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By: Chris Mitchell
Football season’s right around the corner, and we here at KTGR HQ want to get you up to speed with an easy, breezy guide to everything you need to know about Mizzou football heading into the 2021 season. First up is the offense:
The Quarterbacks
Last year Missouri gave TCU transfer Shawn Robinson a spin behind center in the team’s first two games against Alabama and Tennessee. Once he started to struggle, the team turned to redshirt freshman Connor Bazelak to be The Guy. In turn, he ended up completing 67.3% of his passes for 2,366 yards and seven touchdowns. Down the stretch is when he struggled the most, throwing four of his seven season interceptions with just two touchdowns in those last couple of games against Georgia and Mississippi State. Still, though, he played ball well enough to earn some accolades like co-SEC Freshman POY. Compared to the rest of his SEC peers, his stats and splits put him solidly in the middle of the pack. Not too shabby for a redshirt freshman!
Right now, barring some unforeseen circumstances that would thrust true freshmen Brady Cook or Tyler Macon into the mix, Bazelak is gonna be your starter going into Week 1 and probably for the whole season. What needs to come next for him to turn that probably into a definitely, is how willing and able he is to be aggressive with the football and getting it downfield. Three of his six touchdown passes last season came against LSU, and they weren’t the most…challenging throws to make, especially on that 58 yard touchdown pass to Tauskie Dove.
Granted, the flip side of this is you didn’t have to worry about Bazelak being too reckless with the ball in his hands, not to mention you had Larry Rountree to be the workhorse keeping the offense moving last year, but if the offense wants to take the next step without having to start guys like Cook or Macon, he’s gonna have to put up more explosive plays. He’s just one part of this equation, though.
The Wide Receivers
The past couple of years have not been the kindest to the Missouri Wide Receiver room. In 2019, Tyler Badie was the top pass catcher with 32 receptions. In 2020, the lack of real spring prep and the dropped pass bug hit again, but there was a little bit of stability near the end of the season with Keke Chism being the top target for Bazelak. Even though his second best target Damon Hazelton is gone, Chism is still around, plus guys like Tauskie Dove and Barrett Banister who managed to prove themselves as reliable targets last season. With the infusion of some fresh talent in guys like Dominic Lovett, Jay Maclin, and Ohio State transfer/St. Louis native Mookie Cooper, it’s looking like a solid stable of talented, if unproven, pass-catching threats. I wouldn’t be shocked if one of the new kids showed up and established themselves as a top three target for Bazelak this season.
The Running Backs
It’s gonna be tough to replace Larry Rountree this season. Impossible, even. Last year Rountree had 972 net yards on 209 attempts, en route to being Mizzou’s number two all-time leading rusher. Unless Elijah Young wants to take the team and the entire SEC by storm by ripping off a 1,000 yard rushing season, that kind of production probably won’t be replicated anytime soon. Of course, that doesn’t mean this running back room has some potential to be incredibly fun on any given Saturday. If you watched any Tyler Badie tape between 2018 and now, you’ll know he wasn’t Mizzou’s all-purpose yards leader his sophomore year for nothing. He’s not a bruiser, but he’s fast and shifty and he can give your offense a leg up as a pass-catching threat as well. Speaking of Elijah Young, he did have 2,170 yards rushing in his last season at South Doyle High School so it’s not entirely out of the question that he could pull out some big-time yardage right off the bat…but for now Badie leading a very young group including Young and guys like BJ Harris and Taj Butts is going to be the move this season.
The Offensive Line
This is where the sausage gets made on any given play. It can be kinda hard to gauge what’s going on while they’re working since once the ball is snapped the line of scrimmage becomes a tangled mess of beefy dudes, so to dramatically simplify things–if your running back can get through the line relatively untouched, or if your quarterback is having enough time in the pocket to get the pass off, that’s usually indicative of some pretty solid offensive line play. Keep the rest of the offense clean by getting yourself dirty.
Coming into this season, the offensive line was one of the big question marks on the roster. With guys like Yasir Durant, Trystan Colon-Castillo and Larry Borom all playing at the professional level now, Mizzou couldn’t afford too many green players on that line if they wanted to keep Bazelak from running for his life against the notoriously vicious SEC defenses. One way to keep the line stable was bringing back Mike Maietti, one of the standouts on last year’s line who may have some NFL scouts checking out his work this season. Beyond that, the team also courted transfers like Montana State’s Connor Wood and Oklahoma’s EJ Ndoma-Ogar to vye for snaps against guys like Xavier Delgado and Luke Griffin. It also puts some pressure off of Connor Tollison and allows him to take a step back, learn and develop his skills.
Right now I think you can pencil in Maietti and guard Case Cook as shoe-in starts. Outside of that, it could be anyone’s game. This group has a lot of room to grow, and if they can reach their potential they could be a force to be reckoned with in the trenches.
