STRAIGHT FROM ANDY'S MOUTH: Hogs Walking Fine Line at Quarterback Position with Depth
If everything goes normal, Kade's Renfro knee injury last weekend won't be a big deal.
"Towards the end of the scrimmage, Renfro just planted, a non-contact injury, he just planted (and injured his knee," Arkansas coach Sam Pittman said Monday. "He’ll be out. He has an ACL, so he’ll be out for a while. I hated it for him ... just planted and gave way on him, so I’m very sad for him, the whole team is."
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Most folks can deal with that. It's not one of those crazy things.
"It’s a part of the game you wish we could get rid of, but it certainly happened," Pittman said.
Renfro hadn't played in any games, but there were positive things being said about him that gave the impression he was developing.
On the surface, it may not be a big thing. Additional injuries, though, could be a problem with depth.
Photo by Andy Hodges
Heading into spring practice, the Razorbacks will be down to starter KJ Jefferson, backup Malik Hornsby and Lucas Coley, another quarterback who didn't play this season.
The Hogs can't go after a big-name quarterback and don't feel the need to do that. Jefferson showed he can be the man.
Coaches have to be ready in case of injuries and there wasn't a quarterback signed during the early signing period.
"It certainly makes you look," Pittman said about the question of depth.
Enter the transfer portal ... and avoiding hurting Jefferson and Hornsby's feelings.
"If you ended up doing (the portal), you’d certainly need to sit down and talk to Malik and KJ about it before you ever would do it," Pittman said.
The other problem is he doesn't know what the exact scholarship numbers will be. The Hogs had an offensive lineman enter the portal, then take his name out and another one go in ... and that's just this week.
"One of y’all asked me about scholarship numbers and all those things and man, I just don’t know," Pittman said. "It’s going to be fluid. We have an opportunity to get six more scholarships, but you’d have to lose six kids to the portal."
He didn't know Monday if that was going to happen.
"It seems like it’s headed that direction number-wise," he said. "If we got to a total of six, would we use it on a quarterback? Possibly."
There probably won't be a lot of clarity before the Outback Bowl game on New Year's Day.
"Coley’s getting a lot of reps right now, as well," he said. "You’d have to wait a little bit over the next week and a half to find that out, whether you felt comfortable there or not and he’s getting a lot better, so we’ll just wait and see on that."
In other words, the coaching staff doesn't have a clue right now what they're going to do.
Which isn't surprising at this point of the season when the third or fourth-string quarterback goes down.
But they aren't done recruiting.
• STRAIGHT FROM THE ANDY'S MOUTH
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