Heading into the 2015 college football season there were some of us that drank the kool-aid on the Arkansas Razorbacks and for good reason. Bret Bielema is now in his third season as the head football coach at Arkansas and he is developing a tough minded team that is looking to compete in the Southeastern Conference. Last season Arkansas went 7-6 with four of their losses coming by seven points or less. And with key players returning for a rushing attack that was 26th in the nation last year, the Razorbacks appeared ready to hold their own in the competitive SEC West in 2015.
But three games into this season, the Razorbacks find themselves with a record of 1-2 and the bad news for them is that they have not even played a conference game yet as the Southeastern Conference has been the toughest conference in the nation for the past decade.
Arkansas began this season ranked 18th in the Associated Press Poll and they were able to live up to that billing in their first game of the season when they steamrolled the UTEP Miners 48-13. But on September 12, the Hogs were upset at home by the Toledo Rockets of the Mid-American Conference as they lost 16-12. And this past Saturday, Arkansas lost to the Texas Tech Raiders of the Big 12 Conference 35-24 whereas last year the Razorbacks had their way with the Red Raiders as they defeated them 49-28.
Bret Bielema
Under Bielema, the Razorbacks rely heavily on their ground game which suffered a huge blow in August when the school announced that senior running back Jonathan Williams would miss a significant period of time due to a foot injury. The Hogs still have junior running back Alex Collins. But in spite of the fact that Collins gained 1,110 yards rushing last year, they rely on that one-two combo in their backfield which is similar to what they had in the mid 2000’s with Peyton Hillis, Darren McFadden, and Felix Jones as it was all about the “Wild Hogs”. Now without Williams, Arkansas opponents can easily key on Collins as the Razorbacks don’t have a huge threat in their passing game which itself has seen three wide receivers lost to injuries this year. And what the Bielema has to now deal with is a team that has spent the spring and summer believing their own press clippings and in a league like the Southeastern Conference, talent and potential alone are not enough to win which is why a team such as Arkansas needs to take care of their business in the non-conference portion of their schedule which they have not.
The next time that the Razorbacks take the field, the seasons would have changed as it will be the fall and they could be setting themselves up for a huge fall into the abyss of the Southeastern Conference as a manageable schedule for them all of a sudden looks very frightening. This Saturday the Hogs will be at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas to face the Texas A&M Aggies who are currently ranked 14th in the nation before traveling to Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee to meet the Tennessee Volunteers in front of 102,000 screaming fans. And if that isn’t enough, Arkansas will have to travel to meet the Alabama Crimson Tide on October 10 before hosting the Auburn Tigers on October 17. And what Arkansas gets in meeting the Tide and the Tigers is that those two schools have combined to be the last three winners of the SEC West. In a matters of weeks, Arkansas has gone from a team that was poised to compete for the SEC West Title to a team that will just be thankful to be bowl eligible come December.
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