YouTube Rabbit Hole Proves Arkansas Wasn't Best Team in State in 2019

Algorithm weaves from lowest lows to highest highs in recent Razorback football

Author:
Kent Smith
Publish date:
Jul 11, 2023 12:40 PM EDT

In this story:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Sometimes YouTube can have a mind of its own and the rabbit hole it drags you into can get pretty deep. Such was the case in the earliest of morning hours Tuesday.

It all started with a rather innocent desire for punishment. The whole Chad Morris experiment is so far removed now that it's hard to conceive that it could have been as bad as everyone remembers it. Surely the emotion of the moment made things seem worse than they actually were.

With that in mind, I pulled up the highlights from the Western Kentucky game that brought the Morris regime to a crashing halt. It only took a few seconds to realize three things: 1) The end of that staff's tenure was way worse than the people of Arkansas thought in the moment. 2) John Chavis, heralded as the architect of the great LSU defenses of the 2000s, turned out to be the worst defensive coordinator in Razorback history. 3) How Arkansas athletics held it together financially following a combination of Jeff long projects, two years of Chad Morris and then a COVID season is a miracle that is borderline impossible to believe.

Let's start with that last point. The first thing that hit me was the stands were so empty that I assumed it must have been the year under COVID limitations, but soon recalled that the book closed on Morris in 2019. The announced attendance for Western Kentucky was 42,000, which, coincidentally, we were just talking the other day about how a good attendance in Fayetteville toward the end of the Southwest Conference years was 42,000-45,000 fans. How's that for a little perspective on how far the program has come over the last 30 years? The worst Chad Morris game was a Top 10 Ken Hatfield team attendance.

As for the first point, that game was physically hard to watch and it was 1,000% on coaching. Arkansas could have lined up and simply ran the ball and had a legitimate chance to win. Rakeem Boyd had 185 yards and two touchdowns. Yet, he only carried the ball eight times. That's how stubborn and inept Morris was.

Boyd had three carries for 80 yards and a touchdown with over eight minutes left in the first quarter in a game that was tied 7-7. He only touched it one more time the entire half. Afterward, Morris claimed there just wasn't enough time to give the ball to a back who followed up an average of 20.5 yards per carry and a touchdown every four carries by averaging 26.25 yard per carry while maintaining that touchdown every four carries average.

Afterward, Morris said he just didn't have time to give Boyd the ball because of time of possession issue. You see, Arkansas kept going three and out since Boyd wasn't getting the ball, and Western Kentucky quarterback Ty Storey, whom Morris ran out of town the year prior, was absolutely destroying an embarrassingly bad Arkansas defense.

In a game that was way more overmatched than the 45-19 score would indicate, the most striking thing that jumped off the screen was how small the defensive line looked. The second was how almost every player on the field was taken out of contention on even the most basic plays. Morris spoke repeatedly of needing to continue to develop players going forward, but there was an obvious regression that didn't even adhere to basics for holding the edge on a sweep that are instilled in seventh grade. Either Chavis was mailing it in, or the players were intentionally blowing plays.

The evidence from the season suggests it could have been both. This was in the midst of a stretch where Arkansas gave up 51, 48, 54, 45 and 56 points. It didn't matter whether it was an SEC school or a Group of Five, an average of 51 points was a given.

Then YouTube made it worse

Once that video ended, YouTube auto-played the postgame press conference with Morris, then the Trey Biddy "Walk and Talk" that really caught on for him that season, before shedding true reality as to how far the Arkansas program had fallen.

There are times where fans might suspect the Razorbacks aren't the best football program in the state, but there's no solid evidence to work with. That wasn't the case in 2019. There is clear, solid evidence that Arkansas was nowhere near the level of Nathan Brown's Central Arkansas team that year.

The biggest point of evidence is that the Bears went to Western Kentucky and beat the Hilltoppers 35-28 in a game that was a terrible spot by the official from being 42-28. UCA exposed weakness after weakness in the Western Kentucky defense. Weaknesses Morris made no effort to take advantage of weeks later. Perhaps he was too busy skipping out on the team to fly to Dallas each week to be bothered to pop in the tape.

It could be argued that one game doesn't make the Razorbacks the weaker of the two teams, but we're talking about a team that needed an interception with a minute left to hold off a Portland State team that would go on to play Simon Frazier the following week. Who knows whether that's an actual school or just a random guy. Arkansas then went on to struggle mightily with a 3-win Colorado State team and lose to a 5-win San Jose State squad. Meanwhile, the Bears advanced to the FCS playoffs, something there's no evidence that Arkansas team could have done.

Now we see truly how far Arkansas fell

YouTube wasn't content to show just how low the Razorback football program had fallen. It now wanted to show how far the fall truly had been. What popped on last was a series of Darren McFadden highlights.

Arkansas suddenly went from a mid-level 6-A high school team to borderline Alabama in the Tide's prime. It's easy to forget how great McFadden was and how elite the talent was around him. The speed and the power are simply jaw dropping. The offense comes from all over the place as Arkansas switches in and out of the wildcat formation.

What's more telling is the scoreboard tucked into the corner of each game. Single digit rankings next to Arkansas late in the season. Games against Top 10 teams where the Razorbacks are not only in it, they are leading late, and in a lot of cases, go on to win. Say what you want about Houston Nutt. In the midst of all the turmoil going on with the Springdale drama, he had that team playing some of the best football ever played at Arkansas for long stretches of time.

The final take

When it was time to put a stop to the YouTube algorithm and get some sleep there was a lot of perspective taken in. Pittman has done a wonderful job of digging a national embarrassment of a program out of the deepest, darkest depths imaginable for an SEC program. This football team was headed toward decades of futility from which it might have never recovered. It's also good to remember that he did it with a short recruiting window after being hired late, followed by not being able to recruit at all during COVID.

The other bit of perspective is how good Arkansas can be. It's easy to forget at times that the Razorbacks can compete with the upper echelon of the SEC. It's possible to turn on the television and see a truly frightening team coming after the best of the best in the nation.

Perhaps it will happen again. If Arkansas can make the gains it has since the dark days of Morris, it can make the additional gains needed to get into the playoff conversation. When this YouTube rabbit hole started, it definitely opened on a Razorback world where there wasn't hope. At least now there is, and for much of the fan base, that's all they ask.