Football thoughts
1. First things first, the defense is very, very good.
Good enough that competent quarterback play should be enough to win games going forward.
We all remember the early-season issue with deep passes, but those have disappeared. The Tigers allow just 161.4 passing yards per game, which is good for eighth in the country and second in the SEC behind Texas, which leads the NCAA at 135.3.
The rushing defense isn’t quite as highly ranked, at 133.4 yards per game, the Tigers sit at 51st in the country and 10th in the conference, but at just 18.44 points allowed per game they are tied for 16th in the country and sixth in the SEC.
The lasting complaint I had going into the weekend was a lack of turnovers, which was covered up by the Tigers’ ability to get off the field on third down. Missouri allows teams to convert on third down on just 28.21 percent of attempts.
But while the defense had been suffocating in most games, it wasn’t necessarily exciting the way last year’s was.
Going into Saturday, the Tigers had five interceptions and three fumble recovers. And while one turnover a game isn’t abysmal, and a few had come at key moments, seven of the eight came in non-conference games, meaning Missouri had created just one turnover in four key matchups, a fumble recovery against Auburn. And that became a missed field goal attempt.
The Tigers hadn’t created a single point of a turnover in a conference game.
Until Saturday.
They were gifted a couple by Jackson Arnold just being unable to hold onto the ball. The Sooners put the ball on the ground six times and lost four, with multiple just being Arnold losing control running around.
But Missouri was able to jump on four of them, including the game-winning touchdown, the second defensive touchdown of the season and first since Week 1 when Toriano Pride returned an interception for a touchdown.
Add on that the Tiger offense was able to turn one of the two that had a following drive into a touchdown that extended Missouri’s lead and it was a very productive day.
The defense is a great unit and is what I mostly credit for the wins against Auburn and Oklahoma, allowing the offense to come on late, put it together and look like heroes.
2. Speaking of competent quarterback play.
Drew Pyne played fine. Not incredible, but he got the job done and that’s all you can ask at a certain point.
That was one of the best bounce-back performances I’ve seen almost entirely because of just how bad the performance at Alabama was.
The two weeks of first-team reps clearly got Pyne more confident and he made throw after throw in the second half that made me think, ‘Huh, that’s the best throw I’ve seen him make.’ Ending with the perfectly-placed touchdown to Theo Wease. Which, what an incredible catch.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a great performance. He still completed just over 50 percent of his passes for 143 yards, but that did end up being the best passing performance of the day since Arnold struggled so much, unless you want to count a punter.
Read the rest of this week’s thoughts here.
While Missouri was reviving an old rivalry with a comeback win, the rest of the SEC had a pretty interesting week,
Hear directly from coach Eli Drinkwitz and Drew Pyne, Triston Newson, Zion Young and Theo Wease about the game Saturday.
The game swung on a dime Then it swung again.
Missouri sold out its recruiting section for the Oklahoma game on Saturday.
Here are my post-game initial thoughts after Mizzou beat Oklahoma 30-23.
While Missouri was reviving an old rivalry with a comeback win, the rest of the SEC had a pretty interesting week,
Hear directly from coach Eli Drinkwitz and Drew Pyne, Triston Newson, Zion Young and Theo Wease about the game Saturday.
The game swung on a dime Then it swung again.
