On Cupcake Saturday in the Southeastern Conference, Arkansas looked more like a team booked as a breather by an Alabama, Georgia or an Auburn than a true contender.
Mississippi State couldn't believe its luck that a fellow SEC West team could play so uninspired. Arkansas, losing 52-6 in Starkville, Miss., might not have hung with The Citadel (trounced 50-17 by Alabama), Liberty (53-0 to Auburn) or Massachusetts (66-27 to Georgia), which shouldn't surprise you.
Arkansas, after all, has lost to Colorado State, North Texas and Vanderbilt in this "Psycho" shower scene of a season. All that's left is for the Razorbacks is a Thanksgiving Friday date at bowl-bound Missouri, which with Drew Lock at quarterback could take up where Nick Fitzgerald of Mississippi State left off. Barring a Faurot Field loss by the home team, Arkansas will finish 2-10, its worst record since intercollegiate football became part of campus life in Fayetteville in 1894.
Over the years, Arkansas has lost by bigger margins than 52-6 -- a 70-17 flogging by USC in 2005 comes to mind -- but something about watching Mississippi State rip the Razorbacks to shreds proved terribly unsettling.
In terms of money, prestige and tradition, Mississippi State in no way compares with elite SEC teams like Alabama, Georgia and LSU, two of which beat Arkansas this year. Sadly, with the program at a 60-year low, the Razorbacks have dropped below the Bulldogs in SEC football, losing six of their last seven meetings. Such skids as that, along with the ongoing 0-7 against Texas A&M, should trouble the people sitting in ivory towers in Fayetteville.
Many Arkansas fans, I think, still believe in Chad Morris, although perhaps fewer than when the new coach rounded up one highly recruited player after another in the summer. Arkansas' 2019 recruiting class will be judged ultimately on where quarterback Kelly Bryant, formerly at Clemson, transfers. With Bryant at quarterback and given speedier and more sure-handed receivers, Morris would have a better chance of running the high-octane offense that he learned under Gus Malzahn (Auburn) and perfected as play-caller for Dabo Swinney at Clemson.
Because as it stands, Morris' "left lane, hammer down" comment at his first UA press conference rivals Bret Bielema's "uncommon" from 2012 as a verbal misstep,
We were talking about quarterbacks. To that end, does anyone believe that Ty Storey, Conner Noland, Cole Kelley or John Stephen Jones will engineer a football renaissance at Arkansas? Or that one can occur without a significant upgrade in offensive linemen over this wretched unit that continually puts Arkansas behind the chains and its green quarterbacks in untenable positions?
Still, bigger questions may be directed, if not by Morris then by the rank and file, at John Chavis. A defensive coordinator for hire when Morris selected him for his first Arkansas staff, Chavis has watched one quarterback after another carve up the Razorbacks like a Thanksgiving turkey. More often than not, Chavis' troops cannot bring pressure, cover adequately short or long or force turnovers.
Morris called the 52-6 beatdown "completely unacceptable," and it was all of that.
Arkansas needed every stroke of luck, everyone working in close harness, to do much this in Morris' first season. Unfortunately, an expected rebuilding season has turned grim and dangerous. The Razorbacks, sadly to say, are the dirge of the SEC, rivaling L ouisville and Rutgers as the worst so-called Power Five team in college football. At Arkansas, a College World Series finalist last season, baseball can't come quickly enough.
Sports on 11/19/2018