Tom Murphy in The Zone 9-11-26

0:00Enjoy the convenience of seven days a week banking and extended hours with cube from first Arkansas Bank interest member FDIC. Dot com. Let's head to the Jim's razor back pizza hotline. Tom Murphy's betwixed flights on his way to you. Car. Pat Bradley would say and he is joining us now to talk about this big thing. What do you say, Tom? Well, I hope you have a great rest of your trip. We're looking forward to this one. It is going to be a late start. Well, just from a logistics standpoint, what are you guys doing at the paper as far as turning stories around? Are we going to have anything when I open up my Sunday sports page on Sunday morning or do I have to go to the website? Well, that's a great question. I have not heard how late they'll hold to get it on the tablet. But obviously, you can hit ho hog sports.com and find them online as soon as we can write them up and get them edited and post them. So, but you know, lots of big covers from there. We got Hank going. She can take two videos the whole nine yards. Yeah, lots going on. Well,

1:00I'm not going to say it felt like a loss, but there were some pretty disappointed fans, I think. And look, head coach Ryan Silverfield was pretty disappointed in the performance last week. And I mean, I don't know. You got a chance to see him this week, Tom. I mean, just curious. I'm assuming he was in better spirits, you know, as the week wore on. But he was pretty down to seem like after the game the other day and disappointed with what he saw offensively. He was. I mean, it's like as he kept saying, not up to the standard they want. And, you know, at least there's not video of him doing some kind of clubbub weird dance, you know, after beating whoever. And yeah, I think he expects a lot more out of them. And I like that that, you know, and we're not satisfied. But then again, you get a W. That's better than having an L, especially just North Alabama. So, I think I predicted about an 18 point game when I saw the original spread for this. I was really surprised. I thought it was low and I know it went up and then modified. But I just, you talked about a really polished attack. And I know they replaced their entire line. But I think they're big guys that

2:03are part of the system. There's a lot of retention in that program. And of course, the Morgan Scala defense, they've replaced a lot of guys. But again, a lot of attention guys that have done it. So, they're kind of a unified bill. And all the factors go against all of the shots. So, I think I picked their 18 points bread. Okay, what's fair? How much do you expect? And I don't know how, if coach talked about it, do you expect the elevation and the late kick to be a factor tomorrow? Yeah, elevation, he didn't seem to be that concerned. Because you know, fate builds around, I want to say, 13, 1500. And out here, or out there, it's going to be like 50, 500. So, it's not massive. But, you know, I'm going to see it probably with my bad lungs. But and then the kickoff time, maybe your body clocks are a little different. But I just think for 20 or all, it's not that big of a deal. What I want to see from the razor back, I want to see a more efficient offense. And not as many plays that are just stuffed. I want to see some guys,

3:06you know, if they're shooting linebackers or they're shooting their safeties, I want Arkansas to get a hat to them and get some broken run plays. And even that alone would be a improvement over last week. This offense that Utah runs is unique, Tom. We talked with the voice of the UTS today, Bill Riley about this. And I just don't know how many two quarterback systems we're going to be seeing from opponents this year. Now, I mean, it's not necessarily two quarterbacks on the field always at the same time, but they will be lining up two quarterbacks sometimes. They have a lot of weapons and they have usually more quarterbacks on the field than we might see throughout the season occasionally. And, you know, I know the defense played well last week, but that's against a completely different style that you're going to face. And also a team that can be very physical. Yeah, I mean, they've got a lot of speed and that's big one guy that backed up quarterback. He might be faster than Dan Pierre. And in Dan Pierre, we know is a great

4:08runner. And then both the tailbacks Parker and the freshman Bell, they just bounce off people. And so Arkansas is going to have to gain tackle to begin with. They're going to have to always keep in mind what's going on with Ficklin on the field because they do all that stuff with them. Quarterback throwbacks and all kind of things. And still a few call this the fact that triple run. So there can be a dive the quarterback can keep it the quarterback and aclocking is running to the edge and maybe pitch. He can also pull up and throw. So they put pressure on you in so many ways that this is going to be a real test in week two for Arkansas. Tom Murphy joining us from the Arkansas Democrat. Is that, I mean, all right. So the let's figure out here. If you're Arkansas, how you're going to be able to run the ball. And ask me, Tom. All right, let me ask you, is this a pass to run team or is this a run to pass

5:09team? Because I'm a little bit confused when I hear the coaches talk about how they want to establish the run. Well, we've got to establish the run in order to do that, we have to have a vertical passing game. So I'm just not sure what happens first because we didn't necessarily see either of those happen against North Alabama. Right. And what happened in North Alabama was really cheating in safety. It's been like cloud defense, back deep to make it hard to throw over and keep everything contained. And so they didn't really take any shots. I'm not sure if they consider themselves. I think they're still kind of figuring out their identity and they're not sure if they have to do one to set up the other. But obviously they work hand in glove. So you can beat a team deep. Can you keep pushing those safeties back? And Utah's going to, Utah's going to blitz a lot. They're going to push the envelope to see if they can shake KJ up and not allow Arkansas to deep shot. And then you

6:09just feel the constriction. You can't hit deep shots. You feel that because there's constantly linebacks in the safety coming up into your run place. Well, it's all ordered to be safe, I guess, here. And this is a game that I think a lot of people have, a lot of people have penciled in as an L. But like we learned last week, I'm going to perform as matters. And if it's a competitive game, people are going to feel a lot better even in a loss, I would say, in the same way that maybe this last week they felt pretty bad after a win. So I hope it's a good game. I hope they play well. So I don't know what lots of clean up. I'm going to go up. They're really, I think looking better is a big step. And looking better against an opponent like Utah is certainly going to be, you know, favorable for you because they just didn't look so good against the FCS, which was a little dumb sounding. Yeah, you know, honestly, though, when you when you look at and listen to Silverfield this week, his voice, some of the words, I think he's chosen, even just going back to when Hunter handed him the game ball from his first win,

7:14and looking his face. It's it's I got to be honest. He sounded a little bit discouraged this week. Yeah. Have you heard that, Tom? I wouldn't attach discouraged to it, but he knows there's a lot of work to do. And he just wanted it to be a cleaner performance. And he really talked up those tackles, but you know, Bruce Arden Williams did not have good games. And if you don't have good offensive tackles, you got big problems. Tom, I want to ask you about a couple of other things here. Hunter, your check spoke to a group yesterday was the hogs illustrated sports club lunch in. And he is touting the fact that they've already raised eight and a half or eight point eight. Excuse me, million a new revenue in the 20 days since they announced the receding plan. And it just hit me wrong. I guess I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of people who are upset or frustrated. And I realize they need additional revenue. And I mean, maybe there are some people that are celebrating this, but it just it feels a little yucky. I don't know for people who who got

8:18priced out of their seats or people who can afford to pay, you know, an extra 100 grand for their suite. They're probably not. I don't know how they feel about that. I don't know. Just seem weird to me. I guess whenever we talk about money, it just never sits right with me, even though it's an important part of the puzzle. Right. And yeah, it's an unfortunate deal that they just have to keep raising money and it falls on the back of your donors. I've got to go find my boarding pass. I'm right at the front now. Go get your thing. We'll talk to you later.