The Alabama Crimson Tide will travel to Fayetteville this afternoon to take on the Razorbacks. Alabama will try and recover from a road loss to the Ole Miss Rebels, while Arkansas will look for their first SEC win of the season.
Alabama has not had back to back conference losses since coach Nick Saban’s first year in office for the Tide. Saban praised Arkansas for being the SEC’s most improved team and with a very messy loss to Ole Miss, Alabama will need to execute better against a formidable Razorbacks team.
Unfortunately for Alabama, they will be without three important players. Kenyan Drake, the ever dynamic running back, underwent surgery Sunday after breaking his left leg against Ole Miss and will miss the remainder of the season. On defense, Denzel Devall also had surgery on Sunday for a leg injury and will likely miss the next three to four weeks.
One of the biggest losses for this Alabama team will be starting center Ryan Kelly, who is expected to miss the next few games while he rehabilitates a sprained knee. In his absence, red shirt freshman Bradley Bozeman will get the start and the opportunity to ‘rise to the occasion’ for his team.
Unlike any Alabama team we have seen in recent years, Alabama is struggling in three key areas: turnover margin, red zone offense, and penalties. All areas that have proven to be game changers for this team this season. Most recently, against Ole Miss, Alabama turned the ball over twice in the fourth quarter allowing them to come away with a huge upset.
Arkansas, who is coming off of a bye week, held their own in their last SEC match-up, but couldn’t hold on to beat Texas A&M on September 27.
One place that the Razorbacks are excelling in is points per game, where they are seventh in the nation with 44.6 points on average. This will be a good test to see if they can continue to put up points on offense.
Running back Alex Collins had 131 rushing yards against the Aggies and will be the go to target on the ground for the Razorbacks. Hopefully with two weeks to prepare the Arkansas defense has improved, they gave up 523 total yards to Texas A&M. It could get very ugly if this defense gives up that many yards against Alabama.
Arkansas is looking to snap a seven game winning streak the Tide holds against them, the last two have been shutouts 52-0.
*Section Photo credit to Sam Greenwood,Getty Images; Featured Photo (above) credit to Nelson Chenault, USA Today Sports.
