COLUMBIA, Mo. – It was never meant to go this way.
Missouri was never meant to trudge off the field to the tune of a 38-17 handling at the hands of Texas A&M. A Mizzou offensive line once hailed as one of the best in college football was never meant to fall off a cliff and allow more pressure than nearly any other SEC team. True freshman quarterback Matt Zollers was never meant to have to start his first career game against the No. 3 team in the nation with the program’s CFP hopes hanging in the balance.
But that is exactly what happened Saturday afternoon at Faurot Field, an unexpected turn of events from a season that through the first month and a half looked to be one of the most promising in recent memory.
After beginning the season on a torrid 5-0 stretch, with wins over all-time rival Kansas 42-31 and SEC opponent South Carolina 29-20, the Tigers went pound-for-pound with the nation’s No. 8 team in Alabama.
With their undefeated season and a 15-game home winning streak on the line, Missouri fell in a heartbreaker 27-24. The Tigers followed that loss up with a gritty win over unranked Auburn 23-17 in double overtime before falling to No. 10 Vanderbilt in another thriller down in Nashville that saw Missouri drop four spots in the national rankings.
That made Saturday’s game all the more paramount.
With the No. 3-ranked Aggies coming into Columbia for the first time since 2021, it became all the more clear that a loss would throw the team’s already unsightly CFP chances out the window.
Missouri hadn’t beaten A&M since 2014 and hadn’t defeated a top-five opponent since a 2010 victory over, at the time, No. 3 Oklahoma.
It had been nearly as long since the Tigers started a true freshman at quarterback; to find that day, you’d need to go back to 2015 when Drew Lock’s Missouri journey began with a 24-10 victory over South Carolina at Faurot Field.
Though this time around, the young quarterback in question’s fate was not as positive, as Matt Zollers made his first career start for the Tigers, throwing for 77 yards on 7-of-22 passing without a score.
“We didn’t do a good enough job getting him comfortable,” said Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz. “Completions were tough; they were challenging the throw. Ultimately, we have to do a better job of protecting the quarterback.”
The four-star recruit out of Royersford, Pennsylvania, who was prominently hailed as a potential long-term starter for the Tigers down the road, started his first game since Week 1 of his high school senior season after coming in for an injured Beau Pribula in the team’s previous matchup with Vanderbilt.
In that game, Zollers stepped into dire circumstances in a hostile environment and put up impressive numbers, going 14-of-23 passing with a touchdown for 138 yards, leaving many with high hopes for what they could see against the Aggies.
“I’m going to have to watch the tape and see,” said Drinkwitz. “I didn’t think he made bad decisions in the passing game; it’s not like he was throwing the ball up for jeopardy and putting us in terrible spots. We let him down as coaches tonight with the protection plan.”
And while early trends saw both defenses standing tall, with each side forcing two consecutive punts to open the game, A&M moved the ball much better than a stagnant Missouri team, which gained 45 total yards of offense on seven total plays, 40 of which could be attributed to an Ahmad Hardy run that sliced through the A&M defense.
The Aggies, on the other hand, were able to matriculate the ball while the Missouri defense stood tall for a majority of the period, routinely stuffing the line. That was until a nine-play, 59-yard drive from A&M ended with a 4-yard touchdown from Marcel Reed to Ashton Bethel-Roman, giving A&M a 7-0 lead with 5:53 to go in the first quarter.
The two sides continued to go back and forth early in the second quarter as the Missouri defense, which came into the day ranked first in the SEC and fifth in the nation, made it a chore for A&M to go much of anywhere, whether in the air or on the ground.
However, as the Missouri offense continued to struggle with a strong Aggie pass rush led by SEC sack leader Cashius Howell, making life hell for the Tiger offensive line, the Mizzou offense neglected to get anything going as Zollers was seemingly under constant duress, missing targets and consistently overthrowing receivers.
“Yeah, they started to kind of key in on what we were doing at times,” said Mizzou tackle Cayden Green. “I think they started to get reads on what we were doing and read some formations or maybe stances.”
So when Missouri finally got out to a healthy drive moving the ball downfield with some help from Jamal Roberts, who finished his day with 110 yards on 17 carries for a score, things looked promising. However, on a third-and-10 at the Tigers’ own 42-yard line, Zollers saw the pocket close in and attempted to get a pass off before Damiyon Sanford stripped the young QB. Dalton Brooks went on to recover the awkward in-air fumble and return it 26 yards to set up A&M with prime field position as the half wound down.
Not long after, a short run by EJ Smith put the Aggies up 14-0 going into halftime.
The Tiger offense continued to struggle to open the half, going three-and-out once more before A&M took a commanding 21-0 lead on a 48-yard catch-and-run screen from Reed to KC Concepcion on its first drive of the half.
Missouri followed that up with a scoring drive of its own that saw the Tigers use seemingly the only continuously fluid part of their offense to the nth degree — running Roberts and Ahmad Hardy, who was noticeably absent from the second quarter — all the way upfield before Roberts punched it in from seven yards out to make it 21-7.
A&M struck back with another drawn-out drive headlined by a fake punt on a direct snap to Dalton Brooks that ended with a field goal to make the tally 24-7 Aggies.
“Momentum had kind of switched in our favor,” said Drinkwitz. “We had max return call because we thought we were going to be able to generate some space for Kevin, and when you’re in a max return call, you’re not really in a great position to defend the fake. So ultimately that’s on me, I gave the OK.”
On the next drive for A&M, a forced fumble by Mose Phillips III gave an already emptying Faurot Field a little more life before Mizzou was only able to secure a 49-yard Oliver Robbins field goal from it, which inched the Tigers closer at 24-10.
Even as the Tiger offense started to show signs of life, it was clear it was too little, too late, as the defense, which had been forced to go pound-for-pound with the top-ranked Aggie offense all day, had lost a step.
“Yeah, I thought they kept us in it as long as they could,” said Drinkwitz. “You know, ultimately the time of possession kind of put us in a bad spot, and then the fake punt when we had momentum, and that’s really when the wheels kind of fell off for us defensively.”
On the ensuing drive, it was Rueben Owens II who broke off a 57-yard score to give A&M a 31-10 lead with only seven minutes remaining in the game.
And while Hardy followed it up with a 45-yard score of his own on Missouri’s next possession, the Aggies had even more in store with a methodical run downfield that finished with another Owens score, this time from just a yard out.
The score was followed by a muffed kickoff by Roberts; the Aggies recovered and ran the clock out from there. Leaving a mere 29 seconds for Missouri, which ran the ball one time and let the clock run to triple zeros.
“Yeah, that’s one of the toughest locker rooms I’ve been in because we all believed we were going to win,” said Drinkwitz. “They fought like they were going to win, you know, there’s just a couple of really big plays on defense and a big play on offense that changes this. Next week is senior week, you know it’s OK to be devastated, it really is. Like I told you, the only way you’re ever going to achieve your dreams and goals is to put everything you have into it.”
The Tigers’ senior week culminates next Saturday night when they host the Mississippi State Bulldogs at Faurot Field for a 6:45 p.m. kickoff. The Bulldogs fell to No. 5 Georgia on Saturday, 41-21 in Starkville, falling to 5-5 on the season.
The Tigers will then finish off their season on a two-game road split against No. 11 Oklahoma in Norman and Arkansas in Fayetteville.