Last Saturday, the SEC got a bit of a black eye when Arkansas lost to Toledo and Tennessee blew a 17-point lead and found a way to lose to Oklahoma in overtime, at home.
The Hogs and the Vols were supposed to be the two programs on the rise in the SEC, but join Vanderbilt as the only SEC teams to lose a nonconference game after two weeks of play.
South Carolina losing to Kentucky at home wasn't good for the league, often referred to as the best football conference in America. Yes, even in this space it has been called that.
Plus, Arkansas State gave Missouri, the defending SEC East Division champ, a serious scare before falling 27-20.
Most of the shock had worn off by Monday for Razorbacks fans, who saw their expectations come face-to-face with reality against a good Toledo football team from a city known for being the headquarters of Jeep and having a minor-league baseball team known as the Mud Hens.
Teams are never supposed to dominate the statistics and lose, especially teams from the SEC, against even the best from a conference named MAC.
Usually at this point it would be great to look ahead to Texas Tech, another game counted as an automatic victory in preseason. But the Red Raiders destroyed Texas-El Paso 69-20, getting four touchdowns through the air and five rushing as they totaled 674 yards of offense.
Just as a reminder, the Razorbacks had 490 yards of total offense, 308 in the air, against UTEP in the season-opening 48-13 victory.
Right, you can't compare scores.
However, what is obvious right now is the UA has become the Air Hogs.
In its first two games, the team, known to pound the ground, has rushed for 172 yards against UTEP (and 70 of that came on the last play of the first half) and 103 against Toledo. Arkansas had 31 rushing attempts against Toledo, including long runs of 21 by Alex Collins, 11 by Kody Walker and 10 by Brandon Allen, who scrambled three times for 23 yards.
It doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that those are not winning numbers, especially for a team whose bread and butter is supposed to be running the football.
It was obvious last Saturday that the pass blocking was better than the run blocking.
If the Razorbacks have changed their blocking schemes, then unchange them or go out and recruit more fast receivers with good hands.
The loss, still confusing, gave some members of the Ohio media the opportunity to make it open season on Arkansas Coach Bret Bielema, who last week made the comment that while No. 1 Ohio State is a solid top choice in the polls, it plays only one more ranked team this season and the Razorbacks have to play eight ranked teams.
Obviously, Bielema was stating the obvious, but somehow, someway, some folks in Big Ten country still carry a grudge for his success at Wisconsin, which was really a little more impressive than it appears when you consider where his recruiting classes ranked against some of the other conference teams.
Anyway, that comment was just fuel to the fire for some, and Bielema has more to worry about than he has let on.
Generally, Bielema tries to be upbeat and positive, which was why when Jonathan Williams went down with an injury, he said that was the one position where the Razorbacks were the deepest. He wanted to instill some confidence in his other running backs and the team.
Yet, the Hogs have missed Williams the first two games, just as any team in the SEC who lost the third-best running back in the conference would.
The Razorbacks have to fix some things today and Wednesday or Saturday could be a long day.
Sports on 09/15/2015