HOOVER, Ala. — Arkansas quarterback Brandon Allen is the second-leading returning passer in the SEC with more than 4,000 career yards.
He compiled a large percentage of those yards on play-action passes up the seam to Hunter Henry and the tight ends. His most effective play as a Razorbacks quarterback, though, has been to hand the football to Jonathan Williams and Alex Collins.
A caretaker of the football, he threw 20 touchdowns against 5 interceptions in ’14, but finished 13th in the SEC with just nine passes of 30-plus yards.
Type in “Brandon Allen game manager” on Google and the search returns more than 676,000 results, as one media member alluded to Wednesday.
Does that term, sometimes viewed as derogatory, bother Allen?
“If you play the quarterback position and you’re not labeled as a game manager, you’re doing the wrong thing somehow,” Allen said.
“Quarterbacks, they call the play. They get the team lined up. I don’t know how you can play the quarterback position without having the term game manager go along with it. You are the one that calls the shots for the whole offense.
“You hear the terms ‘playmaker’ and ‘game manager’ thrown out there. You have to be able to be both. You have to make the plays when the time comes, but you also have to manage the game and keep your team in the best situations.”
One of new offensive Dan Enos’ top priorities is to open up the field and make the offense less predictable. Allen needs to be able to complete some throws downfield.
If the majority of his throws are play-action tosses to Arkansas’ talented running backs or tight ends while operating behind a mammoth offensive line, Allen also needs to bump up his completion rate (52.5 percent for his career).
For his part, coach Bret Bielema expects Allen to perform at a level of a Dak Prescott or a Jeremy Johnson.
“If you manage the game that your coach asks you to run, you’re going to be good. I heard Butch Jones — what did he call his guy? — ‘CEO quarterback.’ He owns the offense. That’s really awesome. Can’t wait to use that one,” Bielema said.
“So [Allen] is our CEO offensive coach as a player. … He’s going to be what we ask him to be and he’s got great players around him. So it’s going to make him I think have a lot of success. If that’s a game-day manager, then God bless him. He’s going to be good at it.”
An itinerant journalist, Christopher has moved between states 11 times in seven years. Formally an injury-prone Division I 800-meter specialist, he now wanders the Rockies in search of high peaks.
