Get Ready for Spring of Questions with No Quick Answers

There will only be a lot of guesses before games next year with all new faces

Author:
Andy Hodges
Updated:
Jan 27, 2023 12:52 PM EST
Original:
Jan 26, 2023

In this story:

Arkansas Razorbacks

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Less than a month ago, everything looked better for Arkansas football.

Now all we have are questions with no answers coming anytime soon.

Don't look for answers in the spring.

It takes years to find and develop players into a system. That can't be done in just a few months because the Razorbacks now have new coaches fast-tracking evaluations of new players and figuring out what system to use.

Great coaches modify their system to the players they have. The ones who can't do that end up somewhere else.

Let's start on offense, which is the most recent and still fresh.

Coach Sam Pittman got tired of Kendal Briles flirting with seemingly every semi-high profile and encouraged him to be Sonny Dykes' problem at TCU.

It's been entertaining to watch a lot of the self-righteous Horned Frogs' fans and especially the media complaining about the hiring. It goes back to the Art Briles-Gary Patterson feud nearly two decades ago and the fact Kendal was on the staff at Baylor.

Bringing Dan Enos back to be the offensive coordinator probably shouldn't be that surprising, considering he and Pittman worked together previously on Bret Bielema's staff.

Pittman left Fayetteville for Georgia and playing for national championships while Enos went down with the Bielema ship. It happens in the world of coaching.

Don't expect everything to suddenly flip to a completely different system. We'll see how it all plays out, but nobody really knows how players who have been around for a few years are ready to change systems completely.

It's a lot for KJ Jefferson to change what he's spent three years plus whatever he picked up from the previous staff to go to a style that's completely foreign.

There will be a lot of teaching for Jefferson along with newcomers Jacolby Criswell and Malachi Singleton.

How well they pick it up will provide one of the many answers.

There are also questions at wide receiver, tight end and the entire defense. They may be easily answered and exceed everyone's expectations.

We won't know that for nearly a year is the only problem.

Until then, it's just a lot of guessing and speculating. There will be the usual sunshine crowd predicting great things and, of course, the doomsday folks that never expect anything good to happen.

As usual, reality will probably land somewhere in the middle.