LSU is the best team Arkansas will play during the 2023 regular season.
So the time is perfect for the Razorbacks to beat the Tigers on Saturday.
By no means is the suggestion that Arkansas is better than LSU. Frankly, the comparison isn’t even close. According to the latest ESPN numbers, Arkansas has just a 12% chance up pulling off the upset. And the Hogs have won in Baton Rouge just four times since Arkansas joined the SEC.
This year’s Razorbacks have a lot in common with those four teams, though: they’re OK.
Some Arkansas fans want to burn the thing down, the program, and restart from scratch. We’ve already gone over how foolish that is after a solitary loss. Count this author on Sam Pittman’s and Hunter Yurachek’s side, too, in that the prevailing belief amongst the three of us is that Arkansas has some minor issues right now, not major ones.
Those are exactly the kinds of teams that have beat LSU in the Bayou. Arkansas’ 1993 team was the defintion of median, going 5-5-1. Granted, LSU was 5-6 and this year’s Tigers team is a lot better than that. But look at the other three.
Arkansas’ 2007 team is remember fondly, as well it should be, but the Razorbacks were not an elite team. Heck, if for no other reason than all the behind-the-scenes stuff would not allow them to. Yet a 50-48 win was the result against LSU.
Bret Bielema’s 2015 team was good, not great and it could be argued that the victory that season was the last truly great one Bielema had (we wouldn’t argue that, but many do).
And Arkansas of 2021 was solid, not spectacular. They were the team, frankly, that put all those angry fans are where they are today. The belief coming out of that season was so strong that Pittman would have Arkansas among the best in the SEC sooner rather than later, that it spoiled everything that has come after. Well, to the insane. Anyone who has watched Arkansas football for the last 40ish years should have known better.
This year’s Arkansas team has a chance. They’ve underachieved relative to the talent and expectations, but they do, in fact, have the talent. They have an LSU team that is riding the wave of big-time expectations themselves, too, perhaps ripe for the picking.
And you should an Arkansas team that knows what’s at stake over the next month, whether Pittman and the coaching staff are telling them to take things one game at a time or not.