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After earning a surprising postseason bid last season, Arkansas is considered a toss-up to make a bowl game in 2021.
Most sportsbooks have set the Razorbacks’ win total at 5.5 and ESPN’s Football Power Index gives them about a 50/50 shot at hitting the over to reach bowl eligibility.
To be exact, the FPI’s predicted win total for Arkansas is 5.6, with a 53.3 percent chance of winning at least six games. The most likely record is 6-6, which has a 27.4 percent chance of happening.
Reaching the six-win mark will likely hinge on a few toss-up games, assuming the Razorbacks take care of business against their non-conference “cupcakes” - which hasn’t even a given in recent years.
They are heavily favored to beat Rice (93.7%), Georgia Southern (82.2%) and UAPB (99.8%) by the FPI, likely giving them three wins and getting them halfway there.
In SEC play, Arkansas is actually favored to win home games against Mississippi State and Missouri, but is a slight underdog against Auburn and moderate underdog at Ole Miss.
If they don’t win three of those four games, the Razorbacks’ next-best chances at wins are against Texas and at LSU, while the FPI gives them less than a 20 percent chance of beating Texas A&M, Georgia and Alabama.
A breakdown of the FPI’s game-by-game odds for Arkansas’ 2021 season are listed below. HawgBeat also used those percentages to calculate how likely the Razorbacks are to finish with each possible record, from 0-12 to 12-0.
It is also worth mentioning that ESPN made significant changes to its preseason Football Power Index rankings that were originally released in April after noticing “data and modeling errors.”
Most notably, Mississippi State’s surprising appearance at No. 8 was a mistake and the Bulldogs now check in at No. 24. The Razorbacks fell seven spots to No. 36, but that is still better than their No. 56 ranking in the final 2020 FPI ranking and significantly better their No. 91 ranking at the end of the 2018 and 2019 season.
HawgBeat has also included an updated look at the preseason FPI rankings for all 14 SEC teams below, with those on Arkansas’ 2021 schedule in bold and their change from the original rankings in parentheses.
SEC's Preseason FPI Rankings
1. Alabama (—)
5. Georgia (+2)
6. Texas A&M (—)
11. Florida (+3)
15. Auburn (+1)
18. LSU (—)
20. Ole Miss (+2)
24. Mississippi State (-16)
36. Arkansas (-7)
40. Kentucky (-1)
46. Missouri (-12)
47. Tennessee (+1)
65. South Carolina (+3)
104. Vanderbilt (-11)
