Alabama Football: Ranking 2020 opponents by toughness

Shawn Elliott’s Panthers secured one of 2019’s biggest upsets when they went to Knoxville and knocked off Tennessee in week one. That win was the catalyst for a 7-5 regular season mark that landed Georgia State in the Arizona Bowl. They’d go on to lose to Wyoming by a score of 38-17, but the progress in Atlanta is still there.

It’s unlikely they’ll be able to pull out the same magic in Tuscaloosa, but they possess the ability to gain yards and make things interesting for a quarter or two. Like Georgia Southern in past years, the Panthers have an extremely strong running game, one that ranked 12th in the nation a season ago. They return four of five starters along the offensive line.

After the failure that was the Chad Morris era in Fayetteville (more on him later in this list), finished off with a 2-10 overall mark and an 0-8 SEC record, it’s a new dawn for Arkansas in 2020.

Former Georgia offensive line coach, and tremendous recruiter, Sam Pittman is the new man for the Razorbacks, and despite it being his debut season  as a head coach, he’s already brought renewed energy to a program in desperate need of exactly that.

This team is led by tailback Rakeem Boyd, and he’ll run behind a line that returns four of five starters, and the unit’s lone underclassman is one of those four. That’s a huge boon to new quarterback Feleipe Franks, who transferred from Florida, as well as new offensive coordinator Kendall Briles. There are also a couple of few young playmakers on the outside in Mike Woods, Treylon Burks, and Trey Knox, who should blossom in 2020.

Former Missouri head coach Barry Odom inherits a massive rebuilding project on the defense, but after the abysmal 2019 campaign, the Razorbacks still appear set to win more games than they did a year ago. That’s not saying much, but for a program in such dire shape, the resurgence won’t happen immediately.