Petrino never had this Arkansas quarterback situation. Cramsey does

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — For whatever reason, former Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino didn’t get the head coaching job on a permanent basis last season.

It’s not like embattled athletic director Hunter Yurachek didn’t have enough time to interview him with Sam Pittman being fired in September.

We’ll never know all the details, but either Yurachek didn’t want to take advantage of what Petrino had done coaching KJ Jackson for two years or Bobby didn’t really want the job. There could be several reasons there.

The bottom line to all that is Petrino’s in North Carolina now, and his offense was shut down by Clemson last week while Jackson appears to be in a state of mass confusion behind center.

Consider that the Hogs keep flirting with a two-quarterback setup that keeps backfiring and looking like some kids at kindergarten recess at times against Georgia last week.

For whatever reason, offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey can’t seem to figure out the season is in full swing. If a coach hasn’t figured out by the fourth game of the year who the starting quarterback should be, then you usually have a coaching issue.

Either that or the coaches are already viewing this season as an extended spring practice. You can usually forget about wins, but nobody will admit that publicly.

Offensive line struggles add to the confusion

What’s probably worse than anything with quarterbacks is the fact the offensive line way too often doesn’t appear to be capable of blocking old people like me.

It’s hard for quarterbacks to look for receivers wondering if they can survive long enough to throw. All of that could be a big part of the answer to the lack of a consistent running game from the Hogs this year.

We’re going into the fourth game of the year and the coaching staff can’t settle on a starter. You wonder how long it will take if they haven’t figured it out since December of last year.

Petrino never had that issue. At Arkansas he had Tyler Wilson behind Ryan Mallett but he was ready to be a starter. He filled in with little drop-off a few times.

But there was never a question about who the starting quarterback was going to be each week.

With the Razorbacks the most popular guy on the team always has the backup quarterback in the mix. If the team doesn’t win at a rate fans think they should, they want to replace the coach, quarterback and athletic director in that order. It’s been that way since the 1960s.

Cliches aren’t answers for Razorbacks fans

In the past it was never the overwhelming amount of fussing like what’s going on now. For a fan base that often decides the fate of the program on every play, somebody needs to be taken out after every play that doesn’t end up in the end zone.

This is more serious, though. Maybe it wouldn’t be so obvious if Petrino hadn’t been here for two years before Cramsey took over. The difference is stark at times.

When Cramsey delivers cliches for answers about the team for a few weeks in a row, more folks wonder each week. Somebody needs to tell him those aren’t answers but just a clever way to duck the question.

At least Pittman had mastered the art of basically just answering the question he wanted to have asked. It’s a little hook experienced coaches figure out where they are going to say what they want and not get trapped.

But there are only so many times a coach can fall on the sword and say they’ve got to coach better.

People start wondering if the sword is too dull to finish the job.