Hogs’ crystal ball for 2019 won’t start clearing until October

If Chad Morris hasn’t exceeded last year’s win total by the end of September, it’s going to be a really interesting fall for Arkansas football once again.

Admittedly, the bar is low. That’s about the only positive fans can really take from last year’s forgettable season.

The schedule helps, thanks to Michigan wanting to play Notre Dame more than the Razorbacks.

Which is why September can’t be worse than 3-2 and probably should be 4-1. Ole Miss is a winnable game, even if it’s in Oxford where a big number of the fan base will never leave The Grove and another number will start heading downtown midway through the second quarter.

It helps the Rebels are breaking in new coordinators on both sides of the ball along with a bunch of new players that have potential … which is about the same boat the Hogs are in at this point.

Maybe best of all, they will play the second week of the season.

The biggest key, of course, is the three non-conference games in September. The Hogs likely won’t be a favorite in any of the two SEC games (there’s that Texas A&M deal in Arlington at the end of the month).

At least not now.

In case you’ve lost track, that game in Arlington is usually within the margin of error (three of the last five have gone to overtime). Let’s face it, Arkansas is due to win one of these things and whether it’s the Hogs stealing it or flat-out beating A&M is not a particularly big issue to fans.

What no one seems to consider is that of the last seven teams on the schedule (six are league games), history shows that at least one (more likely two) are going to not be up to expectations or just give half-hearted efforts.

It happens every year and nobody can predict it.

Which is why this is not going to feature some guess at what the win-loss total is going to be in September or any other kind of number.

Besides, until things finish up in Arlington that crystal ball everyone is using is going to be very cloudy, no matter what anybody is thinking.

Nobody is thinking this Razorback team is going to contend for the West this year. That’s not particularly a reason to believe it’s going to be a repeat of last year.

Despite the fact you’re not going to get some fans to believe that.

For a fan base that expects the worst to avoid disappointment is the trademark of bandwagon fans. In the case of Hog fans, man wait until it gets rolling to some type of postseason point before most just jump under it.

After September, the real season starts and nobody’s saying it will be easy, but it’s probably not as gloomy as many think.

Ole Miss will be trying to figure things out and their opener against Memphis is seldom an easy game. A&M will play Arkansas after already having gone on the road against Clemson and hosted Auburn the Saturday before.

Right now Jimbo Fisher is just hoping to be 4-1 at that point. He knows it could be 2-2, much like Arkansas. Plus, the Aggies have to be looking ahead at least a little to an off week before facing Alabama.

Auburn will roll into Fayetteville and whether Gus Malzahn is the coach or not might speak volumes. A killer schedule of Oregon, the Aggies, Kentucky, Florida and Mississippi could have an already tense situation bordering on chaos finally slipping over the edge.

The Hogs will go to Lexington to face a Wildcats’ team that lost it’s best players to the NFL (and that is a phrase you don’t hear often about Kentuky football).

Shoot, Mississippi State may take a step or two back and who knows where Missouri will be the day after Thanksgiving.

But I will go out on this: Anything below 3-2 will have the natives restless around Fayetteville.

Which is why we won’t really know anything until the smoke clears on that game in Cowboys Stadium.