1) I've always viewed my role here to be to remind you it's never as good as you think and never as bad as you think. So that means I play the wet blanket today. Saturday was a hell of an effort. It was one of the best, if not the best, game I've seen Mizzou play under Eli Drinkwitz. Had the Tigers pulled off the upset, obviously it's a potential season-changer. But in the end, it was a loss that dropped them under .500 for the season. That doesn't mean you can't take any positives away from it. You absolutely can. But those positives only matter if they translate to future weeks. Do we something similar to the level of play next Saturday in Gainesville? Or do we see a team that comes out knowing it's not playing the No. 1 team in the country and sinks down closer to the level of its competition? Saturday can be a turning point for Missouri. But it's too soon to say it was.
2) What we saw Saturday was something close to Mizzou's ceiling. I'm not sure we saw the absolute ceiling because there were mistakes. That wasn't the best game Missouri is capable of playing, but it's the closest we've seen. The first four weeks, what we saw was a lot closer to Mizzou's floor. Over the course of the season, things tend to even out and teams find the level they should. But what we do is we tend to judge everything on our most recent impression. That's why everyone has spent three weeks burying Missouri and deciding how soon Eli Drinkwitz should be fired. Missouri had played poorly three weeks in a row. Now that Missouri played well, it's back to looking at the bright side of things. Saturday raised the ceiling for me. I am back to being able to listen to this being a team that can make a bowl game out of a season that seemed lost a week ago. But if we're keeping score, we've seen better than average Missouri twice this year and worse than average Missouri three times. If Mizzou plays the way it played Saturday, it can absolutely win any game remaining on its schedule. If it plays the way it played most of the three previous Saturdays, it can absolutely lose every game remaining on its schedule other than New Mexico State. So the best-case scenario for me is now 8-4 (there's going to be a minimum of one week where they just don't play well enough to win) and the worst-case scenario is still 3-9 (which would involve playing really badly against Vandy).
3) One thing that had no downside on Saturday is the atmosphere. We got a taste of what Faurot Field used to be. It wasn't a sellout. They announced 58,165. The upper deck on the east side was mostly empty. But the rest of the stadium--and the hill--was pretty full. And the fans were into it from the start. It had been a long time since we'd seen that atmosphere. The most recent was probably Ole Miss in 2019. Before that, it had been a long time. It shows that a lot of Missouri fans want to buy in. The market is there. And it's up to the team to do its part to keep them coming back. It's one thing to show up for the best team in the country at night. It's another to show up for Vanderbilt at 3 p.m. (kickoff time will be announced today, but I'll be shocked if it isn't the 3:00 SEC Network game) or even Kentucky whenever that game's played or Arkansas the day after Thanksgiving. It's the constant chicken or the egg question. Does the team play well because people show up or do people show up because the team plays well? One thing is unmistakable: The atmosphere mattered for Mizzou on Saturday night. It was fun. It reminded a lot of people--myself included--why we care. There have been too many game days in the last eight years where work felt like work for me. Saturday night was one of those nights that seemed more like, "How ridiculous is it that they pay me to do this?"
4) I said above that we didn't see Missouri's very best on Saturday. It was pretty close, but there were two big issues: Penalties and the red zone offense. Let's deal with the flags first. There weren't more penalties on Saturday than normal. But man did two of them come at the worst possible time. The false start on first and goal at the one probably cost Missouri four points. The hands to the face almost certainly cost it three more. That's seven points in a game Missouri lost by four. You could have survived one of them, but you couldn't survive both. The false start was the biggest one. It was 13-3 at that point late in the second quarter. A touchdown makes it a three-possession game. Obviously we have no idea if the rest of the game would have been the same, but at 16-3, the game is way different than 20-3. Georgia just has to be two scores better. That's not daunting. That doesn't make Georgia panic. But if the Bulldogs come out in the second half trailing by three scores and Missouri gets the ball first, they have to be nearly perfect to make up the deficit. The false start gave Georgia a slight margin for error it wouldn't have otherwise had. At the time it happened, it just felt like something that was going to come back to haunt the Tigers. It did. Plays like that are the difference between beating the No. 1 team in the country and taking solace in how close you were.
5) As far as the red zone offense, this is where Eli Drinkwitz is going to have to earn his four million bucks. Missouri is limited offensively. The offensive line was better on Saturday, but it's not one that gives you the confidence you can just line up and shove your way to the goal line. Missouri is getting below average quarterback play right now. In addition, they only have one or two guys (Dominic Lovett for sure, Barrett Banister pretty often) who are consistently getting open. So what that does is put the onus on the scheme. The best example is the Kansas City Chiefs. They have a video game offense, but they're better in third and seven than they are in third and two feet. So Andy Reid has come up with all these ridiculous plays to compensate for the fact that he doesn't have confidence in his team to just line up and get a yard. On Sunday night, the Chiefs scored a touchdown on a play with one running back handing off to another running back with a tight in the backfield. They scored another on a passing play from the two-yard line on which their quarterback scrambled 39 yards behind the line of scrimmage before throwing it. And they scored a third on a direct snap to the tight end. Would you like to be able to just line up and get those two yards? Of course. But at some point you accept that's not the situation and you have to scheme your way around it. Drinkwitz is going to have to get creative to turn some of those field goals into touchdowns. Missouri is currently 109th in the country in third down percentage. I don't have a breakdown of how many of those have been third and short, but some of them have. Drinkwitz has to think outside the box and do some unconventional things on third down and in the red zone.
2) What we saw Saturday was something close to Mizzou's ceiling. I'm not sure we saw the absolute ceiling because there were mistakes. That wasn't the best game Missouri is capable of playing, but it's the closest we've seen. The first four weeks, what we saw was a lot closer to Mizzou's floor. Over the course of the season, things tend to even out and teams find the level they should. But what we do is we tend to judge everything on our most recent impression. That's why everyone has spent three weeks burying Missouri and deciding how soon Eli Drinkwitz should be fired. Missouri had played poorly three weeks in a row. Now that Missouri played well, it's back to looking at the bright side of things. Saturday raised the ceiling for me. I am back to being able to listen to this being a team that can make a bowl game out of a season that seemed lost a week ago. But if we're keeping score, we've seen better than average Missouri twice this year and worse than average Missouri three times. If Mizzou plays the way it played Saturday, it can absolutely win any game remaining on its schedule. If it plays the way it played most of the three previous Saturdays, it can absolutely lose every game remaining on its schedule other than New Mexico State. So the best-case scenario for me is now 8-4 (there's going to be a minimum of one week where they just don't play well enough to win) and the worst-case scenario is still 3-9 (which would involve playing really badly against Vandy).
3) One thing that had no downside on Saturday is the atmosphere. We got a taste of what Faurot Field used to be. It wasn't a sellout. They announced 58,165. The upper deck on the east side was mostly empty. But the rest of the stadium--and the hill--was pretty full. And the fans were into it from the start. It had been a long time since we'd seen that atmosphere. The most recent was probably Ole Miss in 2019. Before that, it had been a long time. It shows that a lot of Missouri fans want to buy in. The market is there. And it's up to the team to do its part to keep them coming back. It's one thing to show up for the best team in the country at night. It's another to show up for Vanderbilt at 3 p.m. (kickoff time will be announced today, but I'll be shocked if it isn't the 3:00 SEC Network game) or even Kentucky whenever that game's played or Arkansas the day after Thanksgiving. It's the constant chicken or the egg question. Does the team play well because people show up or do people show up because the team plays well? One thing is unmistakable: The atmosphere mattered for Mizzou on Saturday night. It was fun. It reminded a lot of people--myself included--why we care. There have been too many game days in the last eight years where work felt like work for me. Saturday night was one of those nights that seemed more like, "How ridiculous is it that they pay me to do this?"
4) I said above that we didn't see Missouri's very best on Saturday. It was pretty close, but there were two big issues: Penalties and the red zone offense. Let's deal with the flags first. There weren't more penalties on Saturday than normal. But man did two of them come at the worst possible time. The false start on first and goal at the one probably cost Missouri four points. The hands to the face almost certainly cost it three more. That's seven points in a game Missouri lost by four. You could have survived one of them, but you couldn't survive both. The false start was the biggest one. It was 13-3 at that point late in the second quarter. A touchdown makes it a three-possession game. Obviously we have no idea if the rest of the game would have been the same, but at 16-3, the game is way different than 20-3. Georgia just has to be two scores better. That's not daunting. That doesn't make Georgia panic. But if the Bulldogs come out in the second half trailing by three scores and Missouri gets the ball first, they have to be nearly perfect to make up the deficit. The false start gave Georgia a slight margin for error it wouldn't have otherwise had. At the time it happened, it just felt like something that was going to come back to haunt the Tigers. It did. Plays like that are the difference between beating the No. 1 team in the country and taking solace in how close you were.
5) As far as the red zone offense, this is where Eli Drinkwitz is going to have to earn his four million bucks. Missouri is limited offensively. The offensive line was better on Saturday, but it's not one that gives you the confidence you can just line up and shove your way to the goal line. Missouri is getting below average quarterback play right now. In addition, they only have one or two guys (Dominic Lovett for sure, Barrett Banister pretty often) who are consistently getting open. So what that does is put the onus on the scheme. The best example is the Kansas City Chiefs. They have a video game offense, but they're better in third and seven than they are in third and two feet. So Andy Reid has come up with all these ridiculous plays to compensate for the fact that he doesn't have confidence in his team to just line up and get a yard. On Sunday night, the Chiefs scored a touchdown on a play with one running back handing off to another running back with a tight in the backfield. They scored another on a passing play from the two-yard line on which their quarterback scrambled 39 yards behind the line of scrimmage before throwing it. And they scored a third on a direct snap to the tight end. Would you like to be able to just line up and get those two yards? Of course. But at some point you accept that's not the situation and you have to scheme your way around it. Drinkwitz is going to have to get creative to turn some of those field goals into touchdowns. Missouri is currently 109th in the country in third down percentage. I don't have a breakdown of how many of those have been third and short, but some of them have. Drinkwitz has to think outside the box and do some unconventional things on third down and in the red zone.
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