FAYETTEVILLE — It was tough for Arkansas offensive coordinator Joe Craddock to answer the final question in his news conference Wednesday on a subject that has been heavy on his heart.
Arkansas State football coach Blake Anderson, whose wife Wendy passed late Monday night from breast cancer after two years of fighting the disease, recruited Craddock, a quarterback, to Middle Tennessee State when he was an assistant there.
“That’s a tough question for me, to be honest with you,” Craddock said. “Coach Anderson recruited me. I would not be here today without him. It’s really sad to see that happen, and Miss Wendy was a great person. I remember her through the recruiting process. I remember her being around a lot with the team.
“It’s really sad. My heart goes out for Coach. Again, I would not be standing here in front of you today without Blake Anderson giving me a shot to play college football. He found me at Briarwood Christian, a little small school south of Birmingham, and gave me a shot to play quarterback. I owe him a lot.”
Wendy Anderson was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017 and fought a valiant battle the last two years with her husband by her side.
“Me and my family have said a lot of prayers for his family,” Craddock said. “Coach has taught me a whole lot through this process with his courage, how he’s handle this whole situation. We wish them nothing but the best. I know Coach will bounce back and go through the grieving process and all that stuff.
“But it’s really sad. … We’re continuing to pray for the Anderson family and hopefully everything will pass. Miss Wendy fought hard. She fought really, really hard. I love Coach Anderson to death. Hopefully he’ll bounce back.”
Craddock had earlier addressed Arkansas’ Wednesday scrimmage, the last major one for the Razorbacks before the season opener August 31 against Portland State.
“It was about 80 (plays) scripted,” Craddock said. “I don’t know if we got to all of them or not, but it was about 80 originally that planned on running, but I am not sure what the number exactly was.”
It was not an all-out scrimmage as the Razorbacks’ previous two of 175 and 110 plays had been.
“Some of it was situational, so probably a quarter of it was tackling to the ground,” Craddock said. “Others were quick whistles so Coach Morris, and again I am totally great with it. We couldn’t afraid to get anybody else hurt so some periods we said, ‘Let’s just stay up, keep them off the ground,' what we call track to the ball. We are able to keep some guys off the ground by doing that and avoid any more injuries. I think that was good for us today to try and mix it up.”
Craddock noted it was essentially the last time for quarterback Nick Starkel and Ben Hicks as well as other positions to be evaluated.
“Like we’ve said all along, hopefully sooner than later we’ll be able to name somebody,” Craddock said. “We’ll sit down as a staff and talk about it with Coach Morris. I know Coach has probably told you that he has one more vote than everybody else.
“So all we can do as a quarterback room is continue to get better. And whoever we decide to go with they’ve got to be in a position to lead our offense and get our unit in the end zone. That’s the main thing. That’s where we’re at. I’m hoping in the next couple of days we’ll know something.”
Arkansas will have its annual one-hour Beanie Bowl on Saturday, which is more of a walk-through than a practice that happens during Fan Day.
“You don’t get much out of it other than a dress rehearsal of the game,” Craddock said. “Everybody knows where they’re going. … All the stuff where people will know where to go, people will know where to line up, people will know where to line up, people know where to sit on the sidelines. It’s all those kind of things.
“We’ll stage a fight in there. So two guys get in a fight, Coach calls everybody up, tells them, ‘Hey, if this happens you’re ejected and you miss a certain amount of time. Miss the next game or whatever.’ So a lot of it’s scripted. A lot of it’s just going through everything and making sure all of our guys understand what we’re doing when we go into a game.”
Craddock feels like his offense has had a good camp even if some of momentum has been stifled because of injuries.
“I think it has gone pretty good, honestly,” Craddock said. “It has been tough, to be honest, with you in terms of injuries. I know we have had, I don’t know the exact number, but I feel like it has been like six guys that we thought were going to start that have all been missing at a critical time. But hopefully we will get some of those guys back soon and get back healthy and be ready to go.
“But when we had those guys out there, I felt pretty good about where we were.”
One of those injuries was senior wide receiver Deon Stewart’s season-ending ACL tear.
“He’s such a great kid and I love him to death, I really do,” Craddock said. “It sucks to see him go down and miss his senior year after he’s had a great summer of leading the guys, kind of taking charge in that room. It kind of sucks to see that happen, but it also presents other opportunities for other guys to step up.
“The freshmen are going to have to step up quickly. Obviously we feel we recruited well and we feel like we’ve hit on a lot of guys and some of those guys have to play early. Coach told them at the end of the scrimmage, ‘Some of you guys have to grow up quick. This is the SEC, it’s not high school and you guys have to grow up quick.’
“It’s exciting to get some other guys in there, but obviously we have to… Like you said, hopefully get some guys back and that won’t happen. Hopefully we won’t have to see that happen.”
One of those freshman wide receivers is Trey Knox, who has missed he last three days with an undisclosed illness.
“Trey wasn’t back today,” Craddock said. “He’s another guy that has missed several days. We’re still kind of waiting on what his situation is. It’s kind of day-by-day right now, but we’ll see.”
Arkansas could have 11 new starters on offense in the Portland State game because center Ty Clary did not start the opener last season.
"I think it just shows where we’re going,” Craddock said. “ It shows that we are making the strides we need to make.”
One emphasis of the offense during camp has been to cut down on turnovers, which Arkansas was 129th out of 130 teams in number of turnovers per play.
“We have (done better taking care of the ball),” Craddock said. “There's been days when we haven't and there have been days when we've had zero turnovers. I think today we may have had one. I think it was a tipped ball. We've done a pretty good job taking care of the ball, and again, we're still harping on that.
“It's a big deal for me, it's a big deal for our coaches - our offensive coaches - and Coach Morris. If we can take care of the ball and not put our defense in a bad spot, those guys are pretty good, so we don't want to put them in a bad spot. If we continue to take care of the ball like we have we'll make tremendous strides from last year being almost dead last in the country in turning the ball over.”