Another Nightmare Loss Barely Avoided By No-Quit But Average Razorbacks

It boils down to this: The two games Arkansas fans expected their Razorbacks to win, before the real schedule begins, both required the Hogs to rally with two fourth-quarter touchdowns to avoid embarrassing losses.

And now, that real schedule begins, at Austin, with Alabama, Florida and Auburn to follow.

Certainly most of those fans who argued with the assessment that wins for the Razorbacks after Sept. 6 would be rare should now be firmly in this corner.

It can't be spelled out any more clearly. These Hogs, as hard as they fight for wins and not give up, aren't very good -- definitely not on a Southeastern Conference level.

The rest of the wins this season, if there are any, will be rare indeed. They may start coming again on Oct. 18 in Lexington against Kentucky, but not if the Wildcats find an offense to match a physical defense between now and then, and not if the Hogs' psyche is completely broken by what awaits. And, as much as this may pain Hog fans to hear, prepare to see Ole Miss at its angriest in Fayetteville on Oct. 25 when Houston Nutt returns to beat his former employer. Accept it, understand that Arkansas isn't going to win that game. Know too that better days are coming with Bobby Petrino's program, especially against the former coach and Ole Miss, and against the rest of the SEC; but not this year, and not with immediate positive strides in 2009 either.

Arkansas is middling in defensive talent, enough to barely hold off a Football Championship Subdivision team last week and a middle-of-the-pack Sun Belt program on Saturday night. ULM was shut out last week at Auburn, but on Saturday managed to look like Florida during the middle quarters against Arkansas' porous stop unit.

We said in July on a KABZ-FM "The Buzz" midday radio show: Enjoy these first two wins because few would likely follow. How could we speak such blasphemy, the message board regulars cried. Then we let a lot of over-exuberant fans and August preseason hype around the program delude us into thinking, like so many others, that Bobby "Magic Man" Petrino was going to wave some mystical coaching wand and make the average college players we knew he inherited somehow play like prep All-Americans with sudden newfound strength and speed, the likes of which are normally found at Florida or LSU.

The first two weekends should be a big dose of reality for everyone now.

Enjoy the competitive nature of this team, and Petrino's well-designed offense, because that's all there is going to be for the next three months. It could result in three or four more wins, with a few other piddling SEC teams later in the schedule dotted with weaknesses throughout, but that's it.