Arkansas upset LSU, and you should never, ever play Bret Bielema’s Razorbacks in November

Sometimes, large and heavy things take a little while to really get moving. But once they get moving, it’s wise to stay outta their way.

The Arkansas football program as envisioned by Bret Bielema is certainly a large and heavy thing. The Razorbacks want to slug you in the chest for about 51 minutes, with the remainder taken up by manly punts.

That’s about what happened Saturday at No. 9 LSU. The bowl-eligible Hogs produced a 31-14 suffocation of their Golden Boot rivals a week after upsetting Ole Miss, suggesting Arkansas’ early struggles are gone. If that sounds familiar, the same thing happened last year, contributing to an offseason of Arkansas hype.

You could argue Arkansas only pulled this one off because Alabama softened up the Tigers the week before, if you want, but I’ll choose to argue that all SEC teams should draw straws to see who has to play the Hogs late.

Though Bielema’s first year in Fayetteville wasn’t very good, it’s still easy to see signs of the late-season bloom being a thing even then.

In 2013, the average score of Arkansas’ four SEC games before November was a 32.3-point Razorbacks loss. The four November games were much closer, averaging a 9.7-point deficit.

In 2014, the Razorbacks averaged an 11.3-point loss in SEC games before November. In November, that flipped to an 11.4-point average margin of victory, including the Texas Bowl against the Longhorns.

And in 2015, the Hogs fell to 2-4 with losses to Toledo and Texas Tech before knocking off the Rebels and winning at Death Valley.

There’s not much from Bielema’s record at Wisconsin prior to Arkansas that suggests this is really a coaching thing. Do pigs hibernate or something?

The Hogs close at home against Mississippi State (which, like LSU, just got thumped by Alabama) and Missouri (in the middle of campus turmoil and a coaching change). There’s a chance wins in those games would inflate The Bielema November trend a little bit too much, but what we probably need to do is pray for whoever gets this team in a bowl.