they might be able to lift a lot of weight, but couldn’t run fast enough to get to it in the second half.
Morris was a mathematics major with a statistics minor. He looks at things, well, differently than a lot of coaches. It’s a nerdy approach, for lack of a better definition.
It’s why he runs the offense he does. It’s all about the numbers and he amazes his assistants with some of the things he comes up with. How the angles on plays can be just an inch or so off and affect the play.
John Chavis is the same way on the defensive side of things. That’s a big part of the players changing positions. It’s part of what makes me think the defense is going to be significantly better.
The last three seasons, we kept hearing how “close” the Razorbacks were. They could never really close the gap.
Many chalked it up to a lack of talent. I said it was a matter of getting some pretty good players and then making them run around with 10-20 extra pounds and expecting them to live up to their potential.
You could call it “coaching them down.” That’s what Bielema and his staff appeared to do at times. They might have been bigger and stronger, but they couldn’t run enough in the fourth quarter to win games.
Count the number of games the Hogs lost in the second half over the last five years.
The question asked is a good one. Yes, there likely were players in the wrong positions. Former assistants said Bielema over-ruled some of their moves they wanted to make. Being conditioned for strength as opposed to stamina magnified the problem.
Let’s face it, if you’re playing a new position and you’re a half-step slower because of the extra 10 pounds of muscle you’re packing, then you have a problem.
Bielema was more a big picture type coach.
Morris is about the details.
Don’t misunderstand anything. It’s too much of a longshot to start booking tickets to Atlanta in December for the SEC Championship Game.
But they will be improved.
And the record will be better than most think.
