Arkansas Football: It’s time for Nick Starkel to be QB1 after Ole Miss loss

In a game that wasn’t very exciting, but Ole Miss handled Arkansas football in the battle of the bottom of the SEC West.

Arkansas and Ole Miss to open SEC West play and man was it underwhelming to say the least. It may have been exciting for those fan bases to watch their teams finally get something going offensively at times, for the rest of us it was just a mess of players that at times figured it out and at times just looked lost and confused. What did we learn from this one?

First of all, despite all his struggles, Arkansas needs to settle on Nick Starkel as its starting quarterback. He is the only person on the Arkansas roster to account for a touchdown in this matchup and that means something. He finished 17-for-24 for 201 yards, averaging 8.4 yards a throw and a touchdown. Ben Hicks looked too lost to me and wasn’t even able to complete half of his 16 passes.

The Arkansas defense had no idea what was going on most of the time, or so it seemed. They allowed 31 points to an Ole Miss team that was all but shutout against Memphis a week ago. They weren’t able to establish dominance across the line and as a result Matt Corral was able to get going, throwing for 246 yards and two touchdowns and his running back, Scottie Phillips was able to run for 143 yards on the night as well as scoring two touchdowns.

Overall, neither team really looked all that great. Ole Miss looked better than Arkansas did for sure, as they were able to establish a strong offensive performance while Arkansas struggled to stop the Rebels.

Neither of these teams are going to make noise in the SEC West, that much is for sure. I will be shocked if they win much of anything in terms of conference games. To have to face off against the likes of Auburn, Alabama, LSU, Mississippi State and Texas A&M still tells me that these teams have a lot of pain waiting for them as the season continues on.,