Arkansas coach Sam Pittman isn’t overlooking his team’s next opponent, Auburn, despite the Tigers’ struggles this season.

In the midst of a three-game losing streak, Auburn is 3-4 on the season and just 1-3 in SEC play, with the lone win in conference action coming in the form of a narrow overtime victory against Missouri in late September. But Pittman isn’t concerning himself with Auburn’s record — with all four of the Tigers’ losses coming against teams currently ranked in the AP poll; he believes Bryan Harsin’s team passes the eye test.

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“You just look at the team on film, and Auburn’s very scary,” Pittman said Wednesday during his appearance on the SEC coaches teleconference. “…Their team is scary because they’ve got a lot of talent, and they play extremely hard.”

Arkansas (4-3, 1-3 SEC) visits Jordan-Hare Stadium on Saturday at 11 a.m. (SEC Network). Both teams are well-rested coming off a bye week, and while the Razorbacks have had more success this season — including a double-digit road win at BYU on Oct. 15 in their last outing — there are certain aspects of Auburn’s team that cause concern for the third-year coach.

Chief among those is Auburn’s tandem at running back, Tank Bigsby and Jarquez Hunter. The Tigers’ rushing attack has struggled at times this season and is currently 56th nationally and eighth in the SEC in yards per game (170.1), but the offense may have turned a corner after its last game against Ole Miss. In that 48-34 loss on the road, Auburn amassed 301 rushing yards and four touchdowns while averaging 6.27 yards per carry. It was the team’s best single-game rushing performance against a Power 5 opponent since it ran for 345 yards and five touchdowns on 7.34 yards per carry against Arkansas in 2017.

In the loss to Ole Miss, Bigsby had one of the best games of his career, rushing for 179 yards and two touchdowns on 20 touches, averaging nearly 9 yards per carry on the afternoon. Hunter added 80 yards on 10 carries.

“They’re running the ball really well,” Pittman said. “Obviously, the biggest concern is Bigsby and Hunter; they’re really good players.”

Pittman is also weary of the added element that Robby Ashford brings to the table as a dual-threat quarterback. Arkansas hasn’t exactly faced many dual-threat quarterbacks this season outside of Alabama backup Jalen Milroe, who ran for 91 yards and a touchdown in the teams’ meeting earlier this month.

Ashford is Auburn’s second-leading rusher on the year, with 309 yards and three touchdowns, and he has been at his best when he has been able to extend plays with his legs to buy time for his receivers downfield.

“With him being a dual-threat quarterback, that creates a lot of problems for us,” Pittman said. “They’re big and physical up front, and they look like an SEC team…. They run the ball extremely well, have great tailbacks and with their quarterback being a dual-threat, that certainly creates a new problem that we haven’t had for a while.”

While Pittman has been generally impressed with what he has seen from Auburn on film, he’s not discounting the challenge presented in facing the Tigers on the road at Jordan-Hare Stadium. He knows well how difficult it can be to win on the Plains; one of his first games as Arkansas head coach was a 30-28 loss at Jordan-Hare Stadium, he was on staff at Georgia in 2017 when Auburn throttled the top-ranked Bulldogs at home that year. He was also an assistant at Arkansas in 2016, when the Tigers walloped the Razorbacks, 56-3, in the most lopsided matchup in series history.

That win was the first of six in a row Auburn has won against Arkansas heading into this weekend’s matchup — a streak during which the Tigers’ average margin of victory has been 29 points.

“Being on the road, too, makes it even that much harder because Jordan-Hare is a tough place to play, and I’ve been in there several, several times,” Pittman said. “So, yeah, we don’t really look at the record, but we do look at the team, and I think they’re a really good football team.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.