FAYETTEVILLE — To the losing team, 52-6, 38-0, 51-10 and 48-7 defeats might seem ignominiously the same.
They shouldn’t to these Arkansas Razorbacks.
Glum as the Razorbacks and their fans are about these last successive SEC Saturdays losing 51-10 and 48-7 to Auburn and Alabama, it shouldn’t compute to last year’s 2-10 overall, 0-8 in the SEC Razorbacks surrendering 52-6 and 38-0 debacles at Mississippi State and at Missouri.
Fans and pundits criticize various Arkansas aspects of these last two SEC Saturdays. Arkansas coach Chad Morris certainly does, too.
Noting early-game gaffes helping Auburn’s 17-0 first quarter and Alabama’s 17-0 first quarter en route to Alabama’s 41-0 first half, Morris lamented, “Just entirely too many mistakes in all phases. We were going to have to be flawless to have a chance. We were going to have to play our best football of the year over the last two weeks and we just didn’t do that. You can’t make the mistakes against excellent opponents that we did.”
Despite the scores, Morris never doubted his Razorbacks’ want-to against prohibitive favorites far better than themselves.
Alabama ranks No. 1 and No. 2 in the national Coaches and AP polls, and ranked No. 1 in both when playing Arkansas.
Auburn, No. 11 in AP and No. 12 in the Coaches poll, is so defensively formidable that LSU’s 23-20 victory over Auburn last Saturday leapfrogged LSU over Alabama in the AP poll even as Alabama slaughtered the Hogs trying hard.
“I thought our entire team fought and gave great effort all the way through,” Morris said. “There was no quit.”
The same couldn’t be said of Arkansas’ 2018 finish.
Last year’s Mississippi State Bulldogs and Missouri Tigers, both 8-4 overall, 4-4 in the SEC, certainly were better than last year’s Hogs. But they shouldn’t have been 52-6 and 38-0 better.
Knowing what 2018 first-year coach Morris inherited off Bret Bielema’s 4-8, 1-7 2017 Razorbacks, Arkansas fans tended forgiving last year's ending and focus on the Morris regime improving recruiting.
With these 2019 Hogs at 2-6, 0-5, fans’ focus is far less on recruiting a rosier future than on another grim present currently on course to repeat 2-10, 0-8.
With Mississippi State, then nonconference Western Kentucky of Conference USA coming these successive Saturdays to Fayetteville, followed by a Nov. 23 visit to LSU and Missouri closing the campaign Nov. 29 in Little Rock, these Hogs have four games left to change course.
Mississippi State, 3-5, 1-4 in the SEC West, has lost its last four.
Missouri, 5-3, 2-2 in the SEC East, lost upsets its last two SEC games at Vanderbilt and at Kentucky.
If the Hogs continue showing the want-to that Morris perceives they showed against Auburn and Alabama, they at home should at least approach a level playing field for two of their final three SEC games.