Arkansas Football: How Much of an Underdog will the 2016 Razorbacks Be?

ESPN has the Hogs picked to finish last in the SEC west this year. Most experts have the Hogs getting between 5 and 7 wins. Are these predictions reasonable? Or is Arkansas football being vastly underestimated heading into the season?

I’ve already wrote once this season about how this Arkansas football team is eerily similar to last year’s team. It’s almost like a mirror image from this time last year. Everything is exactly the same, except that instead of questions on defense, the concern is around the offense.

Coming into last season, fans were pretty excited about the defense. New defensive coordinator Robb Smith had taken a group of guys that had been not very good, and turned them into one of the best units in the SEC.

Then he lost a handful of key upperclassmen to graduation and the NFL draft. In fact, it was the most Arkansas defensive players taken in one draft in quite some time. 5 of those Hogs ended up on NFL rosters. The Razorbacks lost a LOT of stats from those 5 guys, and fans severely underestimated the damage that losing that many starters would do to the defense.

Flash forward to 2016. New coordinator Dan Enos took an offensive unit that had been under performing, and turned it into one of the best units in the SEC. Just like Robb Smith. And just like the defense 2 years ago, this offensive unit that saw a major turnaround has lost a lot of talent to the NFL.

The defense saw a sharp decline in production from 2015 to 2016. From a top 3 unit to the worst passing defense in the conference. So why, then, are Arkansas Razorback fans so surprised that so many experts don’t have faith in the Hogs offense this season? It’s exactly the same story from last year.

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Bret Bielema is building quite a roster, and it’s loaded with young talent. He’s now getting to the point where the majority of freshmen that he brings in have the opportunity to redshirt instead of having to play immediately. That’s what keeps the elite teams in the nation so good year in and year out: depth.

It’s what Arkansas still doesn’t quite have across the board. The 2016 Razorbacks will have a lot of new faces on offense. And even if the defense improves to become a middle of the pack unit in the SEC, will that be enough to carry an offense that may or may not gel together before the season kicks off?

I’m not saying that you should expect the worst from the 2017 Arkansas football team. But I do think that fans may need to crack open a bottle of realism juice and take a big gulp, because no matter how good Austin Allen, Devwah Whaley, and the rest of the new starters are this year, the likelihood of them being as consistently good as Alex Collins, Hunter Henry, and Brandon Allen are slim.

Has the defense improved enough to make up the difference? Can Dan Enos put together a unit that can score points despite losing so much in big time skill positions? Or will 2016 be just like 2014, a year where we see the flashes of a good team that ultimately isn’t there yet?

I guess we’ll just have to wait until September to find out.