This weekend the Bearcats kick off their highly anticipated 2022 season with a match up versus No. 19 Arkansas on the road at Razorback Stadium. The Bearcats are coming off an historic season where they reached the College Football Playoff after historical wins over Notre Dame and Indiana en route to back-to-back AAC Championships as the Bearcats are looking to make it a three-peat heading into the 2022 season, but it starts with a tough battle on the road versus a very tough Arkansas team. The Razorbacks are coming off as season where they finished 9-4, the best season in almost a decade. This is the first time the Razorbacks come into the season ranked(19th) and will be opening up the season vs another ranked opponent (as the Bearcats are ranked 23rd) since 1974.
“Week 1 is always unique in college football, to start off with a game like this on the road in a crazy hostile environment will be unique for us, it’s going to be a great experience all around.”
The Bearcats know a lot about hostile environments over the last few seasons between the Peach Bowl, UCF in 2018, Notre Dame in 2021, Indiana in 2021, Ohio State in 2018, but Arkansas will be a tough environment as the Bearcats kick off the highly anticipated 2022 season where they will look to prove that the 2021 season wasn’t a fluke and the Bearcats are here to stay for many years to come, but with a hungry Arkansas team to open the season, the Bearcats know they have an early challenge at hand heading into the season.
The Bearcats will look to get a huge win to start the season versus an SEC team in Arkansas after their last two losses dating back to the 2020 season come from SEC powerhouses in Georgia at the 2021 Chick-Fil-a Peach Bowl where they Bearcats last on a last second field goal, and their 27-6 loss to Alabama in the Cotton Bowl this past December. They know that Arkansas wouldn’t be an easy challenge to kick off the season, a season in which will feature a lot of new faces after seeing nine guys drafted in this past April’s NFL Draft, one of those being Desmond Ridder, the Bearcats will look to go on the road, to a hostile environment with Evan Prater or Ben Bryant, however we won’t know who it is until game day.
Arkansas will be returning a lot of talent, after losing their top playmaker in star wide receiver Traylon Burks to the NFL where he was selected by the Tennessee Titans with the 18th overall pick in this past April’s NFL Draft, The Razorbacks will be returning a lot of firepower on offense including starting quarterback KJ Jefferson, sophomore running back Raheim Sanders, then they bring in a guy like Jadon Haselwood who transferred in this past spring from Oklahoma, where he led the Sooners in receiving yards a season ago, and will look to get plenty of targets to fill the void of a guy like Treylon Burks.
