Coming off of an unsettlingly close victory at Faurot over a #24 Boston College team, the Missouri Tiger fan base was, for good reason, concerned about the team being on what some would refer to as “fraud watch.”
After scraping by with a win in double overtime over the Vanderbilt Commodores, 30-27, the concerns only seemed to grow larger this week.
The Mizzou defense, in large part, is the key reason for the team’s high placement in the AP Top 25 poll, but there were a considerable number of miscues that had fans concerned after Boston College.
While the defense had looked promising out of the gate against Vanderbilt, starting off on a three-and-out with a net total of -2 yards allowed, they would end up allowing a 65-yard Diego Pavila touchdown pass to freshman Commodore Joseph McVay.
Missouri’s offense would be fortunate enough to use the Cook-Burden connection for a 20-yard play action touchdown to tie the game early on, but the offense would only continue to struggle from this point on – particularly in the red zone, one of Coach Drinkwitz’s main takeaways in his postgame press conference.
“Not good enough in the red zone for sure,” Drinkwitz noted. “We got to take a really hard look at that and find out what we’re not able to do in the red zone.”
Capping off red zone drives was even more important on a day like Saturday where Tiger kicker Blake Craig was struggling, even on short-range kicks. Craig would finish 3-for-6 on field goals.
Drinkwitz said his message to the redshirt freshman was simply, “Quit showing emotional responses and go out there and execute.”
Drinkwitz would go on to say, “At the end of the day we’re going to trust him, and it’s a learning lesson.”
Missouri would be in a back-and-forth battle all game, primarily trading field goals, but they eventually found ways to move the ball on offense, mainly using Nate Noel, who finished with 199 yards on the ground.
In the third, Noel would set up Marcus Carrol for the Tigers’s second touchdown of the afternoon off of a 64-yard sprint that would land the offense at the Commodores 3-yard line.
At the end of regulation, the Tigers and Commodores were locked at 20 apiece.
Mizzou would elect to start on defense and would give up a touchdown after a 15-yard Diego Pavila rush set up a goal-line touchdown pass for Vanderbilt, but the Tigers would quickly retaliate with another Cook to Burden touchdown pass on the first play of their overtime drive.
In double overtime, the Tigers would rely on the leg of Blake Craig again as they couldn’t find the endzone, and he would sink the kick to put the Tigers up by 3, making it 30-27.
The Commodores would end up making some miscues of their own in their second drive of overtime, including a costly offensive pass interference call, which made the odds of winning the game on a touchdown decrease dramatically.
To conclude the drive, and inevitably the game, Brock Taylor would attempt a 31-yard field goal for the Commodores and miss wide left, leaving the final score at 30-27 Tigers.
The Tigers will have a bye week before taking on Texas A&M in Mizzou’s first road game of the season.