Auburn Football: Post-spring game-by-game predictions for 2019

Like most teams, Auburn had little trouble dispatching Arkansas last season. A 34-3 shellacking at the hands of the Tigers was nowhere close to the worst of Chad Morris’s debut season in Fayetteville.

The Razorbacks bottomed out, finishing 2-10 and going 0-8 in the SEC. The record looks bad on the surface, and gets even worse when you dig deeper and see that two of the 10 defeats came at the hands of Colorado State and North Texas.

It won’t take much for Arkansas to show improvement in 2019, but it faces an uphill battle to garner bowl eligibility. Unsettled quarterback play was the main problem for Morris in his first season at the helm as his offense sputtered throughout. That should be an area of marked improvement for the Hogs next season, regardless of which graduate transfer quarterback ends up earning the starting gig.

SMU transfer Ben Hicks has the inside track after going through spring practice and already having the familiarity in Morris’s system, but Texas A&M transfer Nick Starkel will arrive in the summer and push for the job. Whichever quarterback wins the job should be able to lean on a talented stable of running backs, headlined by rising senior Rakeem Boyd.

You can go ahead and mark down the Razorbacks for improvement on offense next season, but if his teams at Arkansas follow the same script as his teams at SMU, the defense might take another step back, which could cause the on-field improvement to be minimal overall.

Arkansas will score more than a field-goal this time around, and while this matchup is likely vital for the Hogs to have any hope of bowl eligibility, it’s tough to see them having enough to knock off Auburn this far out.

Pick: Auburn 41, Arkansas 31 (5-2, 2-2)