It is time to wrap up the 2018 college football season for the Arkansas Razorbacks.
The end result was evident since a late Saturday night collapse in Fort Collins, Colo., that has become oh so familiar to Arkansas fans.
John Nabors, host of The Morning Rush on ESPN Arkansas asked this week, "Where did it all go wrong with Razorback football in 2018?"
The answer was obvious to me. The season turned on a simple incomplete pass.
Arkansas led Colorado State, 27-9, after shocking the Rams with a pair of long touchdown plays in the third quarter of the second game of the season. Another long touchdown pass from Cole Kelley to Jordan Jones looked to keep the Razorbacks rolling until it was ruled incomplete. They failed to advance the ball and a missed field goal attempt was their last show of resistance.
Colorado State went on to win, 34-27, as Arkansas repeatedly wilted under the slightest hint of adversity through the rest of the season. Where I think first-year Arkansas head coach Chad Morris failed was in enabling his players to do so.
I have only ever argued that Arkansas has more talent than their results showed. The same applied under Bret Bielema. His teams repeatedly underperformed as former players such as Hunter Henry, Alex Collins, Trey Flowers, Deatrich Wise, Martrell Spaight, Darius Philon and Frank Ragnow are thriving in the NFL. Brandon Allen, Jeremy Sprinkle, Jonathan Williams, Drew Morgan and Brooks Ellis are among recent Arkansas alumni on NFL rosters.
Arkansas returned most of its leaders from last season outside of a watered down Austin Allen, a forgotten David Williams, Ellis and Ragnow. That team still won four games against a more difficult schedule.
Most of the team returned and they only win two games? No Georgia on the schedule. No Florida, South Carolina nor Kentucky from the SEC East, but Arkansas instead gets a home game against Vanderbilt. The marquee non-conference game was a road game against a 3-9 Mountain West Conference team in Colorado State. Arkansas did not have to play a true road game for almost two full months in the middle of the season.
That is a schedule built for reaching a low level bowl game. Arkansas was instead throttled at home by a North Texas team out of the Conference USA and crumbled late after leading against Colorado State and Ole Miss.
As Morris himself has become synonymous with the phrase, winning two games this season was "completely unacceptable."
Scoota Harris will play in the NFL, Sosa Agim will play in the NFL, Ryan Pulley is a pro prospect and Hjalte Froholdt is expected to at least earn a roster spot in the NFL.
We learned this week senior offensive lineman Brian Wallace and senior defensive lineman Armon Watts accepted invitations to participate in the 94th East-West Shrine Game in January. Senior defensive end Randy Ramsey was another starter undervalued by the previous coaching staff.
Both receiver Jared Cornelius and nickel back Kevin Richardson returned for redshirt senior seasons. There was individual talent all over the field and, yet, at no time this season did Arkansas seem to get the most from that talent, save for 2.5 quarters in Fort Collins.
A former member of the media and now an unbiased observer in the state made a comment on Twitter this week that really made me think. "I'm gobsmacked by the number of people who think Chad Morris is guaranteed success at Arkansas," he said.
I was stunned when I learned Morris was a candidate for the job at Arkansas a year ago, apparently being pushed by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and his circle. I wrote last year I was underwhelmed by the hire.
Morris is now 16-32 as a college head football coach, and, at 50 years old on Tuesday, he is not a young "up and comer" as he was sold when he was hired. His record in conference games is 8-24.
I still think some of the fan resentment was a result of wanting to buy into what Morris and Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek sold when he was hired. Yurachek still goes around the state explaining how he believes the team is on some guaranteed path to win a national championship.
As a colleague of mine said last week, "They talk like they are building a deck and not a football program."
Real world results have to match up with the message at some point. Morris continued to praise his team for their "fight" as Arkansas was outscored, 90-6, in the last two games of the season. Vanderbilt pulled away with three fourth-quarter touchdowns in Fayetteville. The Commodores finished 6-6.
I will say that every high school football coach I have talked to raved about Morris and his system. Morris himself was 169-38 as a high school coach in Texas with three state championships.
Arkansas no doubt lacked the personnel to effectively run the offense Morris wants to run. Optimism is currently running on a highly-rated recruiting class with more size and speed than the Razorbacks have seen in the era of recruiting services.
I don't know. I don't know how well Morris will do at Arkansas, but I know that a coach hired as an offensive innovator should not have the lowest scoring offense in the SEC. Refusing to go for it on fourth down in game-changing scenarios is not good enough.
Throwing the ball 370 times with Ty Storey, Cole Kelley, Connor Noland and John Stephen Jones is not good enough. Averaging only 3.9 yards per rush is not good enough with a group of running backs that includes Rakeem Boyd, Devwah Whaley, T.J. Hammonds, Chase Hayden and Maleek Williams.
Who knows what it would have done for this team and it's confidence if Morris ever went for it on fourth down or made a late-game decision that showed he had any confidence in his team.
Sports on 11/28/2018