The Arkansas Razorbacks (5-3, 3-2 SEC) will look to knock of a second ranked team at home on the year Saturday when the host the No. 19 Ole Miss Rebels (6-2, 2-2 SEC) at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville.
Both teams were victorious a week ago, as the Razorbacks won 58-25 at Mississippi State, and Ole Miss took care of Oklahoma with a 26-14 win at home.
The Rebels entered the season with high aspirations, but losses to Kentucky and at LSU so far make this a must-win if Ole Miss desires to be in the College Football Playoff.
"They've always played well on defense, but you're looking at number one rush defense in the country and number one against points given allowed in the country," Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman said Monday. "Very, very good. Their front is deep. Very good. They're very, very good at every position on the D-line. Their linebackers are playing well. Pooh Paul's their leading tackler. He's playing extremely well. And they're just really good defensively.
"You think about Ole Miss, you think about offense and then you go over on offense and they have Jaxson Dart who's really, really good, Tre Harris who didn't play last week, but we're expecting him to be there this week. And then the running back has 650 plus yards. So just a really, really good football team, that's very explosive. And like I said before, their defense is playing extremely well. We're looking forward to it. I think the house is going to be packed here on Saturday and we're excited that the fans are out here supporting us and happy about that."
Things are much more even offensively, but Ole Miss has graded out better than Arkansas in every category on Pro Football Focus, which is a football analytics website that provides grades for each individual player and full teams after analyzing each game for all Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams. Grades are given from 0-100, with the higher the grade signifying better performance.
Here's a look at how both teams stack up based on stats from this year and high school star ratings:
Season Stats - Ole Miss | Arkansas (FBS rank out of 134 teams)
Offense
Ole Miss || Arkansas
Scoring: 39.5 (14th) | 33.3 (33rd)
Total yards: 538.1 (2nd) | 482.5 (7th)
Passing: 354.0 (4th) | 283.3 (23rd)
Rushing: 184.1 (40th) | 199.3 (28th)
Third downs: 44.0% (35th) | 48.6% (12th)
Sacks allowed/game: 2.3 (t-85th) | 2.1 (t-74th)
Turnovers: 8 (t-36th) | 13 (t-91st)
Defense
Ole Miss || Arkansas
Scoring: 11.0 (1st) | 21.8 (42nd)
Total yards: 294.4 (11th) | 349.1 (55th)
Passing: 217.8 (65th) | 229.3 (88th)
Rushing: 76.6 (1st) | 119.9 (37th)
Third downs: 28.2% (7th) | 37.0% (57th)
Sacks/game: 4.3 (2nd) | 2.3 (47th)
Turnovers forced: 13 (t-36th) | 12 (t-45th)
Star Comparison (using Rivals ratings)
- CB
- OLB
- DT
- SDE
- WR
- S
- C
- SDE
- ILB
- DT