FAYETTEVILLE — After a first day of 2019 preseason practice that he called the best he has ever had as a head coach, Arkansas’ Chad Morris only wanted to look forward.
He was asked a question about the perception of some veteran players not buying in during his first year in Fayetteville and if he could quantify how much better that would be this season.
“I don’t want to go back to last year,” Morris said Friday night. “The guys last year, those guys, they didn’t ask for a coaching change. And change is hard when you have been recruited to a certain style and you are recruited by certain coaches, gone through a couple of coordinators, couple or two or three strength coaches, that’s tough. That’s tough on a young man.
“When we came in, we brought a whole different style, style of training, style of offense, style of defense and when that happens and you have got an older player, they have gone through a lot of change. So it is really hard to sit and go, ‘I have got four months left, here I go again.’”
Morris, whose team went 2-10 last season, noted that he didn’t think it was so much not fully buying in as it was not having time to do so.
“I really don’t think that anybody said, ‘I am not buying in,’” Morris said. “I don’t think from the time we got here to the time we got into the season that there was enough time to build a relationship and a trust to have a complete buy-in. I don’t think that is just for this football team, I think that goes across to changes when you have coaching changes all across at all levels.”
Morris was adamant that everyone in his program now knows exactly what is expected in Year 2 of his tenure at Arkansas.
“We have been together now for 18 months,” Morris said. “They know exactly what we expect, they know how we train, they know what our standard is and there is no doubt in my mind that this football team is obviously more full capacity than we were a year ago.
“You would expect that and I expected that when I stepped out on the field. You see it, you feel it. I feel it. I walked in today and I felt it. Coming back in, I feel it. These guys are ready.
“Our culture has never been stronger and we have got to do the things in college football that everybody is doing, but we have got to do them better. It’s the little things.”
Arkansas tight ends coach Barry Lunney, who was also on the previous staff, did see some older players who weren’t fully on board in 2018.
“I did see it last year,” Lunney said. “I was surprised by it, but I did see it. It wasn’t a majority. It wasn’t, but a minority of the wrong guys can be dangerous.
“And really the ultimate challenge is that we weren’t winning and that festers and it doesn’t matter if you had recruited every one of them or they were all new, that creates a unique set of challenges of its own.”
Lunney is in agreement with the Morris that it shouldn’t be an issue this season and brought up how the head coach had brought in some members of the military to talk about being there for the man beside you.
“We are hopeful that this is the last time we have to talk about that because it is different," Lunney said. “We are in a different spot. Coach has done a really phenomenal job through the avenues of the people that we brought from the outside - all these people that touch our players.
“Coach has done a great job of making our culture and our expectations are crystal clear.”