I've spent a good portion of this offseason (when I'm not coaching) drafting our lineup and seeing how we stack up to other SEC squads. I've heard it a lot, I've even said it a lot - "we're just not as talented as (XYZ), we need to keep recruiting to get to their level." This little offseason project was built for the purpose of seeing just how out-talented we are on a week-by-week basis. I eventually evolved it into a full-on season projection using basic metrics such as home-field advantage, offensive and defensive talent differential, and roster talent differential. I can explain how I went about these predictions, but for the sake of not making a long post into a novel, I'll leave it at that. While this will be a long post, I encourage you as the reader to read it through and not just skim through to see the results. I put a lot of thought into this! In doing this research project, I used PFF's grading system as the base metric. While PFF is flawed, keep in mind it has a tremendous influence on the Madden rating system. I'm sure most of us under 45 have played either Madden or NCAA football in the past, so I use "overall rating" as a metric since it's familiar to some of us. If you don't know what any of this means, imagine an academic grading scale (C = 70's, B = 80's, etc.) For the incoming freshmen or redshirt freshmen that haven't played yet, I took their (numbers site) rating and subtracted 25. Early enrollees got +3 points.
With that out of the way, I should address this - in 2021, Mizzou had a bad football team. I mean BAD, bad. It's not exactly the fault of Eli Drinkwitz' playcalling, though I will never not-question his personnel decisions regarding QB/RB rotation. It's more of just a holistic, roster-wide talent deficit we had to wrestle with week in and week out. The only Power-5 team we were absolutely more talented than was Vanderbilt, and not by much. To show you just how talentless we were, the offensive line averaged around a 60 overall rating. Even teams perceived as being the "lower end" of P5 in 2021 - Boston College, South Carolina, etc. were working with at least slightly better players than what we had last fall. So us losing to BC and playing a fourth-quarter game against NT/CMU is not exactly a Drinkwitz problem. The fact that we pulled wins out against South Carolina and Florida and made Kentucky sweat until the final second is something worth celebrating. We have to take all the moral victories we can get given the roster.
The good news? A lot of our talent-deficit roster was quite young and returns with more experience. Our youngin's are only going to continue to get better. The small amount of (highly productive) talent we were working with will be third/fourth/fifth year guys. Marcus Johnson was singing Javon Foster's praises at the KC Glazier Clinic this February, saying he's gotten bigger, faster, and stronger than he was in '21. KAD, Isaiah McGuire, Ennis Rakestraw, and Jaylon Carlies will be forces to reckon with defensively. Dominic Lovett will only get better and faster. Contrary to the popular message board consensus, we've actually done a decent job in the transfer portal. Jayden Jernigan might end up being looked at as arguably the best player on the team by December. Ty'Ron Hopper saved our defense from having another year of Devin Nicholson. Jack Abraham will be at least an average starting Quarterback in the SEC - imagine what last year could have been like if Baze was at least "average" and not "terrible." Joseph Charleston is also slept on in the back end. I think he's going to be the starting safety opposite of Carlies and will be one of our better defenders. All is not bleak!
