FAYETTEVILLE -- Winners can quarterback losers.
Ty Storey keeps proving it.
Based on cold mathematics at 1-6 overall and 0-4 in the SEC, these Arkansas Razorbacks are losers. Purely figuring on figures you can't figure it any other way.
Just don't call their quarterback a loser to their face without figuring for a fight.
On a rainy Saturday night in Little Rock while Ole Miss quarterback Jordan Ta'amu won the game, Charleston's Storey again won the Razorbacks' respect, their profile in courage through hard times.
With Ole Miss down 33-31, Ta'amu quarterbacked a 97-yard drive that tallied the 37-33 winning touchdown with 42 seconds left.
Ta'amu amassed 528 yards total offense. He completed 26 of 35 for 387 yards with two touchdowns against an interception and, even subtracting two sacks, netted 141 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries.
First-year Arkansas Coach Chad Morris marveled at the Mississippi junior .
"A guy that rushes for 154 yards and passes for 387, he had a heck of night," Morris said. "That's why he's one of the top quarterbacks in our league.'
But for toughness and sacrificing well-being for the team, Morris most touts his starting quarterback.
"Offensively, I thought Ty Storey was the toughest football player in the stadium without a doubt," Morris said.
Realizing during the season's third game as others quarterbacked the 44-17 catastrophe against North Texas that Storey is his quarterback, Morris started Storey all four SEC games these last four Saturdays.
He's played better in each one. Last Saturday, 12 of 16 for 122 yards and a touchdown and nine carries for 73 yards without a turnover handling and passing a wet ball, was marking his best.
If only, after already briefly sidelined by a first-half hard hit, he had stepped out of bounds a yard short of that fourth-quarter first down. ...
Instead, while exactly achieving that second-and-10 run for the first down, Storey absorbed an accompanying, game-ending, hard hit exacted while achieving it.
It's expected today Morris will reveal whether the hit caused a concussion and if Storey will be available for Saturday's 11 a.m. nonconference game against Tulsa in Fayetteville.
"You never want to take a hit like that," Morris said. "But that's what makes him the competitor he is. The first thing (while led woozily to the sideline) he asked me was, 'Did we get the first down?' You've got to love his grit.'"
His teammates do.
"He had an opportunity to go out of bounds," receiver La'Michael Pettway said. "To see him fight for the extra yards to get that first down proved to me he's really our quarterback."
Some of Arkansas' greatest, such as Joe Ferguson, Brad Taylor, Quinn Grovey and Tyler Wilson, quarterbacked some of the Razorbacks' greatest teams yet finished grittily quarterbacking ordinary and even less-than-ordinary outfits.
Obviously fourth-year junior/first-year starter Storey never started for big winners like they did. But for grittily quarterbacking like a winner despite losing, rank him right with them.
Sports on 10/15/2018