Wilson, Grovey share tough road

Former Arkansas quarterback Quinn Grovey (4) tries to avoide TCU’s Edward Galariz during the Razorbacks’ 41-19 victory in 1989, part of a 10-2 season for Arkansas in which it won the Southwest Conference championship. The following season, Grovey and Arkansas finished a disappointing 3-8.
Former Arkansas quarterback Quinn Grovey (4) tries to avoide TCU’s Edward Galariz during the Razorbacks’ 41-19 victory in 1989, part of a 10-2 season for Arkansas in which it won the Southwest Conference championship. The following season, Grovey and Arkansas finished a disappointing 3-8.

— If anyone understands what Tyler Wilson is going through trying to rally the Arkansas football team from a tough start amid high preseason expectations, it’s Quinn Grovey.

Grovey was Arkansas’ last first-team all-conference quarterback, earning All-Southwest Conference honors in 1988 as a sophomore, before Wilson broke a 22-year drought last season and became the Razorbacks’ first All-SEC quarterback.

Now Grovey and Wilson share something else — returning as fifth-year seniors to preseason nationally-ranked Arkansas teams which got off to 2-4 starts.

Despite the similarities through the first six games, Grovey, in his 15th season as the sideline reporter for Arkansas’ radio broadcasts and a district human resources manager for Home Depot, said he hasn’t flashed back to his senior season.

“I really kind of tried to erase 1990 from my memory,” Grovey said. “It was a terrible season, no doubt about it, but I don’t know that I see any correlation between the two teams. I don’t want to jinx them.

“Obviously, this start has caught a lot of people by surprise, and I’m certain our start in 1990 caught some people by surprise as well.”

Arkansas finished 3-8 in 1990, but Grovey said he expects this season’s Razorbacks to rally and play better, as they did in winning 24-7 at Auburn last week.

The Razorbacks’ next three games are at home against Kentucky, Ole Miss and Tulsa.

“This team has got a lot of football left to play, and hopefully they can get it turned around,” Grovey said. “You look at the schedule and these are winnable games, but it’s going to be up to them to go to work and stay together.”

The 1990 Razorbacks were ranked No. 15 in The Associated Press preseason poll and moved up two spots to No. 13 after opening with a 28-3 victory over Tulsa. They lost their second game — 21-17 to Ole Miss in Little Rock — in the first sign it could be a tough season.

This 2012 Razorbacks were ranked No. 10 in the AP preseason poll and moved up two spots to No. 8 after opening with a 49-24 victory over Jacksonville State. They lost their second game — 34-31 in overtime to Louisiana-Monroe in Little Rock — to start a four-game losing streak.

Arkansas struggled to win in 1990 despite Grovey consistently putting up big numbers. In the days before hurry-up offenses, he set a school-record with 18 touchdown passes and had 1,886 passing yards, the secondhighest total by a Razorback to that point.

Wilson, who missed the second half of the Louisiana-Monroe game and all of the following week’s Alabama game because of a concussion, also is putting up big numbers for the Razorbacks. His average of 317 passing yards per game leads the SEC, and for the season he’s completed 101 of 174 passes for 1,585 yards and 9 touchdowns with 5 interceptions.

In addition to being a team captain for the second season, Wilson has become the Razorbacks’ spokesman since Bobby Petrino’s firing as coach last April.

“I’m extremely proud of Tyler,” Grovey said. “He has given the entire state hope. When things started coming down last spring, he was a guy who really stepped up and took the lead and made you feel like everything was OK — and I still believe everything is going to be OK.”

Grovey said he’s seen Wilson grow “by leaps and bounds” as a player and the way he has command of the offense.

“The way he plays and leads makes everybody else around him better,” Grovey said. “I think not only does he make the offense better, but he also makes the defense better, he makes the special teams better.

“As long as you’ve got him on the field, you feel like you’ve got a chance, and that’s the big thing.”

Jacksonville State Coach Jack Crowe coached Grovey as Arkansas’ offensive coordinator in 1989 and as head coach in 1990, and he faced Wilson and the Razorbacks this season.

Crowe said he sees similarities between the two, not so much in style of play — Grovey was a great option runner who improved as a passer and Wilson is pro-style passer — but in strength of personality and will to win.

“Quinn showed unbelievable loyalty and courage for us in 1990, and I see Tyler doing the same thing for his team this season,” Crowe said. “What you hope as a Quinn Grovey or a Tyler Wilson is that if you do your part, the rest of the people will hang in there and bring their games.

“Quinn and Tyler deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as two of the best quarterbacks the Razorbacks ever have had. Quinn was really the whole key to the thing back in those days. He wasn’t an NFL quarterback like Tyler is, but he was a great quarterback for Arkansas.

“My hat’s off to the great things Tyler is doing for his team in a tough situation, like Quinn did for our team.”

Wilson said he’s tried to look for positives despite the Razorbacks’ record.

“Maybe dealing with some of these things will help me down the road understanding, whether it be in life or it be in football,” he said. “We wanted to win every football game, but you learn a lot about yourself, you learn a lot about your team, how to get through to guys when things aren’t going just as you planned.

“That’s how I’m looking at the past three or four months — five months, really — that we’ve been on. I think there is a lot that I can grow as a leader and a person through learning.

“But having said that, there’s no reason why we can’t go forward and win some games while learning from that process.”

Wilson played on teams that were a combined 21-5 the previous two seasons. Grovey’s Arkansas teams were a combined 20-4 in the two seasons prior to 1990.

“When you’ve won so much and then you go into your last year with high expectations and you’re ranked in the top 15, and then the wheels just fall off, it’s really tough,” Grovey said. “You’ve got to stop that bleeding.

“You can’t let one loss turn into another loss. I think that’s kind of what we did in 1990. We had additional losses because we were still thinking about the last game.

“To go out your senior year like that, it’s something that really bothers you.”

It’s a feeling Grovey said he hopes Wilson can avoid this season.

Sports, Pages 21 on 10/10/2012

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