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1) It felt like Missouri turned a corner on Saturday night in Lexington, Kentucky. We ultimately won’t know that for a while obviously. But we can only judge on the evidence we have right now. And that felt like a game that changes the way you think about a program.
I’d argue it was Eli Drinkwitz’s best win in four years. It came against the program that has been Missouri’s nemesis more than any other in the SEC. I mean, sure, Georgia has beaten Mizzou more often, but that’s to be expected. Kentucky is a team that Mizzou feels like it should at least be on par with and should probably be ahead of more often than not. And the Cats had beaten the Tigers seven of the last eight years.
But it wasn’t just the opponent. Missouri won on the road. At night. In front of a rabid crowd. When it got off to the most horrific start possible. When its best player touched the ball three times and had 21 yards. When its quarterback threw an interception on the game’s second series and came back down to earth a little bit after a month that was as good as just about any we’ve seen this side of Chase Daniel.
In other words, there were a million reasons for Missouri not to win that game. And the Tigers won it anyway. They didn’t just win it. They dominated it. They left no doubt. Nobody watching that game would argue the better team lost. Missouri spotted Kentucky 14 points and then boat-raced the Wildcats anyway.
Historically, the winner of that game has been a top half of the SEC East team. And that’s what Missouri now should be. Of course, we aren’t going to know that for sure for another six weeks. But that’s the direction it’s pointing right now. After the Middle Tennessee State game I told people privately it felt like a night where if it didn’t work out for Eli Drinkwitz, that was the one you’d point to. In other words, not that he was getting fired that night, but if he ended up getting fired you’d kind of look back and say “That was the night it started to seem like we knew.” This is the opposite. If Drinkwitz takes this thing to the heights you all hope, Saturday night in the Bluegrass seems like the night we’re going to point to and say “That’s when it all started.”
2) Typing that last sentence made me think about when that night was for Gary Pinkel. Fittingly, it was a game that celebrated its 20th anniversary last week just three days before the Tigers took on Kentucky.
October 11, 2003: Missouri 41, Nebraska 24
That was the night it all started. There were some signs. Last year I wrote a story calling the 2002 Illinois game “The Day Mizzou Football was Born Again.” And obviously Brad Smith’s debut was the genesis. But on the morning of October 11, 2003, you were still basing your belief that Pinkel would awaken the sleeping giant on blind faith more than anything that had actually happened on the field. To that point, Pinkel was 13-15. The last two weeks had featured an overtime win over Middle Tennessee State by the skin of his teeth and a 35-14 thumping by Kansas. It wasn’t like Pinkel was feeling any heat, but there weren’t a lot of Missouri fans predicting he would become the winningest coach in school history at that point either.
The Huskers came to town riding a 24-year winning streak. Missouri hadn’t won the matchup since James Wilder and Phil Bradley were in the backfield in Lincoln in 1978. Nebraska had gone 7-7 the year before, but was still just 21 months removed from playing for the national championship in the Rose Bowl. It was still the clear bully on the block in the Big 12 North.
Nebraska led that game 24-14 entering the fourth quarter. And then, much like Saturday night, Mizzou left no doubt. Brad Smith scored on a 39-yard run on the first play of the fourth quarter. Missouri recovered a fumble on Nebraska’s next drive, but the offense stalled out inside the 10. And then came one of the most famous plays in the history of Missouri football. If I say “Boom! Boom! Sesay! Sesay!” You know. That’s what John Kadlec said on the radio when backup quarterback Sonny Riccio hit tight end Victor Sesay on a 14-yard pass off a fake field goal to put Mizzou ahead 28-24. The Tigers didn’t look back, scoring 13 more points in the final six minutes to beat the Huskers for the first time in a quarter century. The rain came down in sheets and nobody cared. They stormed the field and they didn’t want to go home and they released 25 years of agony on Faurot Field that night. To steal a line from my friend Sam Mellinger about the 2014 AL wild card game, “Grown men cried that night.”
Pinkel went on to do what he did. He won 117 games and four division titles in two conferences, took Mizzou to No. 1 in the country and the doorstep of a national title shot twice. But it started on an October night in 2003 in the middle of his third season.
3) It’s not lost on me that the two games we’re talking about both turned on a fake kick with someone other than the starting quarterback throwing the football. Like the game itself, we aren’t going to know the true impact of the Luke Bauer to Marquis Johnson fake punt turned 39-yard touchdown pass for a few weeks. There’s no doubt it turned that game around. Missouri had no life at all before that and outscored Kentucky 38-7 from that point on. Whether it supercharged the season remains to be seen. But regardless, it’s a play that Mizzou fans won’t soon forget. It’s a play that will live in Tiger lore for years, if not decades, to come. There have been a few. They might not be the single best plays, they’re just the ones that stand out as singular moments that have stuck with Mizzou fans for years. We’ve already talked about two of them in Saturday’s fake punt and the Riccio to Sesay fake field goal. Here are the rest of my personal top five in my 20+ years here:
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