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1) Missouri lost a game it could have won on Saturday. Had Missouri won, LSU would have felt the same way. Overall, I've actually been pretty impressed with the reaction to the game. A few have gone a little overboard, but mostly what I've seen is a lot of Mizzou fans thinking exactly the way I was thinking: It's a missed opportunity, but not a devastating blow. We were talking in the press box before the game and used the phrase "house money." The upside of a win was much greater than the downside of a loss, as long as it wasn't a blowout humiliation of a loss.
What Saturday showed us is this: Every game on the schedule is winnable for Missouri. Now, don't take that to mean I'll pick them to win in Athens, GA. If Georgia plays an A game, Missouri can't win (nor can anyone else in America). But Missouri has six games left and individually, you don't really have to squint that hard to see them winning (again, outside of UGA). The flip side of that is that every game is also losable. Missouri cannot win most of these games with a C effort. I think they'll be favored against Arkansas, South Carolina and probably Florida (though the Gators are quietly playing a fair amount better than they were at the beginning of the year). They'll be underdogs against Tennessee and Georgia. This weekend's game against Kentucky (we'll get to that a bit later) is basically viewed as a pick em game if it were played on a neutral field. Since it isn't, the Tigers are two to three point underdogs. But if you're betting on a team that's an underdog by less than a field goal, you're probably betting on that team to win the game straight up.
What this season ultimately becomes will be determined by the answer to this question: How consistently can Eli Drinkwitz get his team to play at or close to its best? I don't think we've seen Missouri play an A game so far this season. I know from talking to people around the team, they felt like they left a lot out there against Kansas State. Memphis certainly wasn't an A effort. Neither was LSU. So we aren't yet sure what Missouri's ceiling is. It's unrealistic to expect the Tigers (or any college team) to give you six straight maximum potential efforts. It just doesn't happen. But how close can they come? If they can put together six weeks of good to great efforts, I think this team has a 10-2 ceiling (there's a world in which they can beat Georgia, but even if that happens, I think the likelihood is they stumble somewhere else). If they can't fix the penalties and the defensive issues, the floor is probably 6-6 or 7-5 (they'll find a win or two, but the opposition is too good to go out and win with a C effort the rest of the way).
If I had to pick a record right now, I'd go with 8-4. I'd say 9-3 is more likely than 7-5.
2) It's fun when something happens exactly the way everyone expected it to happen. That's what's going on with Luther Burden. Missouri fans often lament the school's track record with five-star talent, and it's fair. The only one who's lived up to that billing is Blaine Gabbert (you can nitpick and say he had a four-star career instead of five, but he played at a very high level for two full seasons). Burden came in as the No. 1 receiver in America and as of today, he's the No. 1 receiver in America. Literally. He leads the country in catches (54), yards (793) and yards per game (132.2).
He is pacing to have one of the two best wide receiver seasons in 134 years of Missouri football. And he's not as far off No. 1 as some may think. The gold standard for Mizzou receivers is two players who were actually in attendance at Saturday's game: Jeremy Maclin and Danario Alexander.
In 2009, Alexander put together what I consider to be the best individual non-quarterback season in Missouri history. He caught 113 balls for 1781 yards and 14 touchdowns in 13 games. He averaged 15.8 per catch and 137 per game. In terms of strictly receiving, it's the best year in Mizzou history and it's not close.
If you want to go all-around weaponry, Maclin is the choice. In 2007 he had 1055 yards receiving, 388 rushing, 1039 on kickoff returns and and 307 on punt returns. It adds up to 2789 all-purpose yards and 16 total touchdowns. He was actually even better in 2008 when he put up 2846 all-purpose yards and 17 total touchdowns (My God, take a minute to think about those numbers).
Burden isn't catching Maclin in the all-around competition because he doesn't return kickoffs and he hasn't yet shown the ability as a rusher or punt returner that J-Mac did. But he's got a chance to chase down Danario for the best individual receiving season in school history.
Through six games, Alexander had 44 catches for 627 yards and five touchdowns. Burden has 54/793/5. But here were Danario's final seven games:
6/74/0
8/123/2
13/214/1
10/200/3
11/173/1
15/233/1
6/137/1
In the last six weeks of the season, Alexander's worst game was six catches for 137 yards and a touchdown (that was almost exactly an average game for him in that year). To catch Danario's season over the final seven weeks (assuming Missouri plays in a bowl game, but not an SEC title game), Burden has to average 8.5 receptions for 141 yards and 1.3 touchdowns. Possible, but incredible. Even if he doesn't get there, Burden is putting himself in the conversation with Maclin and Alexander as the best receiver in school history. And he's only halfway through his career.
Alexander holds the school record with 2778 receiving yards. Justin Gage has the school record for receptions by a wideout at 200 (tight ends Martin Rucker and Chase Coffman both actually had more). In his first 19 games, Burden has 99 for 1168. We're assuming he has 20 games left in his career (seven this year, 13 next). In those 20 games, he would have to catch 102 passes for 1590 yards to break both of the career records. That's absolutely within his reach.
3) So let's talk about the defense. It wasn't very good on Saturday at all. But I'm not going to take too much out of Saturday. LSU has the best offense Missouri will face this season and Jayden Daniels is the best quarterback it will face. LSU is averaging 44.8 points and 548 yards per game this season. It had 49 and 533 on Saturday. So it basically did against Missouri what it's doing against everybody. Saturday alone doesn't have me running to pull the alarm on Missouri's defense.
However, it clearly has taken a step backward from last season. This is what I was warning against during the summer. Everyone simply assumed that because the defense was really good last year it was a given it would be really good, and probably even better, this year. As Drinkwitz always says, progress isn't linear. Every player and every unit doesn't just automatically improve year over year. Here are my defensive concerns:
*The safeties: They're okay. They're not awful. But they're also not great. Honestly, they weren't last year.
*The pass rush: Can Missouri get somewhat consistent pressure without blitzing? I'm not sure. The Tigers lost their top three defensive ends from a year ago. Isaiah McGuire and DJ Coleman combined for 13 sacks and 23.5 tackles for loss. Darius Robinson and Johnny Walker are on pace this year for about 10 sacks and 20.5 TFLs. That dropoff isn't necessarily huge by any means. On the interior, Mizzou's defensive tackles last year had 14.5 sacks and 18.5 TFLs. This season so far they've got 1.5 sacks (all by Realus George) and 5.5 TFLs. We're focusing on the defensive ends, but the difference this year has been that the Tigers aren't getting as much support from the interior guys behind the line of scrimmage as they were last year.
*Linebacker play: Ty'Ron Hopper was a star last year and Chad Bailey had a hell of a season. That duo combined for 135 tackles, 5 sacks and 22.5 TFLs. So far this year, the Mizzou linebackers (adding in Chuck Hicks) have 68 tackles, 2 sacks and 7 TFLs. The biggest difference is missed opportunities. Last year, PFF College had Bailey with a missed tackle percentage of 10.8 and Hopper at 17. This year, Hicks is at 15% and Hopper a whopping 23.5% so far. I don't think Mizzou's linebackers have been terrible, but they were elite last year. They have not been elite so far this year.
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