It’s easy to get caught up in the hype around Taylen Green, the Hogs’ 6’6” dual-threat quarterback who is perhaps the biggest key to Arkansas’ chances at springing an upset over No. 16 Oklahoma State on Saturday.
As good as Oklahoma State defenders like Trey Rucker, Nick Martin and Collin Oliver, that will be negated if Green can conjure even two-thirds of the magic he summoned last week when he threw for 219 yards in one half and ran for 88 yards on six carries and two touchdowns.
You would have thought he’d just stamped himself as Lamar Jackson 2.0 the way a river of praise since then has flowed toward the unassuming Boise State transfer. Chris Low, the longtime SEC football reporter for ESPN, said on “The Chuck & Bo Show” earlier this week that an NFL scout raved to him about Green after the demolishing of UAPB.
Not just because of his improvement in one offseason under Arkansas offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino, but also because Petrino has had so much success with different kinds of quarterbacks, from Brian Brohm and Ryan Mallett, to Tyler Wilson and of course Jackson himself.
Arkansas Football QB Whisperers
Granted, Arkansas football fans have been recently burned by so-called quarterback whisperers. Chad Morris swept into Fayetteville on the wings of having worked with Tajh Boyd and promptly threw a plumbing wrench into the development of Ty Storey, Nick Starkel and Ben Hicks.
Last summer, all the talk was about how well Dan Enos had done with Brandon and Austine Allen as well as Tua and Taulia Tagovailoa. Unfortunately, in Enos’ return to Fayetteville, he ran out of Division I QB brothers and apparently KJ Jefferson paid the price.
Still, Petrino mostly gets the benefit of the doubt given his previous success at Arkansas as head coach, along with the progress his more recent quarterbacks at Missouri State and Texas A&M showed.
To the point where Green, as the head of a “three-headed monster” including running back Ja’Quinden Jackson and tight end Luke Hasz, strikes some fear into the heart of Cody Stovall, the host of “Locked on Oklahoma State.”
“Athletically, you could put him up there in the top echelon of quarterbacks in the country, let alone the SEC,” Stovall said in the Arkansas vs Oklahoma State preview episode.
That athleticism was on full display in Green’s most thrilling play of the season opener:
Yes, that was against subpar defenders of one of the worst teams in the nation. Yes, Oklahoma State’s faster defenders will close gaps much more quickly than the Golden Lions did.
But just as Arkansas’ defense had trouble wrapping up on tackles at times against UAPB, so did some of the Cowboys’ defenders fail to finish off plays in their 44-20 season-opening win against South Dakota State.
“Collectively as a whole, our defense still has some issues,” Stovall said. “Jeff Roberson, great to see him out there, great to see him playing – missed a lot of tackles. Kendal Daniels… great to see him aggressively approach the line of scrimmage, but missed the wrong holes, took the wrong reads, too many missed tackles.”
Arkansas vs Oklahoma State Expectations
Expect Petrino to test Oklahoma State’s defense with some play-action to help Green get into a groove. Assuming the Hogs’ offensive line is able to keep the Cowboys from wreaking havoc in the pocket, Green should have the opportunity to pick on an OSU secondary that appears suspect outside of Korie Black (Cam Smith looked especially vulnerable against SDSU).
We know Green has serious wheels and can get it done on the ground at times when he gets in hot water. But will the senior abstain from jittery feet, go through his progressions patiently, refuse to get baited into the coverage misread that led to OSU’s lone pick against SDSU and then execute when he sees his chances?
If so, then Arkansas’ chances of picking up an enormous win will shoot up exponentially.
A couple of Oklahoma State insiders doubt Green’s going to deliver an “A” game in Saturday’s showdown, however. Two sportswriters with The Oklahoman, Oklahoma’s largest daily newspaper, predict that Arkansas will score under 25 points against Oklahoma State.
In fact, columnist Joe Mussatto predicts that Arkansas will fail to even score the 20 points that South Dakota State, an FCS powerhouse, put up against the Cowboys. Part of that’s because he has faith Oklahoma State will control time of possession with its human battering ram, Ollie Gordon. But he’s also not sold on Green’s ability to deliver in a big-game environment on the road.
“They’ve got the transfer quarterback, he’s really athletic, he looked good in game one,” Mussato said on the Cowboys Chronicle Podcast. “But this is going to be a whole different environment, a whole different opponent.”
Taylen Green Concern from OSU, UA Sides
To be fair, it’s not only OSU folks who refuse to buy into the Taylen Green hype.
A couple Arkansas football insiders saw issues with Green’s performance in the UAPB win that – if they aren’t cleaned up – could spell doom for the Hogs come Saturday.
“The quarterback’s got to be better,” Clint Stoerner said on “Out of Bounds” earlier this week on The Buzz 103.7 FM. The former Hogs QB pointed out that Green’s first deep ball attempt against UAPB would have been picked off against an OSU-caliber defender, and also brought up a missed opportunity on a slant route that would have led to a touchdown.
Stoerner believes that essentially Green goes through his throwing motion too quickly and takes the ball too far backward, leading to issues with consistently hitting his release point and therefore hurting his accuracy.
“He’s got to get the ball out quicker,” he said. “He’s got to be more decisive, he’s got to be more accurate.”
DJ Williams, the former star tight end for the Hogs, sees some of the same issues. In his “4th and 5” breakdown of the season opener, Williams points out some specific good and bad plays by a number of Razorbacks.
He brings up one play, for instance, in which Green misread the defense on a run play and handed it off instead of tucking it and running into empty space himself. Against UAPB, Arkansas still made good yardage but that likely would have been snuffed out against Oklahoma State.
Of course, none of this is news to Taylen Green.
You had better believe he’s getting it from Bobby Petrino, too.
“He’s very intense,” Green told Paul Finebaum on Wednesday. “He demands me to be on my P’s and Q’s every single day.”
Despite Petrino’s constant pushing, perfection isn’t ever going to happen at this level of football. When it comes to executing out of the gates on Saturday, though, Green and his teammates need to get closer to the unattainable than they did at the start of their 70-0 win in Game 1.
Otherwise, they will have found themselves in too big of a hole against an Oklahoma State squad ready to bury them.
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Highlights from DJ Williams’ Breakdown of Good, Bad from Hogs vs UAPB
The game breakdown below is well worth a watch for any Arkansas football fan. Here are a few highlights:
5:10 minute mark – a missed read by Green on a hand-off. He should have pulled and ran into open space and instead handed it off.
10:15 – missed slant route by Green that would have resulted in a TD
Williams also points out that receivers coming out of breaks are showing a tendency to drift, instead of either holding their spots or making a strong move down a line
9:40 – likely bad spacing by wide receivers
47:30 – calls out defensive lineman Cam Ball for what he sees as a bit of lack of conditioning
On the positive side….
9:05 – Right tackle Keyshawn Blackstock getting 15 yards downfield for a block, Isaiah Sategna throwing great block and hasz sealing the edge to spring jackson on a run
10:45 – Fernando Carmona showing fierce camaraderie with Green by knocking a UAPB player off of him in a pile and then giving him a “Mr. T” stare-down
11:30 – excellent decision-making by Green in targeting Luke Hasz
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