COACH’S CORNER
Arkansas at Missouri
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Sentinel-Record followed up with a head football coach of a local high school after each regular season game this year for the Arkansas Razorbacks. The final installment features J.D. Plumlee, head coach of the Fountain Lake Cobras.
Arkansas closed out an abysmal 2018 football season on Friday with a fitting 38-0 loss at Missouri.
First-year Razorbacks head coach Chad Morris said 15 fresh-
men saw the field for the Hogs in the game. Fountain Lake head football coach J.D. Plumlee said it is those young players who must be the focus of the program moving forward.
“What you do as a coach is you go in there and evaluate those young guys getting snaps in an SEC-caliber game against a very good Missouri team that is going to go to a pretty good bowl,” Plumlee said.
“You get to really see where they are at and what they need to work on. I think it was a very good evaluation game.”
Arkansas (2-10, 0-8 Southeastern Conference) finished with 10 losses for the first time since the program began in 1894. The Razorbacks were not only outscored, 90-6, in the final two games, but they were outscored, 73-0, over the last six quarters.
Announced attendance for the game was
52,482 despite Missouri (8-4, 4-4) closing out an eight-win season and head coach Barry Odom spending $138,425 for more than 5,000 requested tickets. The attendance matched Missouri’s average for the season at a Faurot Field at Memorial Stadium undergoing $98 million in renovations.
“Going into the game, you’re 2-9, it’s your last game, it was cold, it was rainy and it was nowhere near a capacity crowd,” Plumlee said. “You may have had some guys just going through the motions, saying, ‘Hey, let’s get on to 2019.’”
Arkansas fell flat on both sides of the ball in the final weeks of the season after glimpses of promise in the first half of the season.
“A lot of it is Chad Morris’ scheme revolves around having playmakers that can make plays,” Plumlee said. “You are seeing right now where he is bringing in guys with this top-10 recruiting class that can make those plays.
“It all starts with the quarterback. In Morris’ scheme, the quarterback has to be a dual-threat quarterback that can make plays with his legs, too. I think we have better Hog ball in front of us and Chad Morris, in my opinion, is the right guy for the job.”
Redshirt junior Ty Storey finished the season 143-for-250, 57.2 percent, passing for
1,584 yards with 11 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. It took four games before Morris and his staff settled on Storey as the starter.
Plumlee said Morris is recruiting a 2019 class of signees better fit for his offensive scheme. The recruited quarterbacks and receivers are all expected to have more speed and size than what the Razorbacks currently have on their roster.
“If you watched all 12 football games for Arkansas, you saw a bunch of drops,” Plumlee said. “In an RPO-type scheme where you are going to raise up and take the easy hitch on first-and-10, you can’t drop that and the quarterback can’t miss it when it is an easy five yards. That type of stuff has to be cleaned up.”
Plumlee said he also looks for Arkansas to recruit more athletic offensive linemen to match up with SEC defensive lines.
“Just the speed of the Missouri defensive line just ate us up,” Plumlee said. “It hurt us bad.
“There’s just not a whole lot you can do when they are beating you off the ball and you can’t get there and you do not have the ability to just line up and run right at them. It is going to be a long night.”
Arkansas also received little lift on special teams as one of only four teams in the SEC without a dedicated coordinator for special teams. Connor Limpert was 9-for14 on field goals outside of a streak of 10 straight successful kicks.
The Razorbacks averaged 23 yards on
23 kick returns without a touchdown, while giving up three special teams scores. Deon Stewart only returned nine kicks for a total of 91 yards.
“Those are game-changers,” Plumlee said. “We need the potential to be able to do that. It is awfully nice when your kicker can put it in the end zone every time and not give a defense a chance for a big return.”
Plumlee said the coaches now have a better idea of the team’s strengths and weaknesses.
“You’ve got these new guys coming in to where next year it is going to be a very young football team out there in the SEC,” Plumlee said. “He is going to have a bunch of freshman on the field trying to make plays against that SEC schedule.
“That is kind of a scary thing, but when you look at Georgia, Alabama and LSU, there’s freshmen every year making plays. I’m excited about where it is headed, but I do think you sit down and really evaluate who can help you moving forward and who you may need to help get a new home somewhere else.”
Arkansas coaches began meeting again with recruits on Sunday ahead of the December early signing period. Morris talked after Friday’s game about the coache s getting back to work on Sunday and the players getting back into the weight room this week to work toward next season.
“That is what I love about him,” Plumlee said. “There is no one that is hurting more in the state of Arkansas around that program than he is, but it is not going to define him and he is going to get it going and get it turned around. I will tell you right now I am a Chad Morris fan.”