Let’s be honest. Most Arkansas fans watched that Utah score line Saturday night and felt nothing close to surprise.
Somewhere between the fourth punt and the third Utah touchdown drive, a whole fan base collectively shrugged and said “yep, that tracks.”
The Razorbacks got run off the field 43-10 in Salt Lake City. Somehow the final score felt almost merciful compared to how the game actually looked.
KJ Jackson started fast, completing eight of his first 12 passes. For about one quarter Arkansas fans allowed themselves a small flicker of hope.
That flicker got snuffed out fast. By the final whistle Jackson had thrown for 139 yards on 14-of-34 passing, tossed a pick and found the end zone exactly zero times.
Utah’s defense made the Hogs look like they were seeing an SEC-caliber pass rush for the first time in their lives. Spoiler: they weren’t. It was just a good defense playing a bad offense.
The run game didn’t offer any rescue either. Arkansas couldn’t get anything churning on the ground, finishing with a lonely 61 yards on 28 tries. That kind of number tends to send offensive coordinators updating their resumes.
Jackson led the team in rushing, which is not a compliment to the running backs so much as it is an indictment of everybody else involved.
Tape doesn’t lie and neither does the coach
Here’s the part that should worry Arkansas fans more than the scoreboard.
This wasn’t a fluke or a bad bounce.
This was a team finding out, in real time and on national television, that it isn’t very good right now. Coach Ryan Silverfield didn’t try to spin it into something it wasn’t afterward either.
His postgame comments made clear even he wasn’t buying any silver linings from this one. When your own coach can’t find the bright side, you know the tape is bad.
Now the fun part. Arkansas has to turn around on a short week and host No. 2 Georgia on Saturday morning.
Kickoff is 11 a.m., which means Hogs fans get to nurse their Utah hangover and watch their team try to slow down one of the best programs in the country before lunch.
Nothing like a top-five opponent serving as brunch entertainment.
And this is just the appetizer. The brutal stretch of the SEC schedule is about to start, and Saturday gave everybody a preview of how scary this league is shaping up to be.
Georgia’s coming to Fayetteville fresh off a season where they’ve looked like national title contenders all along. The whole conference is loaded this year, and Arkansas is walking into it looking shakier than a lot of fans hoped after Week 1.
Save the Texas worrying for November
Speaking of scary teams having big days, the hated Texas Longhorns pulled off one of the wilder finishes of the young season. They stormed back from a 23-3 deficit to beat top-ranked Ohio State 24-23 on a late fourth-quarter touchdown.
That’s the kind of win that gets a fan base feeling itself. Razorback fans who can’t stand Texas got to watch it happen from the misery of their own blowout loss a few states over. Fitting.
Before anybody starts spiraling about that matchup though, take a breath. Arkansas doesn’t play Texas until Nov. 21, which is about as far away as fall semester finals feel right now.
There’s no reason to worry about the Longhorns today. There are much bigger problems sitting right in front of this program.
Start with an offense that can’t run the ball. Add a defense that got shredded for over 400 yards by a team that isn’t even ranked in the top 15.
Arkansas has 11 games left to figure out who it actually is. Right now the answer isn’t pretty.
The Razorbacks are 1-1. They just got beaten soundly by a team many expected them to at least compete with, and Georgia isn’t walking into Fayetteville feeling sorry for anybody.
Fans wanted competitive football under a new coaching staff.
What they got Saturday was a reminder that rebuilding a program takes longer than one offseason and one home opener against a Group of Five team.
Nobody said this would be easy. Saturday just made it official.
