The duality of Mizzou’s elders

Oct 27, 2024 | Uncategorized

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Missouri quarterback Drew Pyne (6) hands the ball off to= running back Marcus Carroll (9) in the third quarter of a game against Alabama on Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024, at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Ala. In the second half, Missouri ran the ball 23 times and only attempted seven passes. (CAL TOBIAS/ROCK M NATION)

The Tiger defense kept Mizzou afloat in the first half, but the offense couldn’t relieve the pressure put on Corey Batoon’s unit. Ultimately, the burden proved too great to handle.

Vanderbilt had the recipe.

When the Commodores conquered Alabama three weeks ago, they showed what it took to take down the Crimson Tide. They moved at a glacial pace, possessing the ball for 70% of the game. They went 12/18 on third down, didn’t turn the ball over, turned Alabama over twice, punted just twice and remained balanced offensively — Diego Pavia threw for 252 yards, and Vanderbilt rushed for 166 yards as a team.

Entering Saturday, it felt like Mizzou’s recipe for success would need to involve similar ingredients. MU’s offensive foundation in 2024 has been based on efficiency; the Tigers also converted 49.1% of their third downs (13th in the country) and had turned the ball over just four times.

Early on, it looked like Mizzou could put on its best Vanderbilt impersonation, as the Tigers put their own twist on the strategy. The Tigers weren’t able to keep the ball out of Jalen Milroe’s hands nearly as much, but their defense held the Tide to 13 points and 167 total yards in the first half.

“(I’m) proud of our defense,” head coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “They gave us an opportunity to stay in the game, especially in the first half.”

That defense is chock-full of veterans; every single defensive starter on Saturday was an upperclassmen except Marvin Burks Jr., who’s a sophomore. In theory, this defense should’ve been able to quell a rowdy atmosphere in Tuscaloosa; in actuality, however, the defense struggled in its only other true road test of the season, a 41-10 beatdown at the hands of Texas A&M. The Aggies racked up over 500 yards of total offense, averaging almost nine yards per play.

For Drinkwitz, the loss emphasized the need to do rather than think.

“We can’t play over-analyzing every situation,” Drinkwitz said on Tuesday. “We gotta go out there and play football.”

Soon after Drinkwitz spoke to the media earlier in the week, Walker took the podium and mentioned the importance of eliminating thinking in the defense’s success against Auburn the week prior. He hoped that the play sheet could get cut down and that the defense could “play free”.

That was certainly the case early on; Walker Jr. had two sacks, both of which were on third down. Mizzou was handling Alabama’s offense that featured plenty of east-west plays — screens and outside runs — extremely well. Outside of a few chunk gains, explosion was sparse from the home team.

“13-0, (58) rushing yards at halftime, pressure on the quarterback,” Walker said after the game. “I feel like the whole defense wasn’t thinking.”

The peril, however, came from the other side of the ball.

Brady Cook, still nursing a high ankle sprain that he suffered against Auburn, couldn’t conjure up the same magic that led Mizzou to victory last week, a win that saw Cook go from hospital to heroine. The Tigers punted on their first five drives, three of them being three-and-outs. Cook escaped the pocket frequently and couldn’t find open receivers anywhere on the field. A pair of screen passes to Luther Burden III were stuffed immediately; there was a metaphorical lid on the Tigers that they couldn’t take off.

Then, the game went from bad to worse for Mizzou. Cook went to the locker room with what the team described as an upper-body injury — he’d hit his hand on a red helmet earlier in the game and emerged from the turf grimacing — and X-rays that weren’t promising meant that Cook’s day was done.

Enter Drew Pyne. He’s a sophomore in eligibility, but he’s been in college since 2020. In theory this offense had the mental fortitude to not let the valor of Alabama football permeate its system — Pyne included. Many who entered the vaunted arena that is Bryant-Denny Stadium were drowned by the Crimson Tide. They’d only lost six home games since 2008, and those six victors were pretty excellent:

2010 Auburn (14-0, national champions, Heisman Trophy winner)
2011 LSU (13-1, national championship appearance)
2012 Texas A&M (11-2, Heisman Trophy winner)
2015 Ole Miss (10-3, Sugar Bowl victory)
2019 LSU (15-0, national champions, Heisman Trophy winner)
2023 Texas (12-2, College Football Playoff semifinalist)

Once in Tuscaloosa, you get hit with a tsunami of crimson-colored, football-crazy excellence. Crimson disguises itself in the bloodstream, percolating throughout all who support the Tide. The stadium feels like a planet of its own, breathing down the neck of Greek Row. Kappa Alpha Theta, for example, resides in its shadow and, like everything at the University of Alabama, is unable to escape the existence of American football.

“What a wonderful morning here at Kappa Alpha Theta, let’s see what Mother Nature has in store for us to-AAH. FOOTBALL.” (Quentin Corpuel, Rock M Nation)

There was a new saying around campus: “New Era, Sam Standard”. House decks, made for Homecoming weekend that was being celebrated at UA on Saturday, featured Kalen DeBoer next to Bear Bryant, Gene Stallings and Nick Saban, each of whom had built Alabama into college football’s version of the Death Star. But with the Tide on the verge of their third loss before October for the first time since 2006, there was a new urgency present, one disappointed in the season’s results and hungry for a return to the top. DeBoer’s place on those decks didn’t look very justified.

End soliloquy. The main question was this: could Pyne and Mizzou’s offense navigate the atmosphere? Pyne had kept Mizzou afloat against Auburn, but now, he was tasked with guiding the ship to victory. Hope could’ve been derived from the fact that Alabama’s young secondary was one of the main culprits for the defenses struggles leading up to Saturday.

The result, however, was another massive wreckage. Pyne’s first pass attempt, a seam route to Burden, was way off-target, and Malachi Moore came away with an easy interception.

“He’s trying to put us in a position to get back into the game,” Drinkwitz said. “But we just can’t put the ball in jeopardy in those situations.”

Pyne would give the ball away twice more. Bray Hubbard flew in from the safety spot to pick off a vertical route down the left side, and Qua Russaw snared an ill-advised throw to a blanketed Brett Norfleet in the flat.

It was a stark change from something Mizzou had become accustomed to since last season: ball security. Cook set an SEC record last season by throwing 366 straight passes without an interception. Even with MU’s aerial attack taking a step back in 2024, Cook was still doing a phenomenal job keeping the ball out of harm’s way.

About that time to post a MASSIVE graph on PFF Big time throw rates and turnover worthy plays for FBS QBs with 80+ dropbacks. Idk where to start. DJ LAGWAY! Doesn’t matter who the QB is for Charlotte, those dropbacks are CHAOTIC #CFB #CollegeFootball pic.twitter.com/McOPyvOVQZ

— CFBNumbers (@CFBNumbers) October 24, 2024

Despite getting most of the first-team reps during practice this week, Pyne looked flustered, and it ultimately led to three giveaways. It was the first time Mizzou threw three interceptions since Cook and Jack Abraham combined for four against Kansas State in 2022.

“The turnovers really put us behind the eight ball,” Drinkwitz said, “and just put the defense in too many bad spots.”

For as well as the defense played in the first half, the pressure put on by the offense’s lack of production proved to be too much. In part due to the giveaways, Alabama got rolling towards the end of the second quarter, and the momentum carried over into the second half. Alabama scored touchdowns on four of its last seven possessions, as Milroe began dicing Mizzou up both on the ground and through the air. The crimson and white pom-poms shook with vigor, and the joyous voices belting “Dixieland Delight” could’ve lit up the night sky if sound could produce sunlight.

Mizzou, on the other hand, seemed relegated to handoffs; although Marcus Carroll and Jamal Roberts combined for 151 rushing yards, the lack of a threat in the passing game made defending the Tigers far easier. Pyne completed just six passes for 42 yards, and it helped lead MU to just its third shutout defeat in the last decade.

Drinkwitz wasn’t happy with the result, but he was proud of the undying effort from his team.

“There’s a lot of pride and a lot of fight in that locker room,” Drinkwitz said. “We’re all disappointed with the result. We all came with a plan to win, and it wasn’t our day today.”

For Pyne, the nightmare afternoon presents a golden opportunity for growth — even if the gold on Mizzou’s jerseys were enveloped by crimson red.

“At this point, I’ve got two options as a man,” Pyne said. “ (I can) curl up in a ball or grind as hard as I can to get better.”

Looking ahead, Mizzou’s prospects of making the College Football Playoff took a massive blow on Saturday. Its four remaining games are against Oklahoma, South Carolina, Mississippi State and Arkansas, each of whom have at least three losses. In its two most difficult games against Texas A&M and Alabama, both of which were in front of a national audience, MU got outscored 75-10.

Making the CFP would require the Tigers to win out, and a 2007-esque wackiness would have to percolate the sport. But even as the hopes of competing for a national title look bleak, Mizzou will likely continue to do what it’s been doing the entire season: focusing on themselves, a message that was echoed from the veteran who endured unprecedented adversity.

“College football is crazy. We have two losses. and we still have a lot ahead of us,” Pyne said. “I guarantee you every single guy in that locker room is going to hold their head high, come to practice next week and give everything they can.”

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