Arkansas coach Chad Morris discusses the Hogs’ horrible start, Ty Storey and Cole Kelley
During Arkansas’s train wreck of a game against North Texas, Chad Morris refused to put in Ty Storey, his co-starter at quarterback through the first two games. He played two freshmen instead. Why? Chad Morris kept the third-year sophomore out to prevent “putting him in a tough situation where the momentum is not in your favor.”
Well, Morris is throwing him to the lions — or, rather, Tigers — this week. He named Ty Storey as his starter against Auburn in a press conference earlier this week. “I told him that yesterday and his exact words to me were ‘Let’s go, coach.’”
This is a departure from protocol up to this point. Throughout the spring and first three games of the season, Chad Morris refused to name a starting quarterback until the day of the game. But now, Ty Storey is the guy “regardless of the practice, regardless of the way things go I want him to know straight up … we’re gonna go with him.”
He added Cole Kelley was disappointed in last week’s 17-44 loss to North Texas — especially the fact he threw four interceptions to fuel it. All the same, when Kelley went to the sidelines, he was “very encouraging” of the freshmen quarterbacks Connor Noland and John Stephen Jones who replaced him.
More Chad Morris snippets from the conference
- “Ty’s a professional, I think he’s a competitor and, as all of them do, [he] wanted to play.”
- “If you can’t believe things are moving in the right direction, you have no business being here.”
- After battling back from 0-17 to 10-17, “the moment the next piece of adversity hits, it’s like ‘Here we go again.’ I think that’s been the biggest thing, is getting the belief to say ‘We’ve got to keep staying together and battle through the adversity.’”
What Went Wrong
- “You can see the inconsistencies in a lot of areas. The timing with the quarterbacks and wide receivers. Some of that was because we had a true freshman out there, and everybody wants to put in on the quarterback when it was a true freshman.”
- “Inconsistency up front. We ran the ball really well last week, and the first week and third week we haven’t been as effective and as efficient.”
How to Fix It
- “Let’s simplify. Let’s get clarity. Let’s find some things we can do and let’s hang our hat on it as we continue to battle through the storm we’re in.”
- “If it’s only four things we can do, then let’s just get good at those four things. Maybe we only get 10% of the offense in this year. Then let’s get very effective with only 10% of that offense.”
