Speculation Fine, but What's Plan When Hogs Hit in Mouth?

Interesting to hear all this talk about leaders, but there will be adversity

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — It's typical. When nobody has all the answers on how players answer questions, great leadership steps up to give everybody hope. It's probably not Sam Pittman's plan, either.

"Somebody is going to hit us in the face, and we’re going to have to figure out if we are strong enough," he said making the media rounds the last couple of weeks. "Our team has to adjust faster to have success because we can’t lose four games by nine points. We can’t. We just can’t. You’re talking about 7-to-11 (wins)."

Right now he's putting a lot on the shoulders of quarterback KJ Jefferson, who's been around longer than a lot of professors and most high level post-graduate students. He'll either move up or down in next spring's NFL Draft and a lot of that will depend on how he handles everything Pittman and just about everybody else is putting on his shoulders.

"He’s the leader of the team," Pittman said. "Not the defense, not the offense. He’s the leader of the football team. Coming from the quarterback position, that’s a big deal." KJ isn't the only leader being called on to get everybody to his level, both in play and inspiring others to perform their best.

Running back Raheim "Rocket" Sanders has already stepped up to take over his part of it. KJ isn't that vocal, at least where we can hear it. So far, he hasn't shown he's going to walk over to guys and yank them up by their collar and get in anybody's face in public. We honestly don't know if that's missing or because we don't exactly have a lot of access and I'm not basing anything about that on what 18-21-year olds tell me.

Rocket may be the more mature guy, though. We've heard Pittman talk about his never being late for classes, any sort of academic or off-field issues. That's a lot of what coaches deal with these days. We just don't hear anything but gossip and rumors).

"Rocket is so close to that as far as the maturity and the respect he has on the team," Pittman has said. "They’re great players, so it really helps."

Leadership is just one part of a team. Like just about everything else surrounding this Razorback team, we'll know shortly after Thanksgiving how it all really ends up working out.

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