Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Some notes, thoughts, and observations from the other side of the country, as Brady Cook breaks the collective hearts of another SEC fanbase.
Part of life as a sports fan is dealing with tough losses. Even the most sucessful teams and franchises have given their partisan faithful moments of anguish and heartbreak. As Missouri fans, we know this pain all too well, and have become so conditioned by it, that perhaps we even come to expect it.
At about two o’clock local time, that’s where we stood. Our collective headspace was not in a healthy or happy spot. We were in the throes of watching Missouri choke away all of the remaining promise of the 2024 season, as Drew Pyne stumbled around in the backfield and Luther Burden gave Auburn a gift-wrapped touchdown.
This game was not a lightning clap of disaster and pain like some Mizzou losses – this was not Tyus Edney, or Matt Davison, or a bizarre roughing the punter against Kentucky. This was a slow burn, a drawn-out feeling of dismay, like the Connor Shaw game, or the Kyle O’Quinn game, or the Sean Chambers game, or the Tre Mason game.
Look at how all of those names etch into our memory and our collective scar tissue. Those names – and plenty of others, like Jayden Daniels, Kirk Hinrich, Lynn Bowden, Tracy Abrams, Michael Dickson, Roy Helu – live on in the annals of Mizzou slayers. These are the legends of our nightmares, the bogeymen that haunt our daydreams in every close game and stoke our eternal fatalism.
But on Saturday, this story had a different ending. Brady Cook returned under the most improbable circumstances, shrugging off a mid-game trip to the hospital, to lead two scoring drives and a season-saving comeback on homecoming. If Disney made this movie, it would be considered too happy of an ending.
For Auburn fans, it was their nightmare. Brady Cook is now a curse to that fanbase, joining their own collection of tormentors and legends. He adds his story to another bookshelf, joining his mythic tales in the stories of K-State, Florida, and Vanderbilt fans.
In the novel “I Am Legend,” which was loosely adapted into a Hollywood blockbuster film starring Will Smith, the original story ends with the last surviving man on earth having an epiphany. After spending so much time killing the zombie/vampire monsters during the daylight hours for his own survival, he realized that in their society, he had become the bedtime story monster of legend.
Mizzou still has a lot of winning to do in order to tip the scales of the pain it has endured. But on Saturday, Brady Cook became a legend – in Mizzou’s stories, and Auburn’s too.
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Some other thoughts from my desk in New York City….
The staff has played footsie with Luther Burden as a punt returner his whole time on campus. Of course, there is the home run potential with him back there, but he has also proven to be bad at the decision making process of the role. In the Cotton Bowl in particular, he surrendered some hidden yards by not making fair catches, but until now, that was the worst of it. In the Vanderbilt game this year, he was a weapon back there, as the Commodores outkicked their coverage multiple times. Disaster struck against Auburn, as his muff surrendered an immediate touchdown. If Cook and the offense had not pulled off the impossible, the punting — both that play and also Auburn’s two pins in the fourth quarter – would have made all the difference.
What a game by Daylan Carnell. He played the best coverage of anyone in the secondary, and also patrolled the middle of the field. He was physical, and heated up Payton Thorne’s pocket twice. Eddie Kelley also stepped up and played a whale of a game. The team overall had their finest defensive effort of the season.
I thought Kirby Moore and Eli Drinkwitz mismanaged a lot of this game. There were multiple times after the offense crossed midfield that the playcalling stalled out, leading to D.O.A. long Blake Craig field goal attempts. When you know your kicker is not Harrison Mevis, use third down to set up manageable fourth down attempts in that part of the field. The staff did not do this. I thought the called rollout plays with Drew Pyne were a disaster, as he clearly does not have the athleticism to execute extended plays against an SEC defensive front. And the less said about the end of the first half situation with the timeouts, the better. But then they bounced back and kept things in check in the second half, and Moore and Cook were masterful on the final drive.
I’m not as frustrated about the lack of Luther first half touches as I was in the moment. Auburn was bracketing him aggressively, and Pyne was struggling to get the ball to everyone, not just him. When plays needed to be made, they found 3.
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