How would Mizzou football respond after a crushing one-possession defeat in Nashville? Tiger fans got their answer in Missouri's 38-17 loss against Texas A&M at Faurot Field on Saturday afternoon. This defeat now pushes Eli Drinkwitz's record to 3-21 against AP top-15 teams.
If there was a small window of Mizzou's chances of a College Football playoff berth before Saturday, those are now closed following this contest.
"Ultimately, poor coaching by me at the end of the day," Mizzou coach Eli Drinkwitz said. "Our players fought and fought and gave us every chance in the world."
Aggies running back Ruben Owens II waved goodbye to Marching Mizzou after his 57-yard TD run. Back in 2013, Henry Josey's 57-yard run won the game for Mizzou in its 20-13 victory.
Owens' was just the final nail in the coffin, putting the Aggies up 31-10 with 7:40 remaining in the fourth. Historical irony? Maybe. The final blow in another A&M victory on the road? Most definitely.
Mizzou struggled offensively, all night
The Aggies' defense kept the Tigers' offense on its back foot for the majority of the evening, not as much in the run game. The pass game? It was the Aggies' defensive unit's world and Mizzou was living in it.
Unlike the first game for the true freshman QB Matt Zollers, which was full of highlights, this contest against a top-ranked Texas A&M defense was quite the opposite. By the 9:06 mark of the third quarter, the stat line read 4-of-13 on completion attempts and 36 total passing yards.
Zollers ended the night with 77 yards passing. The running backs? Jamal Roberts had 17 rushing attempts for 110 yards. Ahmad Hardy, 13 carries and 109 yards on the ground.
The run game for the Tigers took them only so far. Ahmad Hardy began the contest with a 40-yard run, and he followed that up with a 3-yard run on the next play with 10:11 left in the opening quarter. That was the last time he ran the ball in the opening half.
"He finished with 13 carries for 109 yards," Drinkwitz said. "There are other players out there; there are things that Jamal Roberts does really well, he's a really good player."
Mizzou's offense was facing a deficit of 7-0 with eight minutes in the second quarter and had been able to run a total of 13 plays, which should be taken into account. Another explanation, Roberts, who had 10 carries for 59 yards in the first half.
Churning out extra yardage and continuously falling forward on runs gave the Tigers offense extra smoothie juice when oftentimes, the A&M blitzing attack had Missouri in a continuous blender.
That said, a lack of passing game with no easy outlets was too much for Mizzou overall, even with a pair of explosive plays by Hardy's run and, later, a 34-yard catch by Donovan Olugbode occurring on the first three drives of the game.
Momentum shifting plays
The first dagger into the heart of Mizzou's chance at an upset came in the form of a costly turnover. Down 7-0, Mizzou began its last drive of the first half with 1:57 remaining and two timeouts left. On its own 42-yard line, a 14-yard sack on 3rd-and-10 turned into a double negative for Zollers and Co.
Zollers lost the ball on the sack, which was caught mid-air by Tamu Brooks, who returned it 26 yards, eventually brought down at the 2-yard line of the Tigers. Two plays later, a 1-yard rush by EJ Smith had the Aggies up 14-0 with 20 seconds left in the first half and all of the momentum on their side.
To compound the offensive difficulties, the special teams game of Mizzou was once again exposed against a top-ranked team. The one field goal attempt with 5:13 left in the second quarter yards saw Olivier Robbins attempt his first ever collegiate field goal. From 50 yards out.
Robbins replaced Robert Meyer, who'd been kicking ever since the Tigers' No. 1 spot at the position since Blake Craig went down in the opening game of the season with an ACL injury.
An offside penalty on A&M's Will Lee III made the miss null and void. The Tigers didn't re-attempt on 4th-and-5 in a year of uncertainty at the kicking position. Instead, Zollers' pass didn't find the target, which was Olugbode, and a turnover on downs occurred with just less than 5 minutes to go in half one.
The defensive dam breakage in the second half
Ultimately, as deflating as a 14-0 deficit seemed at halftime for a Tigers' group struggling to make offense look easy, the second half brought more adversity and gut punches for Mizzou. A total yardage split of 314-155 between A&M and Mizzou, a successful fake punt by the Aggies, and 50% of the second half drives ending in seven points for the visitors.
The second half started for Texas A&M with a 3rd-and-6 play, where Mizzou effectively threw all of their chips on the table, blitzing seven to Aggies quarterback Marcel Reed.
The Aggies countered with a screen pass to KC Concepcion, who, after breaking one tackle, took a 48-yard house call the rest of the way. The Aggies lead 21-0 with 11:21 left in the third quarter.
The Tigers simply needed a turnover to get a spark that the offense up till that point hadn't provided in the points column. Ultimately, it's hard to point very negatively to a defensive unit that limited a top 10 Vanderbilt offense to a season low of 17 points two weeks ago and held another elite team in Texas A&M to seven at halftime.
Drinkwitz's record against ranked teams is worth topic of discussion
As pointed out before, Drinkwitz's record is 3-21 against AP top-15 teams. He's now 0-6 against ranked teams the past two years. After the game, he had this to say when asked about the second record I just mentioned.
"They're against good teams, and I don't do a good enough job coaching."
Accountability was certainly on the table with Drinkwitz in his post-game presser. He took the blame for Zollers not being put in enough of a position to succeed, offensive stagnation and more.
Its undeniable that Drinkwitz has elevated the program to levels it hasn't been before. He's also currently coaching a team that has a backup kicker and a third-string quarterback playing more than midway into this season.
Not mentioning his resume in matchups like this would be missing a valuable talking point, while also acknowledging the good he has produced in his tenure. The two questions that will now be asked are, will he leave and what schools want him?