
A late scoop-and-score by the Tigers and an offensive renaissance helped keep its slim College Football Playoff hopes alive.
Entering Friday, the expectation for Mizzou football’s matchup with Oklahoma was that it’d be a clunker.
That expectation was met for most of the game…until the end zone kept getting stepped on in the final minutes.
The dagger proved to be the most epic 17-yard run of Zion Young’s life. With under 30 seconds remaining in regulation and the game tied at 23, Jackson Arnold was sacked by Triston Newson, and the ball popped free. Young picked up the loose pigskin, and his march to the end zone was flanked by a black-clad Faurot Field crowd that thought it’d witnessed the funeral of Mizzou’s College Football Playoff hopes. Instead, it lost its collective mind as MU emerged victorious 30-23.
There were a multitude of reasons for that feeling outside of the play itself. With the game tied at 16 and the two-minute timeout approaching, Mizzou committed its first major mistake of the night. Jamal Roberts fumbled, and Billy Bowman Jr. took the loose ball down the right sidelines all the way to the end zone for a game-changing scoop-and-score.
But the Tigers almost immediately responded; Pyne marched Mizzou down the field, ultimately hitting Theo Wease Jr. on a fade ball to the right corner of the end zone for a touchdown. Wease barely got a foot in, but it was enough. Then, the defense ultimately clinched the victory.
MU’s defense, which had kept the Tigers competitive in multiple games where their offense was stagnant, kept them afloat once again and came alive late in the game. They forced three of Oklahoma’s four turnovers on the night; one was a fumble recovery by Tre’Vez Johnson on a huge hit by Marvin Burks Jr., and the other a Jackson Arnold fumble that was recovered by Johnny Walker Jr on OU’s second drive of the game. Arnold was held to 69 passing yards, and OU’s biggest offensive play was a jump pass fake punt by punter Luke Elzinga that went for 43 yards in the first quarter.
MU also registered seven tackles for loss, one of which was a fourth down stuff; on the ensuing offensive drive, Pyne hit Theo Wease Jr. on a screen pass, which he took for a touchdown.
However, most of the game saw both teams remain stuck in the mud.
For the first time since Nov. 26, 2021, Brady Cook didn’t start at quarterback for Mizzou, as he wasn’t able to get healthy enough from the injuries he sustained against Auburn and Alabama. In his place was Pyne, who was looking to shake off a disastrous three-interception performance against Alabama.
The bounce-back was a tale of two halves. The rebound in the opening 30 minutes was from beneath the ground to the Earth’s surface. Pyne went 6/11 in the first half for just 23 yards; 19 of them were on one pass to Theo Wease Jr. Was it a good pass? Absolutely. Pyne fired a frozen rope 17 yards in the air to Wease towards the left sideline, putting Mizzou at Oklahoma’s nine-yard line following a muffed punt by Peyton Bowen.
But the other takeaway was that the other five completions went for four yards; several of Pyne’s passes, including a halfback swing to Jamal Roberts on third-and-11 on MU’s first offensive drive of the game, were behind the line of scrimmage, which hamstrung the Black & Gold.
Mizzou’s offensive play calling was more conservative than usual, even as the rushing attack was struggling. The Tigers ran the ball 22 times in the first half for just 65 yards, good for under three yards per carry. MU had the ball on its own 15-yard line with 122 seconds left in the first half; in its nine plays before punting, the Tigers ran the ball six times, much to the chagrin of the Tiger faithful who rained down boos amidst the offense’s lack of explosion. MU’s biggest play of the first half was technically a 38-yard gain on the muffed punt by Bowen that set Mizzou up nicely in OU territory.
But the second half was a rebound from the surface to, well, something a little higher in the air. Pyne was letting it rip a little more often, and the invisible lid on MU’s offense was being removed ever-so-slightly. On Mizzou’s second drive of the third quarter, the Tigers methodically drove the ball down the field with a combination of the run and pass, with Wease eventually taking the aforementioned screen pass for a touchdown. Two drives later came the touchdown to Norfleet, which was soon followed by the Wease touchdown. The cherry on top was Young’s mad dash that sent Columbia into a frenzy.
Pyne finished 14/27 with 143 passing yards and three touchdowns. It wasn’t the prettiest performance, but the Tigers didn’t need pretty; they needed enough, and they got enough.
The Tigers will hit the road next week for a battle with South Carolina, who dominated Vanderbilt 28-7 earlier in the day.
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