“The Week Ahead” is our weekly Monday piece, covering any relevant news from the weekend and taking a first look at all the games coming up this weekend.
Week 3 News
Aggies open as 2-point favorites. Before Saturday, I think the Hogs would have been favored. Over at Best of Arkansas Sports, Andrew Hutchinson asked a good question: is this line an overreaction? I tend to think so. As we discussed here in the instant analysis on Saturday and the box score breakdown on Sunday, bad luck and a big motivation gap played a major role in what transpired on Saturday in Fayetteville. As for Texas A&M, they still gained just 265 yards against Miami, and while they allowed just nine points, their defense has sprung a fascinating leak that popped up against both Appalachian State and Miami. We’ll dive into it this week.
The Alabama game is on CBS. The Hogs have landed the 2:30 CBS game when the Tide come to town. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but if Arkansas beats Texas A&M, that game will be the biggest in Fayetteville since the 2010 Alabama game. ESPN’s College Gameday will almost certainly be there for the second time ever (first since 2006).
No Hogs make SEC’s weekly awards. Generally, you have to be spectacular to win an award against an FCS opponent. I thought you could make a case for Bryce Stephens for his big punt return, but the Special Teams award instead went to Aggie punter Nic Constantinou. I can’t really complain.
Recent posts
- Box Score Breakdown: Arkansas 24, Auburn 14
- The Day After: Week 4
- Matchup Analysis: Auburn
- The Week Ahead: Week 4
- Box Score Breakdown: Arkansas 37, UAB 27
Week 4 in the SEC
Kent State at Georgia, Bowling Green at Mississippi State, Tulsa at Ole Miss, Northern Illinois at Kentucky, New Mexico at LSU. Several SEC teams have out-of-conference cupcakes this week.
Vanderbilt at Alabama. One SEC team has an in-conference cupcake this week.
Charlotte at South Carolina. Charlotte is really bad, so the Gamecocks should win easily. We still need to see Spencer Rattler play a decent four-quarter game. South Carolina’s offensive scheme doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, and they need to figure out how to use Rattler before its too late.
Missouri at Auburn. Bryan Harsin is basically gone, but Eli Drinkwitz will join the hot seat list if his Tigers can’t beat the Plains Tigers. If Mizzou loses this game, they’ll have to pull at least two upsets to make a bowl, as Vanderbilt is the only SEC win they can be confident of and they need a minimum of 3 SEC wins.
Around the Country
Indiana at Cincinnati. The Bearcats struggled for a while with Miami of Ohio before pulling away. A Bearcat loss here means that season-opening win doesn’t mean much anymore.
Watch These
Arkansas vs. Texas A&M (6 pm, ESPN). This game will go a long way to determine the SEC West pecking order for the rest of the season. We’ll have much more on this game all week.
Florida at Tennessee (2:30 pm, CBS). Anthony Richardson, winner of the Kenny Trill Week 1 Heisman, has crashed to Earth with two bad games after a season-opening win over Utah. The Gators are now 10.5-point underdogs against a team they’ve dominated for a decade-plus. The Vols’ offense can put up crazy numbers against terrible defenses, but Florida has the best defense they’ve seen so far. The only result that will definitively tell us anything is a blowout Tennessee win, which would help signal that the Vols are for real.
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