Predicting the win total ceiling, floor for Arkansas in 2024
Arkansas Razorbacks head coach Sam Pittman is coming into the 2024 season on the hot seat, after a difficult 2023 campaign.
With all that in mind, Andy Staples and Cody Bellaire broke down their thoughts on Arkansas at this point in the offseason during an episode of Andy Staples On3. There, the two predicted the win total ceiling and floor for the Arkansas Razorbacks in 2024.
Neither had a particularly positive outlook on the season for Arkansas. However, in the best-case scenario, Arkansas can still be a decent team that wins a bowl game. The problem is on the other end of the spectrum the bottom could completely fall out for the Razorbacks.
CEILING: Decent Bowl Team
Andy Staples made it clear that there’s a pretty wide range of potential outcomes for Arkansas this season. If everything goes right, that means making a bowl game as a pretty solid team.
“This one could go pretty decent bowl team or the bottom falls out completely,” Staples said.
For his part, Cody Bellaire emphasized that the Razorbacks are going to be reliant on Taylen Green, a transfer quarterback from Boise State who is replacing KJ Jefferson.
“But the guy that changes the temperature for this team is the transfer from Boise State. It’s Taylen Green,” Bellaire said. “There’s a world in which that guy is a genuine game changer and keeps Sam Pittman’s job alive if he’s able to do some of the things.”
In 2023 at Boise State, Green had 1,752 yards passing and 11 touchdowns. He also rushed for 436 yards and nine touchdowns.
“Yes, you bring in a guy like Taylen Green. I think there’s a world where he can create. I think he might have a little more twitch to him than KJ Jefferson does…KJ Jefferson was a bulldozer,” Bellaire said. “I think Taylen Green’s got a little more twitch to his game, maybe can be a little more creative in the run game with him, but to say he’s gonna bring this team to seven or eight wins, I think, that’s a bit of a stretch.”
FLOOR: Bottom Falls Out
The reality for Sam Pittman is that he’s on the hot seat. Andy Staples acknowledged that and the difficult situation he’s in going into this season.
“This is another hot seat situation. Sam Pittman. We know he’s on dangerous ground here. We also know they just hired Bobby Petrino to call plays, which makes things really interesting because it sure feels like they’re angling to have him be the interim if you wind up firing Sam Pittman,” Staples said.
“That said, he could also do a good job working for Sam Pittman and then Sam Pittman keeps his job… And we’ve seen the bottom — like we saw the bottom fall out of Arkansas at the end of the Chad Morris era too, and really kind of the end of the Bret Bielema era.”
At his most negative, Andy Staples had Arkansas as a 2-10 team. Cody Bellaire went further, explaining that he thinks it could be as bad as a one-win season.
“It’s funny because, to your point, I had the same floor. I had the floor being potentially one win,” Bellaire said. “Yeah, I genuinely believe if they don’t start out on the right foot, it could stay going downhill the entire season.”
On top of that, the move to Taylen Green from KJ Jefferson, who is now expected to start at UCF, might not actually be an upgrade.
“Is Taylen Green an upgrade over KJ Jefferson? I’m not entirely sure he is,” Staples said.
For Cody Bellaire, the problem goes beyond that and comes down to a team that he seems to believe will struggle to compete in the SEC this season.
“He may not be, and I think the tough part of this is this roster as a whole is not put together in order to sort of compete against some of this top competition and really win more than five games this year,” Bellaire said. “I just don’t know if they have the pieces on the offensive line or pieces on the defensive front, and I think that’s how you’re gonna get killed in this conference.”