The Razorbacks open the much-anticipated 2022 season with a new face: the Cincinnati Bearcats out of the American Athletic Conference. Our Tuesday post will introduce the opponent without getting into all of the advanced stats and scheme breakdowns (that will come Thursday).
This was an interesting scheduling decision by the U of A, as there is little benefit to beating an American Conference team, but actually beating a team that’s 22-2 over its last two seasons and reached the playoff last year will be really difficult. So this is a high-risk, low-reward game. The game was scheduled following the 2018 season, where Cincinnati had just won 11 games in Luke Fickell’s second year. The Bearcats are 33-5 with three division titles and two conference titles since the deal was signed.
Series & Program History
Saturday will mark the first-ever meeting between Arkansas and Cincinnati.
The Bearcats are at the peak of their school history right now. They own the oldest program in the state of Ohio, having first played in 1885. After a brief heydey from 1946 to 1954 that included the school’s first three bowl appearances, the program suffered a major downturn from 1955 to 1996 that saw them reach zero bowl games and even briefly become a D-IAA (FCS) team.
In 1996, the Bearcats joined the Conference-USA, which permanently changed their fortunes. After reaching a bowl in 1997 — their first since 1950 — the Bearcats have had 18 bowl seasons and 7 non-bowl seasons. They’ve won at least a share of 8 conference titles, and four different coaches (Rick Minter, Butch Jones, Tommy Tuberville, Luke Fickell) have at least one conference title during their time at Cincinnati. While Nebraska is showing the effects of a long downturn from a great program to a bad one, Cincinnati is doing the opposite, proving that a long upswing from bad program to good one is entirely possible. And the trajectory continues up, as the Bearcats are set to join the Big 12 next year.
2021 Recap & 2022 Expectations
The 2021 season saw Cincinnati reach new heights. The Bearcats won their second straight American conference title and became the first Group of Five team to reach the playoff. They’re now 22-2 over the last two seasons, with the only losses coming to Alabama and Georgia.
The Bearcats are coached by Luke Fickell. The Ohio State alum and former Buckeyes DC enters his sixth season with a 48-15 record (44-7 in his last four seasons). Fickell was on Ohio State’s staff from 2002 to 2016 and before that he briefly coached defensive lines at Akron, so he’s never coached outside the state of Ohio.
Cincinnati is likely due for a step back in 2022, as the 2021 team was loaded with veterans in their final season. The defense, generally regarded as the strength of the team, loses seven of its 11 starters: two of three defensive linemen, two of three linebackers, and three of five defensive backs. All-American cornerback Sauce Gardner is the biggest loss by the defense. Six starters from last year’s defense were either drafted or signed as a UDFA after this year’s draft. Fickell has built up excellent depth across the defense, but topline talent is going to be the biggest question mark.
The offense is in better shape, thanks to four returning starters on the line. Seven starters are back, although starting QB Desmond Ridder, all-conference RB Jerome Ford, and all-conference WR Alec Pierce are among the departed. Cincinnati returns its second- through fifth-leading receivers and signed a big-name receiver in the transfer portal, so it’s really just quarterback and running back that are relative concerns heading into the season.
Schematically, the Bearcats are somewhat conservative on offense, using a spread, pro-style, highly multiple scheme that is balanced between run and pass. The Bearcats offense includes a lot of RPOs and quick, rhythm throws, especially on early downs. They are content to take whatever the defense gives them and string together long drives, which is concerning for a Razorback defense under Barry Odom that prefers a bend-don’t-break style that strikes when opponents get too aggressive. The Razorbacks will have to find some way to disrupt Cincinnati’s rhythm, or the Bearcats will eat up the clock and be perfectly content with long drives.
Defense features a better matchup for the Hogs. Cincinnati runs a 3-3-5 defense that prefers speed over size, due largely to difficulties in recruiting elite defensive linemen to smaller schools. The Bearcats rely on playmakers on the back end, but are not very disruptive against the run, leaving them vulnerable to a ground-and-pound offense like Arkansas’. In the CFP semifinal, Alabama opened the game with 10 consecutive running plays and finished with 47 rushes for 301 yards, a season-high for the Tide on the ground.
We’ll dive much deeper into Cincinnati’s offense and defense, including advanced stats and scheme, in the Matchup Analysis on Thursday.
Interesting Names
A coach you’ve heard of: Sid Gillman. Gillman coached the Bearcats from 1949 to 1954, his last college job before making the jump to the NFL. If you like the forward pass, you like Sid Gillman. Gillman was revolutionary in the development of the passing game, and the West Coast offense was developed directly out of his work, and basically all other passing offenses use his terminology and ideas. He standardized protection schemes and their terminology, described different parts of a route (release, stem, break), emphasized the idea of timing (where in the route the ball should be thrown), and developed the idea of reading coverages and designing routes to beat each coverage.
A player you’ve heard of: Travis Kelce. The NFL’s top tight end played for the Bearcats from 2008 and 2012. He had more than 700 yards and 8 touchdowns in 2012 before being drafted in the third round by the Chiefs.
A game you’ve heard of: Cincinnati 14, Penn State 3, 1983. Until The Citadel came into Fayetteville in 1992, this was the pinnacle of FCS-over-FBS upsets. Penn State was a top-10 team, and the Bearcats had been sent down to I-AA for the 1983 season due to low attendance. But they went into Happy Valley and shut down Joe Paterno’s Nittany Lions. The magic didn’t last, though: Penn State went on to have a good season, while Cincinnati went 4-6-1 in Mack Brown’s brother Watson’s only season as coach.
Random Facts
The city of Cincinnati is known as the Queen City, a name taken from the poem “Catawba Wine” (1854) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
And this Song of the Vine,
This greeting of mine,
The winds and the birds shall deliver,
To the Queen of the West,
In her garlands dressed,
On the banks of the Beautiful River.
The city is named for the Society of the Cincinnati, a fraternal organization created by army officers after the Revolutionary War to commemorate the American Revolution. That organization takes its name from the Roman statesman Lucius Cincinnatus, who was appointed dictator of the Romans during a military emergency, only to relinquish power after the emergency was over and return to his life as a farmer.
Cincinnati has one of the largest economies in the Midwest, and is the home of several Fortune 500 companies, namely Kroger and Procter & Gamble.
In terms of culture, the city is perhaps most famous for its signature dish, Cincinnati chili. Despite the name “chili”, Cincinnati chili is more of a spiced spaghetti sauce, and is served over noodles. Odd ingredients like cinnamon or even chocolate are often added to the “chili”. The dish was created by Balkan immigrants who came to Cincinnati to escape political violence in the wake of World War I. Popular restaurants like Skyline Chili serve Cincinnati chili, complete with very strict instructions on how to order it.
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