Final 2025 SEC power rankings: 14 - Arkansas
It feels incorrect to call last year a roller coaster for Arkansas fans, since it was mostly disappointment, but this was a Hog team that, for the best part of the year, played well enough to make fans believe they were capable of winning a big game somewhere along the line.
That was thanks to the offense of Bobby Petrino, who is now headed to North Carolina under Bill Belichick. Ryan Silverfield is now the head man in Fayetteville, and despite protests from the student body, he’s looking to succeed where several others before him have failed.
There were some ideas that Petrino may have been the man to take over for Pittman once the former head coach was ousted, but his winless finish to the year— despite some promising showings on offense— all but eliminated that as a possibility. There would have been a lot of hurdles to clear if Petrino was the choice that the admin was going for anyway, but he made the choice a little easier.
Silverfield will have to build from the ground up in Fayetteville, where he already would have been starting from behind even if every contributor had remained. Year one could be rough, but 2-10 is not a high bar to clear— let’s see if he can do it.