23-4 Record....

[razorbackfaninar]

While the teams we have lost to almost triple that number of 4 & 5* players on both sides of the ball.

Not TCU and South Carolina, Bama yes definitely , Texas A&M probably close, Auburn probably close as well.  We have out recruited or recruited at roughly the same level as TCU and South Carolina for the past five years. Talent level is not a reason to point to losing those games. 

Arkansas has historically since 2000 averaged 25th in national recruiting.  That's 17 years of data over three head coaches that should tell you that 25th nationally is about where we are going to recruit every year. If we want to compete nationally we can try to improve recruiting, we may even have a few aberrant years where we break into the teens nationally, but what ever the reasons you want to point to history says that 25th nationally is where we will recruit.

25th nationally is not terrible.  There are a lot of teams that would love to recruit that well. There are teams that traditionally recruit much lower than us but that manage to do quite well year and year out, but those teams do not have to compete in the SEC west.  WE do, and that isn't going to change.

So here are the realities we have to work with.  We want to win games as a program.  We have to do it in the SEC West.   We are going to recruit at a level that is lower than the remainder of the teams in the west, so we are always going to have less talent on average than our competition other than possibly MS State.  How do we do it? 

We need a staff that are excellent at evaluating talent.  There can be no misses in recruiting, and we must maximize the talent that we are able to get. That means anyone and everyone who has the talent to help us succeed must see the field.  This means that a coach must have a system, but also must be willing to change and adapt that system to his available talent.  We should never have proven play-makers standing on the sideline, we can't afford that.  We must have a coach that is heavy on discipline, as we can not afford even the smallest of mistakes and we must operate our kicking game with surgical precision.  When you are playing at a talent deficit there is no margin for error.

We must have a coach who runs a system that is proven to be able to beat teams with superior talent.  It won't work 100% of the time.  You will get beat sometimes on pure talent alone when you play a team like Bama, and that system can't always be the same.  For example when Malzahn first came into the SEC people were amazed at his offensive genius.  He was going to be unbeatable.  Fast forward to 2017, and his defense is keeping him alive because people have schemed against his offense and have figured it out.

The successful coach at Arkansas must always be innovative and not simply run "his" offense he must be willing to adapt to his personnel and to his opponent. We must run an attacking disruptive defense, and it must be fast.  A traditional enormous defense with big slow d-linemen is not going to work when you are facing a talent deficit   I don't know who if any body fits this bill, but in my opinion to have sustained success at Arkansas this is what you need. Someone who can take top 25 talent and beat top 10 talent on a consistent basis.

             

[Cinco de Hogo]

Not TCU and South Carolina, Bama yes definitely , Texas A&M probably close, Auburn probably close as well.  We have out recruited or recruited at roughly the same level as TCU and South Carolina for the past five years. Talent level is not a reason to point to losing those games. 

Arkansas has historically since 2000 averaged 25th in national recruiting.  That's 17 years of data over three head coaches that should tell you that 25th nationally is about where we are going to recruit every year. If we want to compete nationally we can try to improve recruiting, we may even have a few aberrant years where we break into the teens nationally, but what ever the reasons you want to point to history says that 25th nationally is where we will recruit.

25th nationally is not terrible.  There are a lot of teams that would love to recruit that well. There are teams that traditionally recruit much lower than us but that manage to do quite well year and year out, but those teams do not have to compete in the SEC west.  WE do, and that isn't going to change.

So here are the realities we have to work with.  We want to win games as a program.  We have to do it in the SEC West.   We are going to recruit at a level that is lower than the remainder of the teams in the west, so we are always going to have less talent on average than our competition other than possibly MS State.  How do we do it? 

We need a staff that are excellent at evaluating talent.  There can be no misses in recruiting, and we must maximize the talent that we are able to get. That means anyone and everyone who has the talent to help us succeed must see the field.  This means that a coach must have a system, but also must be willing to change and adapt that system to his available talent.  We should never have proven play-makers standing on the sideline, we can't afford that.  We must have a coach that is heavy on discipline, as we can not afford even the smallest of mistakes and we must operate our kicking game with surgical precision.  When you are playing at a talent deficit there is no margin for error.

We must have a coach who runs a system that is proven to be able to beat teams with superior talent.  It won't work 100% of the time.  You will get beat sometimes on pure talent alone when you play a team like Bama, and that system can't always be the same.  For example when Malzahn first came into the SEC people were amazed at his offensive genius.  He was going to be unbeatable.  Fast forward to 2017, and his defense is keeping him alive because people have schemed against his offense and have figured it out.

The successful coach at Arkansas must always be innovative and not simply run "his" offense he must be willing to adapt to his personnel and to his opponent. We must run an attacking disruptive defense, and it must be fast.  A traditional enormous defense with big slow d-linemen is not going to work when you are facing a talent deficit   I don't know who if any body fits this bill, but in my opinion to have sustained success at Arkansas this is what you need. Someone who can take top 25 talent and beat top 10 talent on a consistent basis.

           

Yes that is us and our situation, our challenge in a nutshell.   We, and I will include myself, don't give enough thought into how exceedingly lucky we were to get Petrino at that point, it was a stars aligned thing.  It will take just the right coach and some precision in recruiting to right this ship and there are no guarantees.  If we make a change I'm more excited for the players than anything else, they deserve better. 

[razorbackfaninar]

Yes that is us and our situation, our challenge in a nutshell.   We, and I will include myself, don't give enough thought into how exceedingly lucky we were to get Petrino at that point, it was a stars aligned thing.  It will take just the right coach and some precision in recruiting to right this ship and there are no guarantees.  If we make a change I'm more excited for the players than anything else, they deserve better.

Well I think that our margin of error is so small that we have to walk a razor thin line.  We have to have some edge to make up for the fact that we aren't going to recruit at the same level as the rest of the SEC west.  I used to think that with the right coach, the right recruiters etc we could recruit with anyone in the nation, but over the years I have come to accept the fact that due to multiple contributing factors we are at a disadvantage in recruiting.  We must find ways to work around that fact instead of hoping it will change. It can be done, but we aren't going to get there by doing the same thing over and over, or by doing the same thing as everyone else.  We have to look at programs that have traditionally done what we need to do which is field a successful product with less talent. There are blueprints to follow.  Our advantage is that we have more resources and better facilities than most teams that have had to be built in that way. 

In retrospect when you look at it in this way it is easy to see why the Bielema experiment has failed. He thought he could do what he had done at Wisconsin.  He had a blueprint for success that was proven so I can't blame him for thinking it would work.  You can clearly see now with the benefit of hindsight that his insistence on having players to fit his system, on players being practice field warriors, his reliance on a strong walk-on program to fill needs etc have hamstrung him and caused viable and valuable players to sit out when they could have helped us win games. He had the luxury of those ideals at Wisconsin where although he was recruiting much worse nationally he was out recruiting the majority of his division rivals.  He had the luxury of sitting players if he thought their attitude was bad, he had the luxury of starting a walk-on with a good work ethic over maybe someone with more talent but a worse attitude. He could pass on a recruit that might be valuable on the field, but may have had a questionable background or character instead of taking on the challenge of working with that recruit to change his behavior for the better.  He could bring in a talented player and if they didn't fit exactly what he wanted to do he could afford to have them sitting on the side line. If he missed a punt here or there or let a kickoff get run back it wasn't going to break his teams chances.  Those things that worked there won't work here.  The margin of error at Wisconsin was not as small as it is here.