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1) Let me first say that I can't tell you how to feel. I can tell you how I feel. I can tell you how I think it is reasonable to feel. But how you feel about Missouri's 2-2 start is how you feel. The way I feel is that the start is a bit disappointing, but not shocking or disastrous. At the beginning of the year, we divided the schedule into three types of games:
Wins: Central Michigan, SEMO, North Texas, Vanderbilt
Losses: Georgia, Florida, Texas A&M
Swing games: Kentucky, Boston College, Tennessee, South Carolina, Arkansas
Missouri was won the two games it absolutely had to win. It has not yet played any of the games we expected it to lose. It has lost two swing games. A successful season was always based on going 3-2 in the swing games. That is still on the table. I understand why some believe it to be far less likely than they used to, but it has not been eliminated. What has been eliminated is the margin for error.
Before the year, I said seven wins would be deemed as the baseline. Seven might not have you over the moon, but it should not be viewed as disappointing. I said that six wouldn't be a disaster, but it would probably leave most people feeling a little bit disappointed. I thought the most logical path to seven was winning either Kentucky or Boston College because that would provide a little bit of cushion and allow you to have a subpar day which resulted in a loss against Tennessee, South Carolina or Arkansas. That cushion is gone. You now need to win one of the three swing games (and it is fair if people want to switch Arkansas to the likely loss column and move A&M to the swing game category; either way, you've still got three swing games and you pretty much have to win all three).
Here's how I'd handicap it: Four wins is guaranteed (they aren't losing to North Texas or Vandy), five is possible, six is likely, seven is not off the table. Anything more than seven would be relatively miraculous at this point. Again, if six makes you angry or leaves you questioning the direction of the program, I can't tell you not to feel that way. I don't agree with you and I think the issue is more with your expectations than it does with any failure of the program, but I'm not going to be able to talk you out of it.
2) The one thing that shouldn't be up for debate is where the blame lies here. The Solid Verbal, a good college football podcast, has a thing where they talk about good half-teams. Those are teams that are good on one side of the ball, but so bad on the other side of the ball that it doesn't matter. Missouri is approaching quintessential half-team status. Here are Missouri's national rankings in the major statistical categories:
Total offense: 20
Rushing offense: 73
Passing offense: 12
Scoring offense: 20
Total defense: 117
Rushing defense: 129
Passing defense: 33
Scoring defense: 108
So what you have is a top 20 offense and a bottom 20 defense. When we have a situation like this, our blame often times starts to get cast in the wrong direction. Basically, we know the defense is terrible. We expect the defense to be terrible. So we then begin to put unrealistic expectations on the side of the ball that is actually pretty good and we blame them when they aren't perfect. Missouri's offense isn't perfect...but it is good enough to be 4-0 at this point in time. Missouri is better offensively than both the teams it has lost to. The defense would not even have to be good for Missouri to be 4-0. It would just have to be not awful. Unfortunately, it has been awful. But any ire directed to the offense--and, more specifically, to the quarterback--is misguided. Connor Bazelak is 13th in the country in passing yards per game, 10th in the country in touchdown passes and 40th in the country in quarterback rating. This isn't his fault and it isn't the offense's fault.
3) That's not saying Bazelak has been perfect. Because it was the last play, we focus on his overtime interception, a play on which he clearly made a bad decision. He is a good quarterback. I would not put him in the great quarterback category. He has some limitations. I'm not sure he's a good runner. He doesn't throw the deep ball very well at this point. But he takes what is there, he doesn't usually put you in bad situations. He usually isn't going to be the reason you get beat. The question is if he'll often be the reason you win. I'm not sure about that quite yet. I don't think he's an all-conference level quarterback. I'm not sure he's a guy who can elevate your program a level or two above what the surrounding talent says it should be. But on any list of reasons you're putting together on why Missouri isn't 3-1 or 4-0, Bazelak is way, way, way down the list.
4) I touched on this in the snap counts, but Missouri better find a second running back. Tyler Badie was on the field for 62 of the Tigers' 66 offensive snaps on Saturday (oddly, he was a blocker on the 66th and final snap, which I found curious, but that's another story). Overall, he has played 214 of Missouri's 283 offensive snaps this year. Take out the SEMO game, where he took 51 snaps off and he has played 192 of Mizzou's 210 offensive snaps. That is 91.4% of the snaps in the three competitive games. Over the course of an 11-game season (again, we're getting rid of the SEMO game), that would translate to 704 snaps. The only Mizzou skill position players to play that many snaps since PFF started tracking this stuff seven years ago were Jonathan Nance in 2019 when he played 759, J'Mon Moore, who played 813 in 2016 and Jimmie Hunt (717 in 2014). In that time frame, Mizzou has not had a running back on the field for more than 500 snaps. Badie is on pace to pass 500 in week nine or ten. It seems untenable to me.
The issue mainly seems to be that the staff doesn't really believe Elijah Young is ready for meaningful time. He played one snap at Boston College. He played five at Kentucky. I don't care what they said about him all offseason. If they believed he was ready to help, he'd have gotten more than six snaps in Missouri's two most important games. I don't even care if it's Young who takes the snaps. Use Michael Cox or Dawson Downing. But somebody has to give Badie a rest.
This also is a bit of a trend for Eli Drinkwitz. All year last year he said he should use Badie more. But when it came time to do it, he rode Larry Rountree (495 snaps in a ten game season, which, had it been a regular 12-game season, he'd have blown away the highest number of snaps for a Mizzou running back in this era). Going back to 2019 at Appalachian State, Darrynton Evans played 601 snaps. Now, the difference there is App State ran nearly 1,000 plays and the No. 2 back got 237 snaps, so the top guy was still taking less than 65% of the snaps. Rountree got 68.9% of the snaps last season. Badie is at 75.6% of the snaps for the season and over 91% in competitive games. I don't see how Missouri can keep that up. I understand that you're trying to win games and Badie gives you the best chance to do that, but he also has to be available to give you a chance to win in the last month of the season.
