sg Speaks: Time to Clean the Hog Pen

In the second quarter of yesterday’s Cotton Bowl, the cameras revealed David Lee in the coaching booth above the field. The offense was on the field running through their gambit of running plays and Lee was, well, not looking at the field. He must have been looking through his offensive playbook. He must not have gotten to the passing plays until late in the fourth quarter, since we didn’t pass much. Or, just maybe, he was paying homage to Houston Nutt by being stubborn and running predictably nearly every down.

So that’s how we pay our respect to Frank Broyles? By dressing up in all-red uniforms and being classically under prepared for another game? Only, this time we had nearly a month to get ready and over half a coaching staff that also happens to work for Ole Miss. But we shouldn’t have been in the Cotton Bowl in the first place. It is my staunch opinion that Arkansas was chosen solely based on how many tickets we could sell – which was practically bragged about over and over during the telecast when the announcers kept saying how this was the fastest Cotton Bowl to ever sell out. We shouldn’t have been there. Interestingly enough, neither should have Missouri. They got hosed in the BCS selection and were a far better team to play in Dallas, Texas.

This game was a disaster from nearly the beginning. Err, rather, after the first drive resulted in a strangely missed field goal from Tejada, nothing seemed to click after that. Hell… we passed on the first play and had a first down! That’s opening up the game with something new and was a good first step. Then we fell back into our sleepwalking offensive routine and never got back on track.

Here’s what I don’t understand. How can you have a month to prepare and come out that flat on offense and defense? I read somewhere the other day (during the whole DMac eligibility concern) that everything was being prepared with him in mind – that they had even installed some new plays just for him.

What plays? Hint, there were none. We had the same offensive unit that we had all year – two amazing running backs, an amazing offensive line, an amazing fullback, a potentially amazing receiver (and only one that can really catch the ball) and a quarterback that has never been capable of taking a game into his own hands.

We had one month to prepare and get something in the passing game installed. One month for David Lee, who came from four years with the Dallas Cowboys just to run our offense, to “open up the playbook.” One month to help lessen the giant target that DMac wears on his jersey, the one that all other teams aim for. But all Lee could do when shown on camera was to pretend he even cared about this game while he looked at houses in Mississippi on the internet.

The weird thing was that I wasn’t so concerned about our offense before the game. I was more worried about the defense and how exactly we would contain the high octane passing attack of Missouri. Guess what, we did. Guess what else, it didn’t matter since Missouri knows how to adjust DURING the game and not just at half-time.

Which brings me to another point, half-time adjustments. What exactly did we adjust during half-time? Our pads? Because we came out and ran the exact same plays and got burned the exact same ways on defense. We were so scared of being passed on that Tony Temple, alone, ran for 281 yards and had four touchdowns. Let me repeat, 281 yards. Missouri is a passing team, remember? Chase Daniel was in New York with DMac as a Heisman finalist. You don’t send QBs to New York if your team is a running team.

It was a pitiful effort from our tattered coaching staff and January 3, 2008 can’t come any sooner (that’s the day Petrino is expected to announce his coaching staff). Our Hogs have seen better days, and while the next few seasons may be rebuilding years, we will definitely see better again.