Ryan Silverfield got exposed against Utah, but he lacked real alternatives
The Arkansas football team is in that unenviable position where the season is still young but it's hard to see how the full journey ends on a positive note. Coach Ryan Silverfield might not have been the best possible hire by athletic director Hunter Yurachek, but even if a really good coach with better credentials was handling this Arkansas roster, the ceiling for the Razorbacks might not have been higher. The Hogs don't have a lot of high-quality players, particularly on offense. You can't make a gourmet meal if all you have in the cupboard is top ramen. The real debate here might be if another coach could have brought in much better players, but for a 2-10 program in a full rebuilding year, it's hard to expect the instant additions (within the overall process of turning over the roster) to be especially good. Ryan Silverfield doesn't have a lot to work with.
This brings us to a basic point: If your players aren't good, it's hard to expect a coach to immediately open up the full playbook and arrive at a maximum level of sophistication and complexity in the offense. Let's be realistic: Arkansas' offense couldn't execute at a basic level against North Alabama. Ryan Silverfield had to see if that fundamental level of competence could be improved upon against Utah.
Best Of Arkansas Sports revealed how easy it was for Utah to identify what Arkansas was doing on Saturday:
"At Big 12 Media Days in July — pardon me, Monster Energy Big 12 Media Days — Utah head coach Morgan Scalley discussed the challenge of facing a team with a first-year head coach so early in the season.
“'When you’re preparing for a new offense, you’re preparing for new personnel,' Scalley said. “You’re going to do the best you can with the film you have.' Boy did they ever.
“'I think the credit goes to our coaches and just our team’s preparation,' senior safety Nate Ritchie told ESPN 700 after the game. 'We saw a lot of cues that could tell us when it’s run or pass, so we were just able to capitalize on those things. When it was a pass, man, we were ready to party. When it was a run, we were able to rally to the rock and play hard.'
"And rack up stats, which included six tackles, including one for a loss, as well as a pass breakup for Ritchie. Linebacker Jonathan Hall joined him at the dining table, eating to the tune of 8 tackles, a sack and a pass deflection. 'Our coaches were really, really good at finding good tells, 'he added. 'Like the running back or the tackles and what they do when they run and what they do when they pass, so we really honed in on that this whole entire week.'”
Can Arkansas' coaches do a better job of disguising plays? Sure they can. We're not going to argue that. However, with the offense at such a low-end level of (non-) development and evolution, it's not as though the Hogs are in a position to be fancy and clever. If the quarterback can't throw and the line can't block, and the receivers can't gain separation, pre-snap formation changes are only going to matter so much. Arkansas doesn't have players who can take maximum advantage of disguising sets and eliminating pre-snap tells. Utah probably would have figured out UA even if those tells didn't exist.
