BATON ROUGE — The magic pill can be a great young quarterback – if there is a simple plan with a great supporting cast.
KJ Jefferson may be the answer some day for Arkansas. But he played like a freshman with too many freshmen in supporting roles in his first start - a 56-20 loss at No. 1 LSU.
Of course, the Sardis, Miss., product with the Cam Newton body and similar speed is exactly that, a true freshman.
Arkansas interim coach Barry Lunney Jr. elevated Jefferson to the first team in the open week after Chad Morris was fired. Unfortunately, there were no other such talents waiting in the wings to help at other positions.
Jefferson became the seventh different quarterback to start in the last two seasons, and the seventh true freshman to start at least one game this season. Like quarterbacks Cole Kelley, Ty Storey, Connor Noland, Nick Starkel and John Stephen Jones, Jefferson had little help in the trenches.
Oh, the Razorbacks played hard. Give Lunney credit for recharging some batteries. And, they didn’t make horrible mistakes that helped the Tigers. Like Jack Lindsey, who played the final 9:53 at quarterback for the Hogs, there were no turnovers by any.
As much as anything, that’s what Lunney got the Hogs to do, eliminate the turnovers – so often a pick-six – that had plagued them in so many blowout losses the last two seasons.
More than that, the Hogs, in this first game under Lunney, played hard. They opened with fire and finished with fire, something they often lacked under both Bret Bielema and Morris.
Effort is the essence of coaching. Give Lunney credit for getting that from the Hogs, especially for the first 25 minutes.
“Very clearly, I’m very proud of this team,” Lunney said. “We didn’t play nearly clean enough or well enough to beat a great team on the road.”
But he said they did show “tenacity” early, and they “responded” to his message in the open week to play hard. Lunney said he told the team after the game that was appreciated.
“Now, my biggest challenge is to see if we can do it again in six days,” Lunney said, and not just for 25 minutes or for the last nine minutes.
“We want to play 60 minutes, not one quarter or a quarter and a half.”
There was some life at the end after Lindsey entered. Both Jefferson, and the next quarterback, Starkel, had exited with concussion-like symptoms.
Lindsey rolled 30 yards on a keeper, then tossed a 24-yard touchdown pass to Mike Woods in a nine-play, 75-yard drive.
After an onside kick luckily bounced through several sets of hands before the Hogs covered it at the LSU 11, Devwah Whaley raced in from the 2-yard line for a second UA touchdown to set the final score – well under the 42-point betting spread.
The Razorbacks did make some freshman-like mistakes. Jefferson went out of bounds short of the stakes on a second-down scramble. So did Treylon Burks, another hugely talented freshman, on a reverse. Burks stepped out one yard short of the stakes. Jefferson slid too early in the open field, again one yard short.
The rout took a bit to take shape, although the Razorbacks never hinted at an upset. They were within 7-3 at the end of the first quarter and hanging around at 7-6 on Connor Limpert field goals of 24 and 47 yards.
Jefferson hit Burks on a 31-yard jump ball to set up the first field goal. Rakeem Boyd motored 29 yards with a screen pas to set up the second.
Arkansas had a chance to score with the first possession of the third quarter when Jefferson hit Burks for 38 yards. But Limpert missed a 45-yard field goal.
Jefferson exited after taking his third sack of the third quarter, giving way to Starkel, (then Lindsey) for the final 21 minutes of the game. LSU was cruising by then, up 42-6.
Don’t judge Jefferson harshly. Remember, you didn’t see Newton when he was a true freshman at Florida. He was a junior – after a stint in a junior college – when he began to flourish at Auburn.
“He’s very talented, very talented,” Lunney said of Jefferson. “It was a tough, tough task to put a true freshman on the road in this awesome environment.
“He did some good things, but made freshman mistakes. There were a couple of situations that it was (lack of ) awareness of where he was, down and distance.
“It was a microcosm of our football team. He did compete well.
“We started seven true freshmen. The next time we come down here they will be grown men, not pups.”
For that matter, LSU quarterback Joe Burrow, almost perfect against the Hogs, sat the bench as a true freshman at Ohio State. After a redshirt season, he played in 10 games as a backup. He’s no pup now.
The 6-4 Burrow now is headed for the Heisman Trophy if he can avoid a letdown against Texas A&M or Georgia.
Burrow completed 23 of 28 passes for 327 yards and three TDs before exiting when Clyde Edwards-Helaire dashed 26 yards for a touchdown with 5:47 left.
Backup QB Myles Brennan didn’t have to do much to keep the Tigers rolling. His first play was a sweep to Edwards-Helaire and the 5-8, 209-pounder sailed 89 yards for his second touchdown in as many carries. He also had a 27-yard TD run in the second quarter.
Edwards-Helaire, mostly a dump down receiver in the first 20 minutes, finished with 188 yards on just six carries. He was the top receiver with seven catches for 65 yards.
The Hogs never got close to sacking Burrow and he was never close to turning it over. He took his time and waited for his talented receivers to work free. There was hardly a hint of a blitz against perhaps the nation’s most polished decision maker in the pocket.
The only other note on the game was a break from the home clock operator. There were at least three instances when the clock continued to run after dead plays – once after a touchdown and another after a punt.
No one on the Arkansas sideline protested. Oddly, the Hogs led in time of possession, 40:21 to 19:39.
Lunney wondered what it could have been like had they moved the chains a few more times when the yardage was available.
“We talk about those kind of things, the chains, in the walk throughs,” he said. “It’s a point of emphasis, but with freshmen, it’s understandable.”
Lunney wants to make sure those issues don’t resurface.
“Smart people, they learn from mistakes,” he said. “Brilliant people learn from watching.”
There was a closing remark about all the rest. He wants to make sure the Hogs are not in that batch.
As far as how he felt coaching from the top spot for the first time in his career, he said simply, “I loved it.”
There were times he thought it looked like “a football game between two SEC teams, but there are no moral victories. We came to win a football game, to play a full football game.”
As for trophies, the Golden Boot will stay in Baton Rouge. The Tigers made no move to celebrate with their rivalry trophy. It’s not the one they are thinking about now that they have clinched a spot in the SEC title game.
The Hogs have only one thing to play for: a trophy that is strangely given to the winner of the game with Missouri.
“It’s a trophy game,” said safety Kamren Curl.
That’s surely to be often mentioned as motivation as the Hogs close in on the season ender Friday in Little Rock.
What lies after that is to guess how Hunter Yurahcek does to what everyone now agrees is a free-fall through the abyss. Does the second-year athletics director have an answer to stop it?
Is there enough money left at the Razorback Foundation to hire a veteran coach with top-shelf assistants? That’s a costly proposition. There was at least one veteran SEC observer in the press box Saturday night pointing to that as the only solution.
It’s one more game for Lunney. He’s done everything in his power so far. There have been no serious coaching errors in his two weeks in charge.
Someone is sure to suggest playing Lindsey on Monday. Leading two TD drives – even against mostly backups - should lead some to want more of him. It makes as much sense as anything else.
There was a tweet Saturday that his play made it easier for someone to pay rent to his grandfather’s realty company.