Arkansas may have landed at No. 1 in a preseason ranking, but it’s the kind nobody in Fayetteville is celebrating.
The Razorbacks were tagged Thursday by ESPN’s Football Power Index with the nation’s toughest schedule, a familiar spot for a program that keeps showing up at the top of that particular list. Arkansas checked in at No. 47 in the FPI overall, ahead of Mississippi State, but the real headline is the grind waiting for first-year coach Ryan Silverfield.
The slate is loaded with heavyweight SEC matchups at home against Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, Vanderbilt and LSU, plus road trips to Texas A&M, Auburn and Texas. Arkansas also has a Week Two trip to Utah, a team Big 12 media picked to finish No. 3 in a conference race that’s now wide open.
That’s a brutal setup, and the projections reflect it. ESPN’s numbers point to a 4-8 finish, which still leaves Arkansas with a chance to turn the No. 1 schedule ranking into something more useful if the Razorbacks can survive the stretch and get into bowl position.
The SEC dominates the top of the FPI list, too, with nine of the top 10 teams coming from the league. Arkansas’ best chances to swing its own outlook appear to be games against Utah, South Carolina, Auburn, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.
The top 10 in the FPI rankings were Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Florida, Ohio State, Texas A&M and South Carolina.
Silverfield has made it clear he doesn’t want his team measuring itself against preseason labels. He’s also not about to let outside projections define what this roster can or can’t do after a two-win season.
And that 2-10 record came with plenty of close calls. Arkansas lost six games by one score in 2025, with ball security issues, missed assignments and blown defensive coverages helping turn those games the wrong way.
"[Our players] are hungry," Silverfield said. "Those guys who came back from last year, the newcomers, the staff, everybody's hungry. We want kind of avoid all the outside noise, there's not a prove everybody else wrong, let's just go prove ourselves right, like what we're capable of doing.
For Arkansas, the path is steep from the start. But if the Razorbacks beat those projections, they’ll have earned every bit of it.
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Hunter Yurachek Just Sent A Clear Message About Arkansas Keeping Up
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Arkansas has already been ahead of the curve in some of these moves, from adding field and court logos to its venues to becoming one of the first programs to use jersey patch sponsorships. Yuracheks message was less about novelty than necessity, with the department continuing to look at every available option to remain competitive in a landscape where self-sustaining programs have to keep finding new ways to pay the bills. [Read more 🡒]
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The Hogs do have some early leverage in the class with Davion Thompson already committed, though there is still buzz around whether he might reclassify. Arkansas is also in the mix for Lewis Uvwo, whose stock has climbed after a breakout EYBL showing, and Caleb Ourigou remains in the picture too after narrowing his list following official visits. For a staff trying to build another elite class, the challenge is obvious: Duke is right there, and these battles tend to stay tight deep into the process. [Read more 🡒]