Arkansas won’t be able to run it consistently. We’ll end up throwing it 40 to 50 times, with AA getting hit on almost every throw. And so we’ll end up losing for the same reason we lost to A&M. Because we won’t be able to run well enough nor play good enough defense. However, after the game, most posts on here will be about us losing because of an outdated offense that doesn’t throw it enough. That’s my prediction.
I guess the “outdated offense” part of your post dates back to references I made in one of our past discussions. It is a run oriented methodical time possession pro type offense. A team must control the offensive line of scrimmage to make it pay off throughout the duration of a game. Arkansas obviously has not been able to do that so far this season. If that failure to control the offensive line of scrimmage continues with this coaching staff abiding a strict adherence to this same offensive scheme? It is going to be a long season as the tone of your post seems to acknowledge.
The college football world has evolved into a No Huddle Hurry Up offensive scheme. Bielema lobbied against this Hurry Up world asking for time to be mandatorily allowed after the referee readied the ball after every play. Bielema argued Hurry Up football would lead to more injuries. All it seems to lead to is our defense not ever being ready and yielding huge plays defensively constantly.
It is a new world in college football. Maybe Bielema needs to change with it or maybe this fan base should just learn to deal with mediocre football into eternity?
The offensive scheme of CBB includes plenty of passing. Yes, you must be able to control the line of scrimmage. I’m not sure it is a new world in college football. Teams may be trying to play faster, but the way you win is still the same. That’s with being able to run and play good defense. The problem I see is not the style of play. Rather it’s with that style of play not being played well enough by the players. The teams with the players to play CBB’s style at a high level are the ones who win championships. If you don’t have those types of players, then you won’t be a championship level team.
You could switch to a no huddle air raid offense, and the teams that can run through people consistently will still have the advantage. Several years ago we had the best passing offense in Razorback history, and it got shut down against Alabama. I remember Lou Holtz saying before one of those games that we couldn’t beat Alabama because we didn’t run it well enough back then. Teams like that are too physical and too fast to let you hurry up and throw to your skill players all over the field. You have to be able to match them physically and run through them, while being able to stop them on defense. If we don’t have the players to play CBB’s style at the highest level, then we simply won’t be able to beat the best teams most of the time. If you want a better team, then you need better recruiting. Having lesser players or a more finesses system won’t get you to the top. The only way to get there, it seems to me, is through good qb play, physically dominant line play, being able to run consistently, and having a good defense.
Football on any level is usually won on the line of scrimmage.
You wish to place the blame totally on recruiting. An approach of you get the quality athlete, the offensive system will work. That would be true in theory. However what caliber of athletes do you need to put theory into winning on the scoreboard? Probably athletes at least the equal to Alabama. How are you ever going to recruit like Alabama without ever winning like Alabama?
That whole premise of recruiting like a upper echelon SEC team is totally unrealistic when you lose 4 and 5 games yearly in recent history with no championships to ever hang your hat on that any recruit can relate to. Our recruiting is not even approaching matching an Alabama.
One can argue for Bielema’s system and lay blame wherever. However he must win with it sooner than later. Bad O-Lines and terrible special teams with mediocre defenses and results are not going to keep him in Fayetteville indefinitely. Every offensive system stinks when losing.
Our recruiting is not even close to Alabama, and that’s why I don’t expect us to get to their level. I expect us to win 7-8 games a year based on the players we get on average. Every 5 years or so we may win 9-10, since there’s going to be times when we get players who are better than their rankings, and every few years we may only win 4-5. I think we could have any coach and any offensive system, and that will be the case. So I do put the blame mostly on recruiting. I think that coaching and schemes make enough of a difference if the players you have are pretty close to the players you are going up against, but I think it has to be pretty close. Just like card counting in black jack only gives the player the advantage if the house edge is very low to begin with. Well, think of players like the house edge and coaching like a card counting strategy.
You have basically stated Hog fans must accept mediocrity 4 out 5 years with the best possible expectations being a 10 win season with a good bowl twice a decade. I don’t buy that and this program historically does not measure to that low of a standard. It was never the case with Broyles, Holtz, Hatfield or even Petrino. During the SEC years we have had Ford, Nutt and Petrino. The last two accounted for 15 years of the previous 20 years in the SEC prior to Bielema and they both left the program amid scandal. Nutt always had an easily defended absolutely one dimensional run oriented team. Those one dimensional offensive teams never win SEC championships, Nutt was here 10 years. Ford could beat Alabama (Saban won’t be there forever, already talk of his retirement) and Ford never had crummy offensive & defensive lines like Bielema has hatched this year.
Bielema is not producing fundamentally as a solid football coach. Bad kicking special teams yearly, not technically good defensive teams and now this ridiculous O-Line debacle. It just amounts to sheer ineptitude. This program does not have to accept mediocrity four out of every five years. Bielema is paid over three million dollars a year. A lot of high school teams around this state appear to be coached more soundly.
I agree one dimensional offenses aren’t going to win the SEC. That’s why we need to be able to run consistently, so we don’t end up being a one dimensional passing team that can throw for 400 yards but still not win because we can’t run for 1 yard on the goal line in something like 10 plays.
Tell it to Bielema, supposedly two dimensional, but still cannot “run for 1 yard on the goal line in something like 10 plays.” I do not like to criticize young players, that is why I properly attribute all failures on the gridiron to coaching. However that was the most disgusting performance I have seen in 55+ years of watching Razorback football. I had a feeling I have seldom had in watching a football game. That a team deserved to lose. I totally blame Bielema.
Can’t teach “…”
Learn about football before comment
Here are facts:
2011 Hogs Scoring offense (FBS/SEC) #1/#1 2016 Hogs Scoring offense (FBS/SEC) #5/#8
2011 Hogs Scoring defense (FBS/SEC) #9/#8 2016 Hogs Scoring defense (FBS/SEC) #10/#14
The biggest Hogs problem this year is Hogs can’t run the ball (#11 SEC in yards per rush)
and dead last in yards per rush allowed. This fact spells trouble because “run and defense” is Beliema’s football philosophy and the Hogs could not accomplish that, and that’s why he has to lean on Allen to keep the Hogs in the game.
Under Petrino his high-flying offense was more than enough to offset his mediocre defense.
Under Beliema both his offense and defense are bad to average this year.
Bottom line is it does not matter how the coach prefers to do it; run it or pass it, offensive or defensive team…
as long as his team is winning at the end of the game, and at the end of the year.
Has Warhog always been this dumb about football or is He new to this board?
Not so with Alabama. Petrino never beat Alabama. I wish I could give you Petrino worshipers a lesson on this board about what you can do with Petrino. I would be permanently banned.
Show your knowledge about anything you senseless damn wop.
The Hogs have got to want to win as bad as the Tide. They have got to want to win more and thereby play a little beyond themselves. The scheme will work but the players got to get after the Tide and never let up or we will get beat again. The OL must be the big uglies here on out! Some of it is coaching and some of it is team leadership. Hogs in overtime 26-23. HOGS YA’LL.
You are certainly absolutely correct about that. You are even right about such a rudimentary elemental type thing in football apparently needing to be emphasized. These type rudimentary football breakdowns yearly are my growing concern about this coach.
Nobody to kick extra points one year, never able to develop a reliable clutch FG kicker. Nobody that can consistently kick the ball close to the goal line on Kick-Offs this year, that leads directly to good field positions for the opposition way too often. Then you have the dysfunction of the previous QB for the first 2 1/2 years Bielema was up there. That was plenty of time to develop an alternative QB that could function in clutch situations. However absolutely no moves were ever made in that direction. Now we have this O-Line weird issue of being absolutely unable to provide Zero Push in any short yardage situation.
You name a coach in Arkansas history that has ever had any of these rudimentary type problems over often extended seasons? I have seen poor FG kickers but the situation has been soon remedied by the following season. Bielema problems in the kicking game go on & on. I just am rapidly losing faith in Bielema. A great human being with a great personality but not college coaching hard stock. We seem to go from one personality extreme to the other.
The closer to the game we get, the more confident I get. I think that Bama has more weaknesses than in years past. Freshman QB, O-line is average, and no stud RB to deal with. Defense is still stout, but if the Hogs can get over 100 rushing yards we can have success. Also, I know that Bama has scored a lot of non-offensive TDs, but the Hogs also have 3 INTs returned for TDs. Winning the turnover battle, and then scoring off turnovers, will be huge. The Hogs must play their best game of the year and get a few bounces go their way. If this happens, we can win.
feel more confidant in our running game with what our freshman RB’s showed last week. We should try throwing to our great WR’s & TE on their side of the field & not have to try to run against their stout DL which is their strength.
Bama does that to just about every opponent that they play. The only teams that typically compete with them are teams that can spread the field and stretch the secondary by passing. So if we do indeed lose this game, it will most likely be due to our offense not being able to do the aforementioned things. Teams have to be able to open up the run game by being a threat to pass.
Most losses in college football boil down to the defense not playing good enough and a team failing to run the ball well enough. Not exactly a bold prediction there. Predicting we will throw 40 to 50 times and that isn’t enough is also a little strange. Arkansas’s problem is not the pro style offense, it is the “improving but not good enough yet to dominate” talent level at key positions. Because Arkansas, Michigan State, Stanford, Wisconsin, now Georgia, etc. (that’s some pretty good programs running your outdated offense) are in the minority running pro offenses that gives us a huge recruiting edge for pro style QB’s, tight ends, offensive linemen, fullbacks, power running backs, etc. That outdated offense is one of the reasons that the talent is improving under Bielema.
I predict that, if we lose, only the same few Malzahnistas on this board will be complaining about our style of offense. Nowhere near “most posts.” That’s my prediction. 
Where is that “recruiting edge” paying off and all that “talent is improving” on the O-Line? I never before witnessed such a poor performance by an Arkansas O-Line as in that Texas A&M game. Quite a broad stroke of the brush with all those recruiting improvements you laid out there. When is that going to equate to winning just above .500 each regular season? That better recruiting doesn’t seem to be showing up defensively either. Did you watch the defense in the second quarter against that Alcorn State powerhouse? Bielema doesn’t even seem to be able to evaluate or recruit a kicker with leg strength to reach the back of the end zone. Cannot get a reliable FG kicker established either. No Malzahn fan here, I never mentioned him and never will as Hog coach.