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1) Saturday was one of Eli Drinkwitz's two biggest wins at Missouri. I'm not sure whether I'd rank it 1 or 2. Kansas State was the highest-ranked team Drinkwitz has beaten. South Carolina was 25 last year and LSU was 17 in 2020. It was just the seventh win over a top 15 team Missouri has had since joining the SEC. Against ranked teams overall since joining the league, Mizzou is now 10-30. The argument for the LSU game is that LSU is a brand name, was defending national champs and gave Drinkwitz instant credibility. If he can do this in his first year with this roster, what can he do down the road? The argument for Saturday is that a lot of the momentum had stalled and a lot of people had started to turn a little sour on everything. The win changed that. Momentum is back with Mizzou and that's a big deal. Plus, like it or not, Kansas State is viewed as a rival far more than LSU is by most of the people who were in that stadium.
2) It's never as bad as we think (last week) or as good as we think (today). I spoke to a source with the team yesterday and we were talking about the SEC and in particular the East. Well, I was. The person I talked to didn't want any of that yet. "It doesn't mean anything if we don't win next week." I said that if they can win the next two (they'll be favored in both), Faurot should be nuts for LSU coming back to town on October 7th. "Forget about 5-0, we need to be 4-0." It's not hard to get a team up for a huge game like Saturday. It's often a lot harder to bring them back down to earth after a win like that and then get them back up for a game they're expected to win. Memphis isn't a pushover, but Missouri is about a touchdown favorite in early lines I've seen. They got this game in their own state. They should win. Sometimes it's tough to convince players that they'll have to play every bit as hard and as well against a team like Memphis as they did against Kansas State.
3) The game wasn't perfect. It could have been a bigger win for Missouri. The first Kansas State touchdown came on a tipped ball that was caught by someone other than the intended target. Missouri missed a field goal. It felt like they left some chances on the field. That's not to downgrade the effort. It's just to say that I don't think most people would characterize that game as an A+ effort. Overall, I'd probably go somewhere around a B+. Missouri played well, but it is capable of playing better. That's encouraging. If you can beat a top 15 team (I'm not sure K-State is quite that, but honestly, looking around the country, I'm not sure it isn't) with something less than your best game, that's encouraging for the rest of the year.
4) What Saturday did is pretty simple: It kept alive hope for a great season, a program-changing type season. I've drawn that line at eight wins all offseason. 7-5 would be progress and a step forward. But it would be a pretty small step. I don't think it would be a step that would convince a whole bunch of people "We're about to take off! I have to get tickets next year." Eight would come a lot closer to that. Without a win on Saturday, I'm not sure eight was possible. It is now. Don't get me wrong, more is possible. But there are obstacles to navigate before you get to that point. Tennessee looks a lot more vulnerable than it did at the start of the season. But Florida showed it is capable of being a lot better than it's been. If you take heart in Georgia's so-so win over South Carolina, you have to give the Gamecocks some credit for it. Let's, for now, keep Georgia and LSU in the loss column. Let's guess Mizzou beats Memphis and Vandy as it should. You then have to win three of five against Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida and South Carolina. Definitely doable but definitely not automatic. Three of those five gets you to eight and clear program movement. More than that and this board is going to be a happy place.
5) Speaking of not being perfect, it is worth acknowledging that Missouri made it way more difficult than it had to be in the final drive. I'm with others that didn't quite understand why the Tigers called a timeout following a first down. The clock still stops after a first down in the final two minutes in college football. A Brady Cook to Mookie Cooper pass put Mizzou at its own 44 with the clock temporarily stopped with 35 seconds to go. This is when Mizzou used the timeout. If it doesn't use it there and instead rushes up, gets over the ball and spikes it, you're looking at second and 10 with say 32 seconds to go. But you still have a timeout. Missouri's next three plays were an incomplete pass, and two completions to Theo Wease for 17 yards moving the Tigers to the K-State 38. Following a spike, there were six seconds left. If you hadn't used the timeout earlier, you might have saved a few seconds there. It might not have mattered. You're still in a situation where you've got about ten seconds left so any pass you complete is going to have to either be for a first down or out of bounds. But you'd have had the chance to make the field goal a little less than the 56 yards it was supposed to be.
Of course, it wasn't 56 yards because of the delay of game. I give Drinkwitz credit here. He immediately said it was completely his fault. He called it "boneheaded" and said "the players bailed me out." He's right. That can't happen in that situation (although it's worth mentioning that it happened to K-State in a similar situation on the previous drive; delay of game is always a terrible penalty, but there were three of the worst ones I've ever seen in that game, two by Mizzou and one by K-State). But I'm not going to kill him for it because his players DID bail him out. It wasn't good football or good coaching. But they won anyway. And that's how it works. If you win, everyone moves past the mistakes more quickly. You can acknowledge them, but you don't have to harp on them for weeks. If it happens again, he'll get hammered for it. My guess is after Saturday it won't happen again.
