Is Arkansas a good football team that’s played a tough schedule? Are they a bad football team with a deserved record?
It’s cliched, but the reality is in the middle. Or, as the kids say, Arkansas is mid.
The Razorbacks enter Saturday’s game, the first at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium in a month, with a 2-5 record. The five losses have come consecutively to BYU, LSU, Texas A&M, Ole Miss and Alabama.
In other words, Arkansas lost four games it was always projected to lose.
Losses, though, can take a toll on the psyche. We’ve already seen that with the Arkansas fan base, a good portion of which wants to fire offensive coordinator Dan Enos. Only a slightly smaller group of them want to shed coach Sam Pittman, too.
The latter of those two complains should be dismissed out of hand. The former, less so. What is true is that Arkansas can’t keep losing. Not unless the team wants to make all those fans’ wishes come true.
Mississippi State, the opponent Saturday, is with Arkansas in that neither team has won an SEC game yet. The difference is the Bulldogs were expected to struggle and injuries haven’t helped their cause. Injuries have been an issue for the Razorbacks, too, and one has to wonder what could have been in those five games – four of them were one-possession losses – had the Hogs been fully healthy.
That isn’t the situation in which Arkansas finds itself, however and Saturday’s game against Mississippi State carries a ton of weight because of it.
An Arkansas win doesn’t save the season by any means, but it shows the Razorbacks have fight left. An Arkansas will but doom the Hogs to depths of the SEC.
Again.