The easiest crisis to pinpoint is the quarterback.
If Tyler Wilson is less-than-full-speed on Saturday, Arkansas will almost certainly struggle, especially given how dominant Nick Saban's Alabama defense has looked in their first two games.
Even playing at home in Fayetteville, and even with running back Knile Davis healthy and stronger than ever, the Hogs are a passing team with Wilson leading the way. Without Wilson at 100 percent, this one could be yet another blowout victory for the No.1-ranked Crimson Tide.
But more than personnel matchups, more than patterns and play-calls and X's and O's, Arkansas coach John L. Smith has another crisis on his hands -- a crisis of confidence, one that obviously infected the Arkansas locker room after the biggest upset loss of the year last Saturday.
Have no illusions, losing to Louisiana-Monroe was a much bigger psychological blow than it was a body shot. Last week was supposed to be a lead-in game, a padded win, a warm-up to a tough conference schedule and a run the Razorbacks hoped to make in the SEC West.
Instead, it was a hammer-blow to the naturally outsized egos all young football players possess.
Now throw in the fact that Saturday's game is against the No.1-ranked team in the nation -- a team that has looked better so far this year than they did last season when they won the BCS Championship Game – and one can see how Smith has his work cut out for him.
"They're the team on the schedule, so they're the one we have to get ready for," said Smith, which was the coaching equivalent of the famous Donald Rumsfeld line, "You fight the enemy you face with the army that you have."
"It's crucial for us, mentally, to pop back and get read with energy about us. Everybody has a tendency to drop their chin to the ground and carry it there throughout the week. We, as coaches, have to get their chins off the ground and get going and start believing in what we're doing this week."
The first step in that process is a post-mortem on the loss, showing players how UL-Monroe was, indeed, a fluke, a confluence of bad luck and ill-timed mistakes that could never possibly happen again.
"We show them, there's a tackle missed here, an assignment missed here, and there's an alignment mistake here, and if we'd done right and been disciplined we'd have made that play and won that game," Smith said. "Little things: you can pick out a play here and a play there, and we win that game."
Then you try to build them up for the next opponent by walking them through all the things they've done correctly in the past.
"You try to relate to what they've been through: the work they did last spring, the work they did this summer, and the work that they did last fall," Smith said. "You pull upon that and use that and let them know that we have to fight through this. You have to tell them, you have done this in the past. This is nothing more than the grind that we put you through in the summertime."
You rally the fans to fill Razorback Stadium, a spot where Alabama has struggled in recent years. And you whip up the noise to make the home-field advantage your 12th man.
The good news – if you can find a silver lining in an upset as shocking in SEC circles as Appalachian State beating Michigan was in the Big Ten – is that both Arkansas and Alabama are 0-0 in conference play.
"What we tried to point out on day one after coming back on Sunday was things haven't changed," Smith said. "We're still undefeated in the league. So, let's carry on, go to the practice field and get better."
And then, if none of that psychology and none of those motivational tactics work, you do what coaches have done since men first strapped on leather helmets and lost games they should have won: You work them into the ground. You run them and drill them until you find men tough enough to believe they can do the impossible.
"We're going to practice hard," said Smith, his normally upbeat voice taking on a colder and harder edge. "If you're not a part of that, and you're not in the boat, then get the heck out of here. It's going to take a renewed energy from all of us. Some of us are going to have that. If you don't, you don't need to show up. You can simply watch from the stands."
That, of course, is the perfect solution. If you don't have players who believe they can win, you find different players.
But since the Hogs are facing the best college football team in the country Saturday, that might not be the best option available. At the very least, Smith had better hope that his best athletes are not the ones watching the game from the stands.
