If Lovett leaves, Burden will likely move into the slot — which is his natural position in this offense.

Hate losing Lovett, but that could be a very good thing for the offense. Burden played out of position on the outside the entire year and it showed.

1) Is Brady Cook playing his way into the QB conversation for next year? Look, guys, I don’t know. But I’m not willing to say no for sure. I know everyone is convinced Sam Horn is great. And maybe he is. But are you willing to go into a year as big as next year with a guy you haven’t seen do it? If Cook played the way he did today all year this team is 9-3. Do you believe he can do it from the start next year with a full year under his belt? I totally understand if you don’t. But today is the first time I’ve considered that he might be the starter next year.

2) They’ve got two receivers you can build around and a couple more that are nice pieces. Dom Lovett is a star. Luther Burden is probably going to be. Mookie Cooper is a useful piece, if not a No. 1. Mekhi Miller has made plays every time you’ve given him a chance. The pieces are there. You have to keep them all together and that’s not easy in this day and age. But if all four of those guys return, Missouri’s passing game could be pretty fun next year, whoever is throwing the ball.

3) Why go for two in the third quarter? You don’t chase points with 25 minutes left to play. When Arkansas got the ball back with five minutes left, I was sure I was going to have to erase the column I wrote and write one about how Eli Drinkwitz’s reliance on a chart cost them the game. I’m glad I didn’t have to. Drink coached a very good game today. That was one I didn’t like.

4) For most of the first half I thought I was going to have to talk about the defense deserting Missouri when the offense finally showed up. But I didn’t. They were great in the second half. And truth be told, they weren’t nearly as bad as I initially thought in the first half. Arkansas converted 5 of 7 third downs and made a couple of big plays, but overall, the Razorbacks still had far fewer yards than Missouri. They’d just been better in the red zone…until they weren’t.

5) If I’m a Razorback fan, I’d like a word with my coordinators. The plan in the first half seemed to be blitz the hell out of Brady Cook. The problem was they weren’t getting there (shoutout Mizzou OL). And once they didn’t get there, all Cook had to do was break the line of scrimmage and he had 20 yards in front of him. He even said he was surprised at how much room he had to run. It was the same play over and over and Barry Odom didn’t change until the second half. Once they did, Missouri only got three more field goals. But the damage was done.

On offense, why do you get to the three-yard line and run a QB sneak with someone other than your 242-pound QB who is a hell of a tough runner? And then why do you kick a 19-yard field goal when you’re down by five points.

Coaching: Mizzou > Arkansas

6) I never thought Isaiah McGuire would be the player he is today. I thought he had a chance to be a nice piece. He’s fourth in the SEC in sacks. He’s a dominant edge rusher. He’s the best defensive player on this team and he’s going to play on Sundays. By the way, he did it with a separated shoulder today. Hats off, kid.

7) That said, we shouldn’t see him play in a Mizzou uniform again. He’s proven everything he needs to prove. I don’t think he’ll be the only one to not play in a bowl game. The next three weeks or so are going to be an absolute roller coaster. There are a lot of guys who will have options (both pro and portal) and they aren’t all guys that aren’t seeing the field. I have no idea how it’s going to play out.

8) So where will that bowl game be? I think it’s either the Liberty Bowl against Kansas or the Las Vegas Bowl against a PAC-12 team. Those are the two destinations I’m hearing the most. The draw for the Liberty Bowl is obvious. They had reps here today and they’d love to have the Border War. I’m sure there’s some appeal for the SEC too. From everything I’m hearing, Missouri would prefer Vegas. Desiree Reed-Francois knows plenty of people out there. There might be some back channeling going on. It will be interesting to see which way it goes, but I think those are the two destinations. The Las Vegas Bowl is on December 17. The Liberty Bowl is on December 28. I know Missouri would like to have the bowl game before Christmas is possible and I think they’d rather face a PAC 12 team than Kansas. I’d prefer Vegas too, but I don’t think anyone is going to ask me.

9) I’ve been pretty vocal in the past that bowl games don’t matter. This one does for this team. Now, like I said, if I’m Isaiah McGuire, I’m not playing. Probably true for a couple other guys too. But for this program, winning a bowl game over a Power Five team would be big. It would give you a winning record. It would be four Power Five wins in the last five weeks. It would be momentum. It would get your fans excited. Fair or not, 7-6 looks a lot prettier than 6-7. Missouri needs to try to win this game. That takes precedence over everything else, including giving the freshman quarterback game reps.

10) This team deserves a lot of credit. They could have quit a lot of times. I quit on them a few times. A lot of you did too. They didn’t. That’s a credit to the kids and a credit to the coaches. They’re a lot closer to 9-3 than they are to 3-9. For those of you who have insisted they were close, you appear right now to be more right than you were wrong. There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic today. Again, you’re going to have to survive a wild offseason, but today gave us a lot of looks at what the positive crowd has insisted we should have seen all along. Maybe we should have. For the record, I’ve never buried this program or this coach. I know you think I have some weird personal axe to grind. I don’t. But I’ll admit I didn’t believe a month ago they were capable of getting this thing to 6-6 with a chance at 7-6. I was wrong. I don’t have any problem saying that. Credit to them.

Enjoy the victory, the leftovers and your families. I'm going to do snap counts in the morning, then my family is doing Thanksgiving Dinner tomorrow and I've got Chiefs tickets Sunday. So you're not gonna see me after about 10 a.m. tomorrow for the rest of the weekend. Which surely means some crazy shit is going to happen and I'll be back here at 10:02 tomorrow morning.

@GabeD if you knew about this a week ago, why didn’t you say something then? Especially if you heard it from multiple sources.

These kids are pro now, shit needs to be no holds barred.

Today has been a wild day on here (I certainly am not innocent of it) lol

Really gave us the full spectrum of fandom when a player leaves:

We had the “sky is falling” fans (I’m probably in this bucket)

We had the “we’re gonna be okay and have a plan to reload in the portal” fans (probably the right bucket)

We had the “______ wasn’t that good anyways and we can easily replace him” fans (If this is you, you’re sorely mistaken - Lovett is a baller)

I miss anything?

Why recruit high school kids when you can get a whole team of proven juniors and seniors in the transfer portal? Sure, you’ll need some to round out your class, but this could be the way for high caliber teams competing in the sec.

Talk about a gut punch. Came to website just to hear bowl bid rumors and saw Lovett and Burden possibly leaving. Didn't realize how much I was going to hate the transfer portal. More reason that only the big brand teams are going to keep winning. Every year they miss on a 3* kid, who cares, they will get him in the portal, disgusting. Will Mizzou ever be able to build on a pretty decent end to a season (all things considered) when at least half of our players get snatched up?

The SEC has like 9 teams that are going to be offering huge money to our players and we can't meet it. I see us as about 15th in the conference going forward for NIL money

I wouldn't be surprised if GAs are now Scouts on Saturday. Nothing more effective than taking players from your conference foes.

I have never seen a sport set up as dumb as this is now.

Good luck getting a coach after Drink is fired.

I can't believe I'm going to say we would be better off in the B1G or Big12 again with the current structure.

No way will the lesser teams in the SEC have a chance when pretty much everybody can pay more for our players.

Worse thing about it is we finally get a coach who can't recruit good. Then they go and change the rules that makes high school recruiting meaningless

Good luck to Dominic Lovett, but this young man is 6'1" and 194 pounds and is ready to break out next year next to Mookie and Luther.

A more general conversation but why is this a rule?

If it’s for the benefit of the “student athlete,” then why stop at the first transfer, every transfer should have immediate eligibility.

If by not allowing immediate eligibility on the second transfer, the goal is to stop a kid or school from abusing the transfer portal then it wasn’t really about the “student athlete” in the first place.

If anything, the opposite would make more sense imo. You have to sit out the first time and can transfer at will there on after.

Thank you for your time.

Regards,
DJ

1. I already thought people were delusional when they thought Drink would start anyone other than Brady next year. Add in he sort of looks like he can throw the ball and now Drink has a decent argument to his critics to send Brady out there. It is laughable how many people can’t figure out that to Drink Bad Experience is better than talent with no experience. He has shown that time and time again. Brady is the QB here next year unless there is an injury. Brady is a warrior. If he can figure out how to work through his progressions you can live with the lack of arm strength.

2. I believe that this stuff with Dom is about the money and feeling like he will never be perceived as the guy here because of Luther. If I am wrong and he says no it about the 25 times I was standing wide open in the endzone this year and the QB didn’t see me, ok I can understand that and I felt his frustration all year. But if ut is about the money/pub he is getting very bad advice. First he shouldn’t care about the pub. People can talk about Luther as if he is the number 1. The stat sheet doesn’t lie. Dom is the number 1 receiver on this team. If it is about the money he should be thinking long term and short term. There is probably a booster for LSU, aTm, Auburn, Arky, or TN or USC wear that will pay him a good chunk of change this next year. He may net an extra $50-$100k. Nothing to sneeze at but it is a drop in the bucket compared to future NFL money. Nothing about Dom’s measurables screams high draft pick. He will make us money by showing what he can do on the field. He 100% for sure has the opportunity to do that here. Will he anywhere else? Maybe maybe not. So he can cash a slightly larger check come Dec 5th but what about the check he is risking in a few years. Hopefully someone can step in and give him better advice than he has been getting.

3. That being said it is not the end of the world to lose Dom. I am probably his biggest fan on this board but we can slide Luther inside and IF we can get a true X receiver actually improve the corp. Every coach including Saban and Kirby are going to lose kids they want to hang on to. The key is being able ti replace them. Losing Wingi seemed absolutely devastating last year and we got significantly better on the Dline. So everyone can take a chill pill until we see which way this is going to break.

4. More importantly that losing guys to the portal are losing guys that could come back to graduation. If you are a top 2 round projected pick I get it go get paid. We need to hang on to the guys that are RD4-7. Doing that is crucial to not having another complete rebuild.

5. Next year is make it break for Drink. I think he has shown signs that he can be a good coach. Hopefully they come through. A lot will be riding on Brady’s ability to improve and keeping the defense together. We shall see. In my mind 8 regular seasons is the minimum to feel really good about football going forward.

6. I really hope we don’t get screwed for a second year in a row for a bowl. In my mind the SEC kind of owe’s us for screwing us multiple times in just a few years Va Kentucky. I just hope we don’t get sent to Birmingham mainly because I can’t make it but also I want a P5 contest. Also to any of the little bitches that are saying you are afraid to play ku grow a pair or go root for ku. Vegas, Liberty, Music City all would be great.

I checked receiving stats for Alabama, Tennessee, Ole Miss, LSU, USC and Texas. Using his stats for this season, Lovett would have been the leading receiver for every one of those teams but Tennessee. Hyatt had 68 catches. The leading receiver at Bama was a running back (Gibbs), with 42. A couple of wideouts caught 37.

Lovett has already put together a highlight reel of catches, on both contested catches and bad throws, that will intrigue NFL scouts. Which is another way of saying: This is all about the money.

Y'all thought Drink starting Cook all year was bad, look at Dabo going down with the ship.

DJ was 8-29 for 99 yards, maybe one of the worst stat lines I've ever seen


DJ is terrible and they have a freshman who was a 5 star QB

Mizzou is one of 21 undefeated basketball teams. Like it or not the path to us being one of the top teams in basketball is probably an easier route. Up next Wichita State!

All those 4 and 5 star kids that are 2nd and 3rd string will leave for NIL opportunities at other schools.

It's going to be straight chaos, if last year proved anything, it's that Mizzou and Drink can find a lot of good players in the portal. They turned around a shit defense in one year.

There's no reason to think that Mizzou can't find a QB and OL replacements in the portal this year, maybe even some from big programs.

Why would you sit the bench at Alabama if you can start at Mizzou and make at least some NIL money?

There will also be kids left out in the cold, this system is going to break itself at some point and the NCAA will either dissolve, or have to implement some controls.

https://www.yardbarker.com/college_...ege_football_head_coaching_hires/s1__31403150

Not a whole lot going on today, in the Mizzou sports world, or personally for work, so stumbled across this, interesting enough, especially the Missouri v Arkansas ranking/analysis/comparison..

Look I am not happy Lovett is contemplating leaving but if you consider that in the Kentucky game he had no receptions and against NMSU he only had 1 catch you could almost see this coming. Earlier in the year he was the leading receiver in the conference. How does someone of his talent get ignored in two games like that? To me this can be viewed as an indictment of how he views the QB situation and maybe he feels for his talents to be utilized better he needs to move on.

Next player up.

Nm

People are saying they are done with CFB or whatever. Not that I care how they spend their time, but the reality is that Mizzou never had a chance to compete for a title prior to the new age of CFB. The two really good cotton bowl teams that they had recently were probably closer to a once in a generation thing, and even those teams were not good enough to win it all. Not that we can ever go back and I know most ppl probably hate that this is even brought up, but I am firmly in the camp that the fan experience is more enjoyable with them in the big 12. In theory, They should be power rated within a TD of every team in in the big 12, and resources all pretty similar. It's fun football to watch. Mizzou decided to take the check and accept the Ls. It is what it is. I will still enjoy CFB

What these two things does is crush average teams. Say your average team has a great year. Awesome. Next year that team will most likely lose their top players to the transfer for a bigger NIL opportunity that the average team can’t offer them. This will be a continuous cycle of beating down average teams when they have a good year and won’t ever let them build something great.

Can’t wait to see how these next couple of years shake out.

We do not have an NIL budget to compete. I know for a fact that Burden gave us a home School discount. For some kids that will be enough.

Fact of the matter is a lot of our best “prospects” will go on to the blue blood programs they didn’t get offers from out of high school.

However we will also be a destination for other “talent” not quite good enough to be blue blood recruits.

Of course there will always be exceptions to the rule but this is the new world we are in.

The is the new reality like it or not.

Portal and NIL are ruining college sports! Sad to see. Coach has zero leverage anymore....chew a kids ass....boom, he's transferring.....groming a bunch of candy asses.

Kid had potential. But I’d still rather have @Raffle back or listen to Bob Douglas hit on Mitchell Forde.

4 great seats row 6 115 deadcenter.
1/7 (2) 1/18 (4) 1/28 (4) 2/18 (4) 2/21 (4) 3/4 (4)

Dude is a flaming pussy. When is the last time he’s been a Mizzou advocate? I was his his fraternity brother. He’s actually a pretty massive pussy.

Gabe was right months back. Mizzou should zig while everyone is zagging in this conference. Mizzou needs to put what they have in NIL towards basketball. It’s way easier to build an instant winner there, you pay a kid one year and he’s gone to the pros instead of going to a blueblood (yes I know Brazile left to go to Arkansas) and it’s easier to compete with the money we have in this conference in basketball than football.