*As I wrote in my column, whatever you want to think, you could find something to reinforce it today. Missouri was better than it was last week. That's a damn low bar. It certainly was better. If you think it was better enough to offer hope for the rest of the season, you probably are one of the more optimistic folks on this board. If you came in believing this was a bad team and a lost season, you could find proof of that too.
*There were good things today. Chad Bailey looks like an upgrade. Trajan Jeffcoat was heard from. Mekhi Wingo is a playmaker and a building block. Kris Abrams-Draine continues to flash. The run defense was better. Those things count. You can't just ignore them. Of course, it seemed like Missouri plugged one leak only to see another one pop up. North Texas is a bad offensive team. They had thrown for less than 100 yards in each of their last two games. They threw for 305 today and had guys running WIDE open. The Mean Green had scored 35 points total against three FBS opponents this year. They scored 35 against Missouri today alone.
*Honestly, I don't have a lot of fire for the defense. I knew it wasn't very good before today and it wasn't very good today and it won't be very good going forward. I'm more worried about the offense. Missouri did do some good things. The vast majority of those things occured when Tyler Badie had the ball. Badie scored three touchdowns and accounted for nearly half of Missouri's total yardage despite touching the ball on just 19 of the 72 plays. North Texas simply didn't have the athletes to contain Badie. But Tennessee did last week. And Boston College kind of did the week before. When Mizzou plays someone that forces it to use anyone other than Badie to beat them, I'm not sure Mizzou can do it.
Badie averaged 11.9 yards per touch today. On plays Badie did not touch the ball, Missouri averaged 4.68 yards per play. That includes a 41 yard touchdown catch by JJ Hester and a 60 yard touchdown run by Dawson Downing. Missouri's other 50 snaps averaged 2.94 yards. Now, that's not fair. You can't just say "Take away the 20 best plays and what did they do?" But all but two of those plays were made by one guy. Hester's 41 yard TD catch accounted for more than a quarter of Missouri's passing yardage. Outside of that completion, Mizzou averaged 3.72 yards per attempt. That's beyond terrible. To be fair, Chance Luper fell down on what should have been a pretty easy 50-yard completion. But still, 3.72 yards per attempt is nearly impossible and even with Hester's catch, it was under 5 per attempt. Outside of Hester, here are the average yards per catch for each receiver:
Keke Chism: 7.75
Tauskie Dove: 6.67
Mookie Cooper: 6.33
Dominic Lovett: 2.67
Daniel Parker: 3
Barrett Banister: 10
Niko Hea: 8
Elijah Young: 8
That's insane. I don't have the PFF information yet, but I'd be willing to bet no more than six passes were thrown more than ten yards downfield. I'd bet more than half of the passes didn't go five yards past the line. The question is why? There are four possible explanations. I don't know which one it is, but here are the four possibilities:
They don't think the quarterback can execute an offense that goes downfield more.
They don't think they have the receivers who can get open to make that offense effective.
They don't think they have an offensive line that can provide the time to run that offense.
This is what Drinkwitz's offense is and it isn't really going to change that much.
I don't know which is true. I think it's probably a little bit of all of them. Today was probably the strongest ammo for the crowd that doesn't think Connor Bazelak can be a highly successful quarterback. He was fine. He didn't make mistakes. He didn't beat Missouri. But he never really made any big throws or plays either (and the one time he kept the ball and ran showed why he probably doesn't keep it more). I think Missouri has some explosive potential at receiver. I think it's all in its first or second year of college football and probably not quite ready. I think Boo Smith is capable, but for some reason he basically never plays. The experienced receivers are possession receivers who should be the No. 3 or 4 receiver on a good team. The line is limited.
But also, I think part of this is Drinkwitz's offense. It's more lateral and side to side. One thing you need to do that is good perimeter blocking. I haven't gone back to watch the game at this point, but I'd be interested to see how many plays Missouri needed a block by a receiver and didn't get one. It's something I'd like to look into this week. I think a lot of these plays are designed to get one block or to have a receiver make one guy miss and those things aren't happening right now. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the offense is always going to be this limited, but I do think it has a lot more side to side stuff than maybe people are willing to admit right now.
*Appears that BJ Harris has become the No. 2 running back and Dawson Downing has become No. 3.
*Today changed nothing about what I think about this team. They'll beat Vandy. They should beat South Carolina, but it's not a sure thing. Probably the worst news for Missouri has nothing to do with its own team. That's happening in College Station right now where it appears maybe Texas A&M is figuring things out a little bit and might be a lot better team than I expected them to be when they come to CoMo next week.
*Mitchell and Joel have stories coming. We'll have grades and snap counts in the morning. We'll try to get in touch with Sam Horn, Mark Mitchell, Luther Burden and Tyrone Webber tomorrow. Enjoy the evening.
*There were good things today. Chad Bailey looks like an upgrade. Trajan Jeffcoat was heard from. Mekhi Wingo is a playmaker and a building block. Kris Abrams-Draine continues to flash. The run defense was better. Those things count. You can't just ignore them. Of course, it seemed like Missouri plugged one leak only to see another one pop up. North Texas is a bad offensive team. They had thrown for less than 100 yards in each of their last two games. They threw for 305 today and had guys running WIDE open. The Mean Green had scored 35 points total against three FBS opponents this year. They scored 35 against Missouri today alone.
*Honestly, I don't have a lot of fire for the defense. I knew it wasn't very good before today and it wasn't very good today and it won't be very good going forward. I'm more worried about the offense. Missouri did do some good things. The vast majority of those things occured when Tyler Badie had the ball. Badie scored three touchdowns and accounted for nearly half of Missouri's total yardage despite touching the ball on just 19 of the 72 plays. North Texas simply didn't have the athletes to contain Badie. But Tennessee did last week. And Boston College kind of did the week before. When Mizzou plays someone that forces it to use anyone other than Badie to beat them, I'm not sure Mizzou can do it.
Badie averaged 11.9 yards per touch today. On plays Badie did not touch the ball, Missouri averaged 4.68 yards per play. That includes a 41 yard touchdown catch by JJ Hester and a 60 yard touchdown run by Dawson Downing. Missouri's other 50 snaps averaged 2.94 yards. Now, that's not fair. You can't just say "Take away the 20 best plays and what did they do?" But all but two of those plays were made by one guy. Hester's 41 yard TD catch accounted for more than a quarter of Missouri's passing yardage. Outside of that completion, Mizzou averaged 3.72 yards per attempt. That's beyond terrible. To be fair, Chance Luper fell down on what should have been a pretty easy 50-yard completion. But still, 3.72 yards per attempt is nearly impossible and even with Hester's catch, it was under 5 per attempt. Outside of Hester, here are the average yards per catch for each receiver:
Keke Chism: 7.75
Tauskie Dove: 6.67
Mookie Cooper: 6.33
Dominic Lovett: 2.67
Daniel Parker: 3
Barrett Banister: 10
Niko Hea: 8
Elijah Young: 8
That's insane. I don't have the PFF information yet, but I'd be willing to bet no more than six passes were thrown more than ten yards downfield. I'd bet more than half of the passes didn't go five yards past the line. The question is why? There are four possible explanations. I don't know which one it is, but here are the four possibilities:
They don't think the quarterback can execute an offense that goes downfield more.
They don't think they have the receivers who can get open to make that offense effective.
They don't think they have an offensive line that can provide the time to run that offense.
This is what Drinkwitz's offense is and it isn't really going to change that much.
I don't know which is true. I think it's probably a little bit of all of them. Today was probably the strongest ammo for the crowd that doesn't think Connor Bazelak can be a highly successful quarterback. He was fine. He didn't make mistakes. He didn't beat Missouri. But he never really made any big throws or plays either (and the one time he kept the ball and ran showed why he probably doesn't keep it more). I think Missouri has some explosive potential at receiver. I think it's all in its first or second year of college football and probably not quite ready. I think Boo Smith is capable, but for some reason he basically never plays. The experienced receivers are possession receivers who should be the No. 3 or 4 receiver on a good team. The line is limited.
But also, I think part of this is Drinkwitz's offense. It's more lateral and side to side. One thing you need to do that is good perimeter blocking. I haven't gone back to watch the game at this point, but I'd be interested to see how many plays Missouri needed a block by a receiver and didn't get one. It's something I'd like to look into this week. I think a lot of these plays are designed to get one block or to have a receiver make one guy miss and those things aren't happening right now. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the offense is always going to be this limited, but I do think it has a lot more side to side stuff than maybe people are willing to admit right now.
*Appears that BJ Harris has become the No. 2 running back and Dawson Downing has become No. 3.
*Today changed nothing about what I think about this team. They'll beat Vandy. They should beat South Carolina, but it's not a sure thing. Probably the worst news for Missouri has nothing to do with its own team. That's happening in College Station right now where it appears maybe Texas A&M is figuring things out a little bit and might be a lot better team than I expected them to be when they come to CoMo next week.
*Mitchell and Joel have stories coming. We'll have grades and snap counts in the morning. We'll try to get in touch with Sam Horn, Mark Mitchell, Luther Burden and Tyrone Webber tomorrow. Enjoy the evening.
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