The Razorbacks Football Season Is Over Before it Began
This is me at my most pessimistic.
The Razorbacks may have 10 games left to play but for many fans, as well as some players, football season is over. I sat at my computer trying to put into words how it feels to watch something I love so much become a source of let down and dread. Talking to some friends before the loss to Texas Tech, I told them all I could feel was just that, dread. Dread for the outcome I was sure that was coming after playing a team the Hogs annihilated just a year ago. Dread for watching a defense that is but a hollow shell of the top 10 squad in the nation they rose to be last season. Dread for watching a quarterback I have defended and kept hope for, play great until the game was on his shoulders. Most of all, dread for hearing the excuses after the game from a coach I feel has sold us a bill of goods during the off season that was nothing short of a lie.
Sep 19, 2015; Fayetteville, AR, USA; Arkansas Razorbacks head coach Bret Bielema Mandatory Credit: Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports
“We didn’t do enough to win.” – Bret Bielema
“The 5th edge of Arkansas is you earn everything you get. We earned this loss.” – Bret Bielema
This is far from what we expected as fans. The Razorbacks have the 118th ranked third down defense and 104th in red zone efficiency. Saying that the Hogs haven’t been doing enough to win is just an understated excuse that the fans are tired of hearing. We want improvement, end of story. The fans of Little Rock took a lot of grief after the Toledo loss, which I was there and shared in giving that grief. One thing that can’t be taken away from us in LR is that we still stood by this team through all the trials and tribulations since 2012. No planes have flown over demanding Bielema be fired, but with the product he has put on the field, that could be on the way soon.
The game in Fayetteville, following the loss in Toledo, was completely sold out. Fans were there for our beloved Hogs even after the worst loss since ULM, only to be yet again disappointed. Obviously Tech was not a bad opponent, and all the more praise to them, but this was not supposed to happen. The fans swallowed their let down, showed up, and in no way can take any blame this week for that performance. The crowd at the U of A did everything to give the Razorbacks an electric environment to rise up and get a much needed victory. So, as far as earning what you get, the fans put in enough to earn far more than they have gotten this year under Bret Bielema.
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I am fully aware of all the injuries the Razorbacks have taken this season, and that’s a great excuse for the offense, but what is the reason the defense can’t make a stop? What’s the new excuse we can expect to hear this week from the coaching staff and media? I would rather not hear any snippets of a Bielema press conference this week and instead just wait to see what he has done to make this program meet the expectations of its battered following. We don’t want to hear the talk, we want the results.
The post game press conference gave a platform for Texas Tech head coach Kliff Kingsbury to say how he felt about Bret Bielema. In reference to the head coach talking a lot of trash after coming off a season in which he won 2 conference games, Kliff says, “He just got his ass kicked twice in a row and probably will next week by A&M as well. That did feel good.” One would think that after all this running of the mouth with nothing to show for it, that Bielema would have kept his thoughts to himself. Nope, not ol’ crazy BERT. Today he says “If that was an ass kicking, I’d love to see what last year was.” The fans are are tired of this and quite frankly, with this season on the road to an abysmal failure, it’s embarrassing. In the words of the “Unknown Player”, who after the game running by a media member with a hot mic, said, “God we suck.” Truth can hurt sometimes.