(Photo credit: LG Patterson)
By: Andy Humphrey
Welp, that was quite troubling.
A good portion of the Mizzou fanbase pegged this as the Tigers’ most important game of the season. After four straight home games, they were charged with having to go into the belly of Kyle Field off a bye week and earn a signature road win to prove that they were worthy of their preseason ranking.
Instead, they got smacked in the mouth early and often. And it may have brought their playoff chances close to zero.
A few might still blame questionable officiating in the first quarter for helping create this blowout. While they aren’t wrong that A&M should’ve been flagged on a fourth-down pass play during Mizzou’s first drive and a shove of an official by an A&M receiver, let’s not miss what actually happened here. Mizzou wasn’t favored to win this game, but they weren’t expected to be absolutely lifeless during most of the 60 minutes. But that’s what happened. And now they’re left to pick up the pieces.
With that, let’s get to the Knee-Jerk Reactions:
Mizzou got rattled by the 12th Man
The first and foremost goal for the Tigers should’ve been to take the Kyle Field crowd out of the game as early as possible. With Mizzou getting the ball first, they had to make an early statement. But after Luther Burden’s opening reception for a 27-yard gain, things quickly turned for the worst. Yes, it should’ve been pass interference on the 4th down throw from Cook to Wease. But having to rely on a call by the officials typically means you didn’t execute well enough. It wasn’t a great throw by Cook. And then the onslaught came.
Here were the results of Mizzou’s first five drives: Downs, punt, punt, punt, punt.
Here were the results of A&M’s first five drives: TD, FG, TD, TD, punt.
Mizzou had every look of a rattled, shook, unprepared team right from the jump. And that’s squarely on the coaching staff. They had two weeks to fix what needing fixing after the first four games, and then get their team ready for what will be one of their more stressful environments of the season. They clearly did not look ready. You absolutely cannot start the way they did and expect to win. Because once you give the Aggies the slightest edge early, the crowd takes over and you can’t recover. By the time it was 17-0, the lead seemed insurmountable.
Sure, practice noise might’ve been louder. But the Kyle Field crowd was certainly more effective against Mizzou.
Brady Cook played his worst game
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t think Brady Cook has been deserving of all the hate he’s received during his three years as Mizzou’s starting quarterback. But Saturday, he deserved every bit of criticism.
In the A&M-dominated first half, Cook was 4-of-11 for 63 yards and was sacked three times. I’ll get to it in a bit, but I don’t the the offensive line helped him out much. That said, there were at least a couple of sacks that resulted from just bad recognition of the pressure by Cook. Pair that with some more misfires in the passing game and some indecisiveness in the pocket, and you get an awful combination. He ultimately finished 13-of-31 with 186 yards and a touchdown throw.
It’s fair to be worried about him now. This is now two games in a row where he’s clearly looked jittery. Some long-time critics of Cook might be saying “DUH, we knew this all along!!” But he hasn’t looked this bad before. Saturday was only the second time in his career where he had a completion percentage under 50 percent in a game. The only other game he did that was at Georgia last year. In fact, the only times where he was held to under 200 yards passing and under 60 percent on completions was against Kansas State and Auburn in 2022, and he played both of those games with one healthy shoulder.
I’m not saying all that to defend him; I’m just trying to provide the actual context of how bad this has gotten. Because right now, there’s not much on the field you can point to in defense of Cook. He’s got to play better. Period. Drinkwitz probably won’t bench him this year, so if Mizzou is going to find anymore success this year, it’ll be on Cook to figure things out.
The offensive line was overwhelmed
While Cook was playing poorly, his offensive line didn’t do him any favors either. The Aggies have a tough defensive front, for sure. But six sacks allowed is far too many to compete against any SEC opponent. Some costly penalties added to the struggles. Armand Membou’s ineligible man downfield flag negated a touchdown by Burden, one that could’ve switched the tide back to the Tigers in the first quarter. An illegal formation penalty on Marcus Bryant took away a Cook scramble for a first down. And a run game that had carried the offense through the first four games was non-existent in College Station, averaging just 2.3 yards per carry throughout the game.
While the line play left a lot to be desired, I think a different offensive game script could’ve helped them out early. Mizzou only gave the ball to Nate Noel three times on their first four possessions. With what he has meant to Mizzou’s offense so far this year, that carry total should’ve been at least doubled. Even if you’re only averaging three or four yards per carry early on, at least the offensive line is given a chance to do what they do best and settle into the game. However, they tried to lean on the pass game. That clearly didn’t work, and Mizzou had to largely abandon the run for the rest of the game. The offensive line will look back and find several things they need to fix. But I also don’t think they were properly utilized during the first half of this game.
The defense never got its footing
This was probably the most demoralizing thing to watch on Saturday. Mizzou had some leaky moments against Boston College and Vanderbilt in weeks past, but largely held up when they needed to. But against the Aggies, the dam broke early and was never patched up. A&M racked up 512 yards of total offense, with 305 of them coming in the first half. Mizzou’s defense was gashed on the ground allowing 236 team rushing yards, and 6.6 yards per carry. Connor Weigman came back from injury, supposedly to the delight of Mizzou fans. But he ended up carving through the Tiger secondary for 276 yards and just four incompletions.
This game was very clearly a setback for this unit. Collin Klein appeared to be a step ahead calling plays against Corey Batoon. Tackling became an issue. And Mizzou had early trouble getting off the field, giving up 6-of-8 third down conversions in the first half. Yes, you can say that they were on the field a little too long because of the lack of offensive production. But when you give up third down conversions of 8, 6, 13, and 7 yards all in one half, there’s not many places to point the fingers other than at the 11 guys charged with making the stop and the coach in charge of directing them. Back to the drawing board for this unit, too.
If there’s any playoff hope left, it’s hanging by a thread
This wasn’t just a loss. This was a crushing loss. About as bad that a loss can be at this level of football. The entire country just watched Mizzou get hammered by a team 16 spots behind them in the rankings in an ABC game. That’s hard to recover from. Mizzou got the benefit of the doubt with their 10-2 record last year because their two losses were at least competitive against a tough opponent. This one? Yeah, not so much.
At this point, for the record, I think just about the only thing to save Mizzou’s playoff chances would be a win at Alabama. I don’t think just winning the other games on the schedule and finishing 10-2 will be enough to wash off the stink from this loss. You either win out and go 11-1 to solidify your spot, or go 10-2 and hope for all kinds of chaos in November.
But seriously, can we expect any of those scenarios after what we saw Saturday? This is clearly not a playoff-worthy team right now. If they don’t make meaningful changes for the rest of the season, expect nothing more than a consolation bowl game like most years. I’m not saying Mizzou can’t rebound from this; they still get to play the games and will have their shot. But they were exposed to the rest of the country on Saturday. And now, it’s time to prove that they won’t fade away into the distance like everyone now expects.
