Arkansas Football: Game-by-game predictions for 2018 season

The Arkansas football program will be entering a new era and the 2018 season will be heavily monitored. How will the Razorbacks finish?

Who would have thought that the Bret Bielema experiment would have failed this quickly? Arkansas hired Bielema away from Wisconsin to lead the Razorbacks back to relevancy and do what he did for Wisconsin: win, and win often.

The program has since moved on and hired Chad Morris away from SMU. The new head coach is offensive-minded but he needs to make sure the Razorbacks don’t forget to play defense like they seem to have been recently.

Arkansas’ schedule is more than daunting, however. In fact, the Razorbacks have one of the toughest four-game stretches at the end of September and to start the month of October in all of college football. Getting back to a bowl game isn’t a give, but Morris has the right mindset and his players are buying in.

Take a look at our game-by-game predictions for the Razorbacks’ 2018 schedule.

Some FCS foes are tough to handle and others are relatively harmless. In this case, Eastern Illinois is the latter. While the Panthers had a winning record last season, they didn’t fare too well against the only FBS opponent they faced, losing 38-10 to Northern Illinois.

Luckily for Arkansas’ defense, the Eastern Illinois offense was about as lethargic as any at the FCS level, breaking 20 points just four times and two of those happened because of overtime. The Panthers never broke the 30-point mark, which will work out in the Razorbacks’ favor.

Arkansas will have a solid offense, especially if Cole Kelley can grasp the playbook and catch up to Ty Storey, but my money is on him as the No. 1 quarterback and he’ll get off to a strong start versus Eastern Illinois.

This one won’t be all that close as Arkansas’ offense lights up the scoreboard.

Final Score: Eastern Illinois 13, Arkansas 45 (1-0)