I will preface this post by saying I’ve been a hog fan all my life and remember the glory days.
The obvious:
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This offense will not work with the talent we have or lack thereof. Offensive line is woeful, and here we are in year five. Our offense is slow developing and requires a better than average offensive line to work. It is obvious this is not the case. Recruiting misses, lack of numbers, lack of development are things I see with my own two eyes. We continue to recruit drop back quarterbacks that have limited at best mobility. The stat played over and over yesterday was how many times Allen has been hit. Little to no running game against an SEC team. Yeah we roll over the cupcakes and brag at how good our running game is, how we’ve got to establish it each and every week. Yeah right, can’t fool me anymore. We will be lucky to get 100 years rushing against Bama or Auburn. The questions are these. Is our coach too stubborn to change? Where is the creativity each and every week? If Spurrier was our coach Allen would have been benched. Why not go to 3 and 4 wideouts and spread the field? Why not try hurry up, no huddle? Heck if it’s not working you’re beating your head against the wall forcing a square peg into a round hole. It appears to me that we will not change, we are either going to win or lose, (which has been mostly the case). ADAPT. This is woefully lacking by our coaching staff. And lastly, how about half time adjustments. I think we give sedatives to our players at the half time break. We are 0 and 17 when trailing at halftime under this coach. Is that not a trend? Wouldn’t you imagine that the coach can recognize this? This is insane to think we are going to get different results doing the same thing. This is what I really don’t understand.
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Defense. When was the last time Arkansas had a really good defense. One above average, not great, year under this coach. What I see is huge cushions by the defensive backs. When announcers say that is easy pickins they are correct. This prevent defense we play seems to always come back to haunt us. How many points have we surrendered at the end of the first half playing it safe. Safety play other than Rameriz is lacking. We used to be safety U, we are light years from that. It is obvious that what we do doesn’t work, playing base defense against teams that have superior talent is a recipe for disaster. If you’re going to eventually get smoked, why not gamble? I would rather stomach a loss at least trying to be aggressive, than to sit back and take punch after punch. Rhodes comes in with great credentials, buy so did coach B. We are out schemed game after game. Go back and watch if you can find it the SEC channel, forget what the show is called, but watch Sumlin describe how a simple scheme change destroyed us. Film room, something like that. Read a stat on another board that Washington State has averaged 54th in recruiting rankings, well below us. Both their offense and defense is better than ours.
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Lastly but not least, special teams. It is obvious that overall we absolutely stink on special teams. Week after week, game after game. No punt returns, kickoff team is pathetic in all areas both receiving and defending kickoffs. Punting, well at least we haven’t had one blocked. We kicked our first field goal this week, in week 5. Almost laughable, take that back, it is laughable. Question: Year 5 coach, what the heck is going on here?
Mediocre is hard to take for an old timer, below that is detestable. And it is OBVIOUS that is where we are.