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Arkansas football dropped Sunday out of both the AFCA USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll and the Associated Press Top 25. But the Razorbacks remained in the top 25 in one other highly-used metric.
Coach Sam Pittman and the Hogs fell seven spots in ESPN’s Football Power Index from No. 18 to No. 25 following the team’s 38-23 loss to Auburn on Saturday. The fall dropped the Razorbacks behind three SEC teams they were previously in front of: Auburn, Texas A&M and Tennessee.
The FPI isn’t a ranking of teams, per se. It is instead an algorithm that takes a combination of factors based on past results that projects how a team would do in future games. In it, the Hogs fell from a projected 8-4 record to a projected 7-5 record, meaning, the system figured Arkansas would beat Auburn.
The good news is the FPI still projects the Razorbacks with a 98% chance to get to six wins, ensuring bowl eligibility. Perhaps it isn’t the height of what Arkansas wanted after it’s 4-0 start, but the team hasn’t played in a bowl game since 2016, either.
Arkansas is unlikely to see its FPI, or its ranking, shift much in the next two weeks. The Hogs play FCS Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Saturday in Little Rock and have a bye following.