Should KJ Just be Done for Season with No Bowl Game Future?

There's not a lot of upside for Razorbacks quarterback with just two games left in season

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Arkansas quarterback KJ Jefferson looked to be done when he possibly walked off the Saturday night. Considering the Razorbacks had just looked uninterested in a 48-10 loss to Auburn, he was the last player to leave the field with his head down pretty much the entire way. Is he done playing?

It's hard to say how much — if any — can be put on his shoulders. Everybody on the offense in a completely dysfunctional 3-7 season looked really bad. More accurately, nobody looked particularly interested in even playing the game. A subdued Sam Pittman looked surprised.

"We were coming off a good week, had a really good week of practice," Pittman said later. That was a little surprising to hear. Most of the time coaches have an idea of what's coming, or at least admit they did. "As you would imagine, you're obviously trying to continue to pump up and motivate (on the sideline). We are, some of the kids are, all this. The sideline was about like what it was on the field, to be perfectly honest with you. I didn't feel like we quit, I just didn't feel like we ever really started today and that's all of us."

That was classic Pittmanese. To translate they were trying to keep firing up the players but for some reason nobody was buying it. It apparently looked on the sideline like what we saw on the field and Pittman doesn't really have an answer.

Now the question is whether Jefferson will return for a sixth year. Yeah, he's been around that long. There are probably professors on campus that haven't been there anywhere near that long. Backup Jacolby Criswell got his first amount of playing time because it sounded like Jefferson had enough. Nobody was blocking in front of him all night long.

Razorbacks backup quarterback Jacolby Criswell takes off on a 64-yard run against Auburn :: (Campbell Rogerson / Arkansas Communications)

"We're down 41-3 and KJ is getting the heck beat out of him back there," Pittman said. "Obviously, I wanted to look at Jacolby and I talked to KJ. He went in there and played really well. He played like what I thought he would, like how he's been practicing and things of that nature. The bottom line is it was seven minutes left in the third quarter, and we're down 41-3. KJ was bloodied up a little bit and I wanted to see what Jacolby could do."

In other words, that was when Pittman waved the white flag. We have no idea what KJ thought because he didn't come in for the postgame press conference. Apparently they could round up just two players, defensive end Trajan Jeffcoat and wide receiver Isaac TeSlaa.

Maybe the biggest question for Sam Pittman in his press conference Monday may be if Jefferson will play Saturday against Florida International. There's not a whole lot Jefferson can gain from playing in these final two games, he's already got his degree, been a captain for a couple of years and any aspirations for an NFL future probably went down the tubes this season.

It will be awhile before we will ever get an honest answer from anybody, but there has to be some folks wondering if Pittman made some guarantees to keep Jefferson from transferring somewhere after the 2020 season-ender at Missouri. He talked about telling him he was the future after that game on the flight back to Arkansas. That was the first time he started and played a complete game ... and it was a loss.

To refresh your memory, his backup, Malik Hornsby did a quick transfer portal entry, then backed out. Pittman didn't have any really hot prospects coming in and he was probably concerned about what is the most important position on the field. Jefferson did quarterback 11 of the 12 regular-season games in 2021, sitting out one game with an injury.

The next year wasn't as good, barely reaching the Liberty Bowl with a 6-6 record, then everything fell apart with a new offensive coordinator that got fired before Halloween. Kenny Guiton is the fourth offensive coordinator Jefferson has played for in his time. When he walked off the field Saturday night, he didn't look particularly interested in making it five.

HOGS FEED:

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OLD DOMINION POSES SOME MATCH-UP CHALLENGES FOR RAZORBACKS ON MONDAY NIGHT

HAS DECISION ALREADY BEEN MADE ON SAM PITTMAN'S FATE AS RAZORBACKS' COACH BY HUNTER YURACHEK

RAZORBACKS' CHOICE OF WHAT TO WATCH AT HALFTIME DOWN 27-3 MAY HAVE SAID IT ALL

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