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Arky fans..seriously, where did it go wrong with Bielema?

Posted on 8/25/18 at 2:54 pm
Posted by RidiculousHype
St. George, LA
Member since Sep 2007
10186 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 2:54 pm
He went from 0-8 to 2-6 to 5-3 in the league his first 3 years. Now, as tough as the SEC is I doubted he would take that next step, but I figured he’d be able to sustain that 5-3/4-4 level by recruiting those huge linemen and building a brand around physical play.

When we played y’all in 2014/2015 and had to stop your NFL RB’s running behind 375 lb linemen in November, I was like “well this is gonna be a huge pain in the arse every year”. And then it all went south. What happened?
Posted by Network
Member since Aug 2018
79 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 2:56 pm to
When he ate that fifth sweet roll.
Posted by WhuckFistle
Member since Jul 2015
2990 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 2:56 pm to
The buffet line.
Posted by LouisvilleKat
Member since Oct 2016
18190 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 2:57 pm to
The day he discovered bacon was cheaper by the pallet
Posted by UltimateHog
Oregon
Member since Dec 2011
65758 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 2:58 pm to
We're a week from the season why are we talking about Bret Bielema?

Like asking you where it went wrong with Les Miles.
Posted by HeavyHog222
Grove, OK
Member since Nov 2015
85 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 3:04 pm to
The job was tougher than he expected. I'm not sure he had the work ethic to succeed at a place like Arkansas. His style wasn't a good fit. You can't bully around schools like bama, LSU, or Auburn.
Posted by RidiculousHype
St. George, LA
Member since Sep 2007
10186 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 3:07 pm to
I hear ya. I was just listening to an SEC preview podcast today and they talked about the Chad Morris system and how it will take time with Bielema’s players. It just got me to wondering what really happened, seemed like he had a good thing going there for a while.

Also, the short answer to Miles is QB recruiting. His offense was actually the correct one for our personnel, which typically lacked at QB. But it was his fault at the end of the day that we lacked at QB in the first place.

Yeah, I’m ready for next weekend
Posted by Hellmet
Member since Nov 2015
519 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 3:16 pm to
From what I've heard he started to hit the bottle. He got lazy and it showed on the field as his players were not fit to play at a SEC level.

I think to that he thought he was doing a good job and was covered by our AD. The focus was on them going to class and getting good grades, even our AD didn't see winning as a priority.

That comfort level with the AD came to a end when we fired the AD, that probably scared the shite out of the fat bastard. And that opened the door for us getting rid of him a couple weeks later.

Posted by agswin
The Republic of Texas
Member since Aug 2011
4339 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 3:30 pm to
He did not realize the disparity between the SEC and the Big 10?
Posted by CrabInMyShoeMouth
Member since Jul 2016
2486 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 3:40 pm to
The hiring of Kurt Anderson as OL coach. Our o line play relatively hit rock bottom the day he took over, and o line was supposed to be the team's foundation. The foundation crumbled and so did everything else. It also didn't help anything that Jeff Long and Bielema created a culture of integrity first, winning second.
Posted by TheSwineAssault
The Delta
Member since Apr 2010
1615 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 3:46 pm to
The minute I heard Drew Morgan mention that Bret slept during film reviews, I knew he was the wrong guy for Arkansas. Like it was mentioned before, He got lazy, hired the wrong OL coach, and etc.
Posted by AshLSU
Member since Nov 2015
12868 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 3:58 pm to
quote:

Like asking you where it went wrong with Les Miles.



Everyone knows that answer. 01/09/12

Posted by randomways
North Carolina
Member since Aug 2013
12988 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 4:02 pm to
I'm not an Arky fan, but I might be one of the few remaining Bielema fans. I think Bielema tried to build a football team the right (or what I consider right) way -- developing a fundamentally sound team that punished you in the trenches and used the ground game to open up the QB play. Just basic tried-and-true football, nothing flashy. He tried to emulate Saban, but he lacked Saban's defensive coaching acumen and Saban's recruiting prowess, and the SEC is brutal on teams that lack good recruiting.

Now I'm going to make a completely unsubstantiated wild guess as to why he declined -- he came in when the rest of the SEC was adapting to Bama and LSU's style of football, which meant the SEC was getting better at taking on teams like the one he was trying to build. I admit this isn't actually a well-documented theory, but it makes some sense to me.
Posted by Arksulli
Fayetteville
Member since Aug 2014
25171 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 4:19 pm to
quote:

I'm not an Arky fan, but I might be one of the few remaining Bielema fans. I think Bielema tried to build a football team the right (or what I consider right) way -- developing a fundamentally sound team that punished you in the trenches and used the ground game to open up the QB play. Just basic tried-and-true football, nothing flashy. He tried to emulate Saban, but he lacked Saban's defensive coaching acumen and Saban's recruiting prowess, and the SEC is brutal on teams that lack good recruiting.

Now I'm going to make a completely unsubstantiated wild guess as to why he declined -- he came in when the rest of the SEC was adapting to Bama and LSU's style of football, which meant the SEC was getting better at taking on teams like the one he was trying to build. I admit this isn't actually a well-documented theory, but it makes some sense to me.


And... you would be mostly wrong.

Not on the style of play being impossible to run (though very few high schools in Arkansas run that system). Its on the he failed because the SEC had adapted to the Bama/LSU style of play.

Bielema failed in three ways.

Effort. He honestly believed, and it was part of his coaching strategy... that players and coaches should take it easy in the off season so they would be fresh for the final month or so of the season. Which was a great strategy in the Big 10. In the SEC it meant that by the time your team got into game speed you already had a couple of SEC losses.

Conditioning. His holy mantra, which his S&C coach shared with him, was bigger is better. Not stronger is better, but bigger. He preferred to add pounds over speed and conditioning. So not only was our defense gassed by midway through the third quarter but you had things like Alex Collins, who is now showing he can run away from NFL speed, being bulked up to the point where he couldn't run away from college speed.

Flexibility. Bielema could not change. Giving huge cushions on the WRs when he was a DC was the way to go. And he stuck with it, even though teams could not wait to get a 3rd and 3 against us because our DBs were at least ten yards away from the line of scrimmage. Do we play better going fast? To bad. Is our O-Line coach not cutting the mustard? Give him another three or four years.

He was fat, lazy, and stupid.

The thing is, while we are putting the boots to him now... Arkansas fans really wanted Bert to succeed. We liked the big oaf. But it was like hiring that guy you really like to a vital job and discovering that he was too shiftless to bother doing the job you hired him to do.
Posted by PorkRoast
Louisiana
Member since Sep 2015
6047 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 4:20 pm to
quote:

He was fat


Change back, Arky.
Posted by gohogs141
Fayetteville
Member since Jun 2011
7512 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 4:24 pm to
Even in the season he went 5-3 in the SEC, he lost to Toledo and Texas Tech. If we just win those games it’s a possible 10-3 season after the bowl. The 2016 team blew two huge leads to end the year or that’s a 9-win team.

Our 2014 team was the same way, I really think that team was better than their record but we just lost SO many close games and our terrible kicking game cost us a couple. We had a top 10 defense that year and an NFL RB duo, Hunter Henry, etc.

We just weren’t very physical at all his last few years and were probably the slowest team in the SEC. Our OL had crumbled and the defense reached historic lows after the loss of several players to the NFL. He had some fleeting moments where we looked great but seemed to take two steps back and his record overall turned out to be pretty terrible.
Posted by jdevers
Member since Nov 2008
2059 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 4:29 pm to
Look at quality and depth of offensive linemen year to year and then then look at the one year we actually “broke through” and see the massive difference in defensive statistics versus all others. The stars aligned that year, we all thought it was a stepping stone but it was a pinnacle. The three players that made our defense solid (very good on one side of the field actually) all left that same year with no one behind them. He tried to build Wisconsin but didn’t know how Wisconsin was built in the first place. For his system to work we would need our entire starting offensive line to be first or second team all SEC with a backup crew good enough to be third team. Then a defense solid but not flashy, think maybe a defense littered with third team all SEC guys and guys behind them nearly as good. None of that came close to happening. We were starting freshmen every year on the offensive line because of necessity not talent and we never had depth.

I like where AggieChad’s recruiting for 2019 is going, if we can sustain that level for another year and maybe win some games this year and get close enough to winning in some losses to be talked about then we could potentially break through into serious Texas recruiting and build something. A lot of ifs, but there are very few sure things in football.
Posted by cardboardboxer
Member since Apr 2012
34330 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 4:41 pm to
He couldn’t recruit well enough to run his system. It’s as simple as that.

And the problem was obvious day one.
Posted by randomways
North Carolina
Member since Aug 2013
12988 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 4:55 pm to
quote:

Not on the style of play being impossible to run (though very few high schools in Arkansas run that system). Its on the he failed because the SEC had adapted to the Bama/LSU style of play.

Bielema failed in three ways.

Effort. He honestly believed, and it was part of his coaching strategy... that players and coaches should take it easy in the off season so they would be fresh for the final month or so of the season. Which was a great strategy in the Big 10. In the SEC it meant that by the time your team got into game speed you already had a couple of SEC losses.

Conditioning. His holy mantra, which his S&C coach shared with him, was bigger is better. Not stronger is better, but bigger. He preferred to add pounds over speed and conditioning. So not only was our defense gassed by midway through the third quarter but you had things like Alex Collins, who is now showing he can run away from NFL speed, being bulked up to the point where he couldn't run away from college speed.

Flexibility. Bielema could not change. Giving huge cushions on the WRs when he was a DC was the way to go. And he stuck with it, even though teams could not wait to get a 3rd and 3 against us because our DBs were at least ten yards away from the line of scrimmage. Do we play better going fast? To bad. Is our O-Line coach not cutting the mustard? Give him another three or four years.



None of this tells me why I'm wrong. It just tells me what other factors you think were involved. The hostile tone of your comment suggests you're upset by any theory that isn't openly and unambiguously critical of Bielema, so I don't see any basis for continuing this particular discussion of the issue with you
Posted by SAINTS0321
Member since Jan 2016
3963 posts
Posted on 8/25/18 at 4:56 pm to
Nothing should have stuck with Bert forever ..the vatech beamer way
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