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GD: Overall, I agree with the statement that if you have two starting quarterbacks, you don't have a starting quarterback. I would imagine throwing for 18 yards in a conference game would likely cause any coach to examine all available options. I haven't seen a lot of Kentucky this year and when I have Terry Wilson has been the quarterback. Backup Gunnar Hoak is 8-14 for 127 yards this season, which doesn't sound great, but the Cats average only 127 yards passing as a team. You can read more about the struggles here. Bottom line is Kentucky's biggest weakness matches up with Mizzou's biggest weakness. If UK wins this game, it's going to be because the run game and the defense win it, not because they suddenly find a great passing attack. At least I think. But I've seen some wild things happen against the Missouri pass defense.

GD: 1) Nobody has ever said specifically. He's got a foot injury of some sort is all we know. My first reaction was that athletes who have anything at all wrong with an ankle or a foot wear that boot around, so it's no big deal. But he's using crutches and it's still a problem and he still isn't practicing so obviously it's at least some what of a big deal. I'm not sure you can count on him at the start of the season at this point.

2) I'll go with either Jalani Williams or Stacy Brown. The Tigers are in pretty good shape with both and we think both could commit at any time.

GD: I'm not sure I'm ready to say better. I actually think this Missouri team is pretty decent. I think they're going to finish 8-4 and one play and/or some terrible weather away from 9-3. I think the South Carolina loss really has tainted the way everyone is looking at this team.

But it is worth noting that the main reason we've all been skeptical about the future is the quarterback position. Two things have happened this year which have made next year's team look like not as big a dropoff. First, Drew Lock played against South Carolina and Alabama (I don't even include UGA where I thought he was decent), it's possible he's not quite as tough to replace as we thought he would be. I'm not saying he isn't a good quarterback. He is. But he's also not won many games where Missouri wasn't pretty clearly the better team. So perhaps the difference between him and whoever the replacement is isn't quite as big as we thought. Second, the Tigers have played the last four weeks without two starting receivers. Jalen Knox has stepped up and there are some guys that have offered hope for the immediate future.

If Missouri can add Kelly Bryant (or a similar grad transfer), there are quite a few pieces on this team. Obviously it will help if Albert O stays in school, which I think he would as of today, but obviously things can change. If that happens, Missouri brings back the vast majority of its offense (583 of 646 yards from scrimmage in the Memphis game). The defense? I mean, it's not been all that good this year, so whatever you lose on that side of the ball doesn't really terrify you.

Your point on the schedule is interesting. West Virginia comes to Columbia in week two and that's a tough one. But you get Ole Miss and South Carolina at home and then Troy, Wyoming and SEMO in your non-conference games. Week seven is at Vandy and I don't think it's hard to see Mizzou being 6-1 at that point in time. The last couple years, the schedule has been front loaded. Next year, it's backloaded. In the last five weeks, Mizzou has road games at Kentucky, Georgia and Arkansas, plus home games against Tennessee and Florida, which you would think would be improved in year two under new head coaches. So next year might be the year where you need to make hay in the first half of the schedule and hang on in the second half. But with the right quarterback, I could see next year shaping up as a seven to nine win season...and that's not something I would have thought six weeks ago. At the start of this season, I was ready to pretty much punt on the idea of a bowl game in 2019. I'm no longer willing to do that.

GD: It absolutely hurt. It was the one thing Pinkel did that I never really understood. The chances of going into Florida and Georgia and getting a lot of guys was always lower than the chances of getting similar guys from Texas. Here are the players Mizzou signed from Texas from 2012-15, Pinkel's four years as an SEC head coach

2012: John Gibson, Russell Hansbrough, Rickey Hatley, Jordan Williams, Chaston Cuffey, Torey Boozer

2013: DeQuinton Osborne, Jason Reese, Marcus Loud, J'Mon Moore

2014: Keyon Dilosa, Roderick Winters

2015: None

The Lone Star haul went down every year. The 2012 class produced three starters, the 2013 class produced two and then 2014 and 2015 (we've talked a lot about how those classes have hamstrung the program) produced not a single starter from the state of Texas. Now here are the "SEC footprint" players in that same time.

2012: Brandon Holifield, Sean Culkin

2013: Nate Crawford, Eddie Printz, Shaun Rupert

2014: Spencer Williams, DeSean Blair, Walter Brady, Ish Witter, Nate Brown, Thomas Wilson, Tavon Ross, Trevon Walters, Marvin Zanders, Lawrence Lee, Paul Adams, Finis Stribling IV, Thomas Richard, Rocel McWilliams

2015: Terez Hall, Tyrell Jacobs, Justin Smith, Franklin Agbasimere, Johnathon Johnson, TJ Warren, Emanuel Hall, Richaud Floyd, Corey Fatony

The "transition classes" in 2012 and 2013 had five guys from these states, one of whom was a starter. The Tigers went all in in 2014 and 2015, signing 23 players from SEC states. Of those 23, seven became starters and two more contributed (Floyd and Wilson) on offense or defense. So that's a 9/23 success rate, which figures out to 39%. That's not great. Of the 28 players here, 13 of them either transferred, were dismissed or didn't finish their eligibility due to injury. That's nearly half your signees that didn't do much of anything for you and didn't even finish their time on campus.

So, the problem was two-fold. First, Missouri went lighter recruiting an area that had produced a lot of players for an area where it was an unknown commodity (and was always going to get third or fourth-tier recruits due to simple geography). Second, the guys they did get were the wrong guys.

From 2016-18, Missouri has signed 17 players from Texas and 17 from traditional SEC states. So they're still recruiting the SEC area, but they've put more emphasis back in Texas. In addition, they've branched out to Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Michigan, New York, Illinois and other place that they haven't really gotten many guys in the past. Simply put, the net is being cast much wider now than it was in the Pinkel years. That includes Texas, but is hardly limited to Texas.

GD: I'm not going to lie and build up an expectation that we're going to start covering softball recruiting, or even women's hoops recruiting, on a regular basis. Aijha Blackwell was kind of a special circumstance because she was local and a top ten national player. But it just doesn't make much sense to devote any resources to doing it full time. We'll cover the teams as we have the past few years, but not really recruiting.

GD: I don't think they're done at all. Kobe Brown was on campus this week. They're kicking the tires on some other guys. I think they'll add one player in the early period and have a spot available in the spring for another addition if they find someone they like.

GD: It doesn't shock me. Aaron Murray threw the ball a lot. I was a little surprised to see Chris Leak on there and surprised that Danny Wuerffel wasn't a little higher. But the SEC has never been a wing the ball all over the field conference until the last few years. Honestly, I can't really think of the guys I'd consider great SEC quarterbacks in the last 20 years. The ones that I can ran as much as they threw (Tim Tebow, Cam Newton). It surprises me that if Lock just averages 200 yards a game he's going to be second on the all-time list...but he also started for three-and-a-half years which most guys don't.

GD: I'm not going to say that. Realistically, I have a hard time seeing this as an NCAA Tournament team, but we don't know the resolution for the waivers with Dru and Mark Smith yet. Guys might be better than we think. I'm not going to say it's not possible they make the tournament. I wouldn't expect it, but I'm not going to say the NIT is the ceiling.

GD: Correct. A player can explore his draft status and come back, but the team has to keep his scholarship open if he chooses to. It will put a few coaches in a tough spot. But they make millions of dollars and push kids to the side all the time, so I don't feel bad for them.

GD: We are projecting them to take four or five offensive linemen. Paul Adams is gone after this year and Yasir Durant after next, so they'll need some tackle depth in the next two classes. Taking three guys who could play there wouldn't be a bad thing. They may not take both, or even have that option, but I don't think it's out of the question.

GD: I say if they can help, get them eligible as soon as you can. Both are going to be on the roster for 2019-20 regardless, so if they can help this year, you want them. You say terrible record, but I don't think Missouri is in danger of falling to 10-24 or anything. I don't think people understand exactly how difficult it is to be a major conference team and have a record that bad. In the last five years, outside of Mizzou (which managed to do it three times), there have been a total of 18 teams in the big five conferences plus the Big East (generally considered the "high major" leagues) to finish with ten wins or fewer. For the record, Boston College, DePaul and Washington State are the others to pull it off more than once in that span. Interestingly, Cal did it last year, going 8-24 with what Cuonzo Martin left behind in Berkley. I'd expect this to be a step back from last year, but I don't think Missouri's in danger of being historically terrible or anything. Certainly not to the point you give up on the season before it starts.

GD: Five Guys is probably the best of those. I'm not an In N Out fan. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's fine, but I'll take Whataburger over that and Culver's. Five Guys is fantastic (in part because they give you a mountain of fries and they are amazing). Honestly, I think part of the reason I love Whataburger so much is that I can't get it. It's like a once every couple of years thing because I have to be in Arkansas, Texas or Oklahoma to get it. So it makes it even better than it already is. And for those who don't Twitter, here was my exchange with Mizzou defensive back and Texas native DeMarkus Acy yesterday.

So score one for Acy. Well done. He did tweet back at me saying he didn't mean to offend me, but I was in no way offended. First, I am old. Second, it is fun when the guys we cover show some personality and aren't robots. This is going off on a tangent, but I've told a lot of people at Mizzou the problem with reduced access over the last few years is that we don't know them and they don't know us. We're just guys in a crowd who stick a tape recorder in their faces twice a week. So we don't know enough about them to ask good questions, they don't trust us to give us good answers and you guys get a watered down product. There are Missouri players who I've covered every game they've ever played who probably couldn't tell you my name. And the issue there is that we don't get to tell the good stories about them. We just write about how they play and that's it. And that's not why we're in this business or why you guys follow. I mean, that's a part of it, but we're interested in telling the stories you can't see on a football field. The more often we get to interact with them and see them as human beings and vice versa, the more you guys get to find out more about them and read good stories about them. And that's the goal and why most of us try to fight for more access.

Tangent over. My two favorite burger places in Missouri that aren't chains are Billiard's in Columbia and the Westport Flea Market in Kansas City. I've never had anything else on the menu at either place. Bailey's Range in St. Louis is very good too, but I've only been there once. St. Louis probably has some really good places to get a burger, I'm just not as familiar with them.

GD: Well, the first thing that has to happen is that the Huskers need to not lose the first six games of the season so they can qualify (easy shot teed up and taken). Beyond that, I think it's probably pretty likely. The Music City Bowl, Outback Bowl, Gator Bowl and Citrus Bowl all have potential Big Ten/SEC pairings every year. So there are plenty of opportunities. Those bowls aren't always Big Ten/SEC as the Music City and Gator Bowls also take Notre Dame or an ACC team twice every four years, but potentially there are four matchups (not including the College Football Playoff and access bowls) between the two leagues every year. And I'm sure a bowl game would love to have a traditional matchup with the Big Red Horde traveling when the Huskers get back to the postseason. I'd be a fan of this game. I'd like to see it in the regular season with a three-game series played in Columbia, Kansas City and Lincoln. But given that Mizzou pretty much has its Power Five non-conference games set through 2030, it doesn't seem very likely any time soon.