Arkansas Football Are the Razorbacks as good as they look?

In the latest installment of the AP Top 25, Arkansas football finds itself locked in as the No.16 team in the country. While seeing such a sharp change of pace for what has recently been a lackluster program is definitely inspiring, it also feels a tad… questionable.

To put it simply, it seems rather hard to believe that the Razorbacks have become this dominant overnight, especially considering that they have only one relevant win so far this college football season.

Crushing a ranked Texas squad is always something worth bragging about. However, what else has Arkansas done?

Looking at how they have handled their 2021 schedule so far, we see the Razorbacks sitting at an attractive 3-0 record. Not only that but all of those wins were decided by 19 points or more. That’s not bad at all.

The uncertainty comes in when looking at who has been beaten, though. Of Arkansas’s three opponents thus far, only one sits at the Power Five level, and that is the aforementioned Texas Longhorns.

The other two foes, Rice and Georgia Southern, are shaping up to be absolute jokes this season. Their combined record currently dwells at an unpleasant 1-5, and that sole “victory” was on behalf of GSU over an FCS adversary in the Gardner-Webb Bulldogs — by a measly five points.

Outside of that one win, both powers have lost the other five games by an average of almost 37 points. Especially when playing in the SEC, Arkansas is expected to throttle that kind of competition (regardless of their quality of play in recent memory), so praising them for doing so seems a little over-the-top.

And there’s the kicker: the Razorbacks are in fact not being worshipped for beating up Rice and GSU; the only reason anyone is giving them the time of day is that they ran over an OK Longhorns team that was clearly not ready for them.

But hey, nonetheless, no one should try to take the win away from them, including me. However, if they truly want to steal the hearts of their doubters, they should focus on this next month’s worth of games that they have, starting this weekend.

Arkansas has been recognized for its alarmingly tough 2021 schedule, and such recognition is certainly deserved. In the next four weeks, the Razorbacks will have to: travel to Arlington to face the seventh-ranked Texas A&M Aggies, visit the atmospheres of both No. 2 Georgia and No. 13 Ole Miss, and welcome the 23rd-ranked Auburn Tigers into their humble abode. Did I mention that there is also no bye week present in this stretch?

The most likely outcome from these matchups will have Arkansas sitting at a less impressive record of 3-4, essentially exposing them and where they lie in the college football food chain. With that said, Razorbacks fans better enjoy their newfound relevance while they have it.