Got to hit the road for St. Louis later this morning, so trying to get everything out there early today:
Last night's Media Day Notes
Mizzou joins chase for top 25 guard
Tuesday's Top Tigers
This week's mailbag
A couple of things we posted last night:
Michael Scherer with some perspective on the defense
Tiger commit Rod Ford with a big week
As we did last week, each Tuesday we're going to take a look at three things to watch when Missouri is on defense and each Wednesday will be three things on offense. Last week, we ran those as standalone stories and focused on individual matchups. For the bigger games (i.e., those against Power Five teams) that's how we'll handle it. I'm not going to break down six individual matchups against Eastern Michigan because this shouldn't be super competitive (and I don't care if they did score more than 60 points last week). So instead, I'm going to include my three things to watch in the DDL. Today, three things to watch on defense:
1. Was the performance up front an aberration or is the DL down this year? Charles Harris was kept quiet by WVU. I said on Saturday that when Harris is that quiet, Missouri can't beat a good team. You'd like to see him come out and be flat out dominant against a team like Eastern Michigan. Terry Beckner has been elevated to co-starter status with Rickey Hatley, so it will be interesting to see how much more run he gets this week. Missouri should dominate up front against the likes of the Eagles. If they don't, it's time to be concerned.
2. Are the Tigers better in the nickel? They should be, simply by playing EMU and not WVU. But Barry Odom said he liked the scheme and likes his linebackers and mostly will stick with the three linebackers when they go nickel. Scherer said yesterday (and I included this in the notebook) that Donavin Newsom was getting a lot of the blame, but it wasn't necessarily his fault. I'm sure sometimes it was, but Scherer intimated that sometimes when Newsom was trying to chase down a receiver, it was because he was covering for someone else who didn't do his job.
3. Is Missouri mixing coverages? Odom said on Monday that they put Aarion Penton on his own in man coverage a lot. If they're doing that against WVU, you've got to assume they're going to do it against most teams. So what are they doing on the other side? Is it man to man for John Gibson (or TJ Warren or Logan Cheadle or whoever is there)? Or do they go man with Penton and have everyone else play zone? It wasn't something I really paid attention to last week, but I'll try to keep an eye on it Saturday.
I'm off to speak at the St. Louis Tiger Club at Llywelyn's Pub in Webster this morning. If you're in the area with nothing better to do, come check it out and say hi. We'll keep this updated throughout the day as needed.
Last night's Media Day Notes
Mizzou joins chase for top 25 guard
Tuesday's Top Tigers
This week's mailbag
A couple of things we posted last night:
Michael Scherer with some perspective on the defense
Tiger commit Rod Ford with a big week
As we did last week, each Tuesday we're going to take a look at three things to watch when Missouri is on defense and each Wednesday will be three things on offense. Last week, we ran those as standalone stories and focused on individual matchups. For the bigger games (i.e., those against Power Five teams) that's how we'll handle it. I'm not going to break down six individual matchups against Eastern Michigan because this shouldn't be super competitive (and I don't care if they did score more than 60 points last week). So instead, I'm going to include my three things to watch in the DDL. Today, three things to watch on defense:
1. Was the performance up front an aberration or is the DL down this year? Charles Harris was kept quiet by WVU. I said on Saturday that when Harris is that quiet, Missouri can't beat a good team. You'd like to see him come out and be flat out dominant against a team like Eastern Michigan. Terry Beckner has been elevated to co-starter status with Rickey Hatley, so it will be interesting to see how much more run he gets this week. Missouri should dominate up front against the likes of the Eagles. If they don't, it's time to be concerned.
2. Are the Tigers better in the nickel? They should be, simply by playing EMU and not WVU. But Barry Odom said he liked the scheme and likes his linebackers and mostly will stick with the three linebackers when they go nickel. Scherer said yesterday (and I included this in the notebook) that Donavin Newsom was getting a lot of the blame, but it wasn't necessarily his fault. I'm sure sometimes it was, but Scherer intimated that sometimes when Newsom was trying to chase down a receiver, it was because he was covering for someone else who didn't do his job.
3. Is Missouri mixing coverages? Odom said on Monday that they put Aarion Penton on his own in man coverage a lot. If they're doing that against WVU, you've got to assume they're going to do it against most teams. So what are they doing on the other side? Is it man to man for John Gibson (or TJ Warren or Logan Cheadle or whoever is there)? Or do they go man with Penton and have everyone else play zone? It wasn't something I really paid attention to last week, but I'll try to keep an eye on it Saturday.
I'm off to speak at the St. Louis Tiger Club at Llywelyn's Pub in Webster this morning. If you're in the area with nothing better to do, come check it out and say hi. We'll keep this updated throughout the day as needed.
