11/11/2023 football Edit

Cody Schrader's historic day leads Missouri to 36-7 win over Tennessee

Jarod Hamilton • PowerMizzou

Staff Writer

COLUMBIA, Mo. 一 The best moment of Cody Schrader's life didn't occur while he was shredding No. 14 Tennessee's 21st-ranked defense for over 200 yards on the ground and over 100 receiving yards.

It was after Missouri's 36-7 win over the Vols at Faurot Field that Schrader experienced the euphoric moment, as his teammates chanted “Cody! Cody!” as they hoisted him on their collective shoulders and celebrated with some of the fans in front of Don Faurot's name in the ring of honor.

"Yeah, it's an unbelievable feeling. I mean, just looking back you guys know my story by now and you just see where I came from," Schrader happily said in reflection. "And then, having a team and brotherhood that you can feel that real love in the locker room. That's something you always look for and I'm just extremely blessed to be a part of this team and will never forget for the rest of my life.

"That's definitely my number one moment in my entire life."

Safety Jaylon Carlies called Schrader's performance "iconic," while left tackle Javon Foster called it "insane."

Those are good words to use considering the history Schrader made on Saturday.

He did something that no one in the Southeastern Conference had ever done and something that's only been done nine other times in FBS history when he rushed the ball 35 times for 205 yards and a touchdown while also adding five receptions for 116 yards.

It was the first time a Missouri player had recorded a 90-yard rushing and 90-yard receiving game in the same game and Schrader had done that by halftime when he had 18 carries for 105 yards and a touchdown and three receptions for 93 yards.

Therefore, he was also the first Missouri player to have over 100 yards rushing and 100 yards receiving in the same game.

Also, he was the first Mizzou player to record over 300 scrimmage yards in a game since Devin West recorded 333 total yards (319 rushing) versus Kansas in 1998.

Schrader said he didn't do anything different in preparation for this game and that some games are better than others, but it didn't really take long to figure out this game was going to be his game.

In fact, the start of Schrader's historical day began on the first play from scrimmage.

Missouri quarterback Brady Cook lined up in shotgun with Schrader standing slightly behind and to the left of him before motioning in a full sprint to the opposite flat as Cook snapped the ball.

Schrader turned upfield once the ball was snapped turning his motion into a wheel route along the right sideline and ended up hauling in a 38-yard reception.

"I've been messing with Brady, saying 'Give me the ball more. Give me the ball more.' He's like, 'Well, always be prepared in scramble drills to get the ball,' and that's like his way to say you're not getting the ball," Schrader said jokingly. "So, as I was running, I just kind of found myself 一 I think they were playing cloud. I was able to just kind of keep up the divide on my landmark and as I turned, I saw Brady running and then I just kind of stood there and Brady threw me the ball."

It was just one of many big plays he made, literally.

The Tigers had 15 big plays which are considered plays that are 15 yards or more on passing plays and 10 or more yards on run plays.

Schrader had eight of those by himself.

Three of them were receptions that went for 23, 38 and 43 yards. The other five were runs of 11, 14, 18, 31 and 35 yards.

"What an incredible day that little Superman had for us. I can't call him the Smurf anymore he's risen to a new level. He's Superman now and (I'm) really proud of him," Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz said with a grin. "Absolutely (Schrader should be considered for the Heisman). If we're talking about the best player in college football, who's done more for his football team than anybody else.

"He's the leading rusher in the SEC. When was the last time the leading rusher in the SEC on a top 10 thing wasn't considered for the Heisman?"

After hearing of Drinkwitz's remarks, it wasn't lost on Schrader about where he began, as he said earlier.

He and former Missouri S&T linebacker Ben Straatmann, who started the year as a walk-on and has since earned a scholarship, talked about their humble beginnings and making it in the SEC before Schrader's press conference.

"We were just kind of talking about hopefully, we are inspiring kids to take chances on themselves," Schrader said. "Don't look at D-II schools or lower level schools as not good enough or this is all I got. ... The whole recipe of this whole thing is work. And I think everybody thinks you got to be the fastest you got to be this now. Especially in my position, when I bought in, is that you got to be able to hit a person in the mouth for four quarters and either they're gonna fold or I'm going to fold, and I'm determined to never fold."

Schrader's story of going from a Division II player to a walk-on Tiger to the starting running back to a scholarship player to the team's leading rusher to a team captain to one of the best running backs in the SEC has been told time and time again and the story never really gets old because he keeps adding to new pages to it.

After Saturday's performance, he can not only lay claim to something that has never been done before in the SEC, but he can also claim something he's been chasing since spring ball, which is being a 1,000-yard rusher.

He's at 1,124 yards for the season, and that's usually the pinnacle of a lot of running back's seasons. Not for Schrader, though. In fact, eclipsing the milestone was the least impressive milestone he accomplished on Saturday and how many people can say that?

It was another heroic feat by one of Missouri's truest of sons.

"Four quarters of Hell"

Three hundred and sixty-five days ago, the Tigers had allowed Tennessee to put up historical offensive numbers in a 66-24 win for the Vols. The Tigers were struggling to qualify for a bowl game and the loss had put them at 4-6 with two games remaining.

The Tigers were trying to scrape and claw to a third straight .500 season and it took everything they had just to get that, but on Nov. 11, 2022, the team was at their lowest. Or as Drinkwitz's said, they were in Hell.

"Can't kill us, we've already been killed," Drinkwitz said. "I mean, we've been at the bottom. We were in Hell last year. You lose some of those games the way we did. They don't get much worse than that. So, this team just said, 'Hey, you can't kill us. We're going to fight our way out and fight for each other. I think that's really it.

"We're willing to go down to the depths and fight our way out, and we got to see if anybody else would go down there with us."

Mizzou infamously went 2-4 last season in one-score games and the 66 points and 724 total yards allowed to Tennessee were season-highs for the Vols.

On Saturday, the defense held the Vols to their second-fewest amount of total yards (350) this season and a season-low seven points, which marked the lowest-scoring game of the Josh Heupel era with the previous mark being 14 points in a 38-point loss to Florida in Week 4 of 2021.

This was the first game Tennessee didn't score in double figures, since Week 4 of the 2020 season when it had seven points in a 27-point loss to Kentucky.

Tennessee was 5-of-13 on third down, 0-of-1 in the red zone and had three giveaways including an interception returned for a touchdown.

Defensive end Darius Robinson, who had two tackles, a sack and a tackle for loss, entered his press conference grinning ear to ear after the team's performance and was one of three people (Drinkwitz and Carlies) to mention how great defensive coordinator Blake Baker's gameplan was.

"The past two years were bad, but now finally, we don't ever got to talk about that again," Robinson said playfully. "This is a new year, a new day. Our defensive coordinator Coach Baker did a tremendous job this week getting us prepared. All of our coaches (did tremendous) with our different schemes, like we showed a three-down look and a four-down look. And that's all Coach Baker. He's working extremely hard for us."

Tennessee entered the game with the nation's third-best rushing attack at 227 yards per game and the three-headed monster of running backs Jaylen Wright, Dylan Sampson and Jabari Small. Missouri heard a lot about them and it served as fuel for the Tigers' defense to limit them to 13 carries for 47 yards, and the Vols to 23 carries for 83 yards (3.6 yards per carry).

"So, coming into this game, they put the stuff up, showing us that three-headed monster back there at running back," Carlies said. "We don't really look at that stuff and get nervous. We take that as motivation. You know, you're not going to come in here and do what you want to do."

Carlies finished the game with three tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss and a fumble recovery on one of college football's most bizarre plays.

Quarterback Joe Milton took a snap from the shotgun with Sampson flanked to his right. When Milton received the snap, Sampson raised his arm as if he was going to receive the handoff, but his arm hit Milton's throwing arm and the ball went several yards forward toward Carlies. It was originally ruled an incomplete pass and then overturned to a fumble.

Carlies credits his practice habits for the heads-up play.

"In practice, with any loose balls that hit the ground, it doesn't matter if it's incomplete or not it's always emphasized to hit the ground," Carlies said. "Then, when I saw it hit the ground, I heard my teammates saying to get on it and my instincts just kicked in to get on the ball."

Carlies did have the fumble but he didn't have the best defensive play of the night. That belongs to fellow safety Daylan Carnell, who had a 38-yard interception returned for a touchdown in the fourth quarter to extend the team's lead to 28.

Carlies said him and Carnell had talked about one of them coming down with one and it was the latter who did.

"Watching film and stuff, we see the tendencies that they tend to have, and it's funny, throughout the game DC and I were talking and we said one of us was going to get one because we were both so close during the game," Carlies said. "We just knew one of us was going to get one, but when he got it, it was just an exciting moment because we called it."

It was four-quarters of Hell for the Tigers last season, but on Saturday night Tennessee got a taste of the medicine it had been dishing out to the Tigers for four straight seasons.

It's safe to say revenge was on the mind of Drinkwitz and the Tigers this go around.

"Our team came out and we wanted to stand on business tonight and we had some unfinished business from last year and we came out and took care of business," a passionate Drinkwitz said during his postgame interview with CBS. "Great win. Our defense kicked their ass."

Missouri dominates both sides of the trenches

Schrader doesn't have the day he witdidhout the offensive line's physical play up front.

The offensive line has had good days, bad days and everything in between at times this season, but on Saturday it was a great day.

The Vols had allowed just one game this season in which their opponents had over 355 total yards (Kentucky had 444 in Week 9), but on Saturday the Tigers put up 530 with an almost even balance of passing (275) and rushing yards (255), and a lot of that is due to the men up front.

"I think the biggest thing for us is we're okay with getting the two-yard or one-yard runs because we know we're going to keep coming back and smacking people in the mouth," Schrader said. "And that is what I keep saying about this offensive line and I think that is the biggest change from last year to this year, is that these guys want to dominate teams."

Mizzou had the ball for 39 minutes and 56 seconds and ran 75 plays for 7.1 yards per play compared to just 57 plays for the Vols.

"We came in with that mentality because we knew last year we didn't play as good as we knew we could," Foster said. "Pretty much last offseason we were just like we're going to grind, grind, grind, and get better because the team is going to go as far as the offensive line goes. So, we just make sure we put it on our backs."

Foster said it's helpful to the offensive line's confidence when playmakers like Schrader make plays and once he got rolling, Foster said he could see it in the Volunteers' body language they were defeated way before the clock hit triple zeroes at the end of regulation.

"We were just trying to lean on them and make them tap out," Foster said. "I think we've done our jobs. Yeah, they were just head down, but they gave us a great look. Cody is just a great player, man. You just can't take that away from him."

It wasn't just Mizzou's offensive line winning the battle of the trenches but the defense, too.

The box score says the Tigers only recorded one sack and four tackles for loss, but what they did in the run game to limit the Vols and help force turnovers was a big part of this game, and it wasn't too long before Robinson started seeing the same poor body language from the Vols' offense that Foster saw from their defense.

"That's what you've got to do. The No. 1 goal each week is to stop the run," Robinson said. "And I could tell in the second or third quarter they don't want to be out there anymore with us and it was just because we were being so physical, just being on it and being gap sound.

"Our DBs played fantastic. Like, I love our DBs, like they're the best because they make me able to pass up so much better because the quarterback has got to hold (on to the ball) because there was so much great coverage. You know, it's awesome just to dominate."

Drinkwitz has been demanding complementary football for weeks, and in Week 11, with a lot to play for and a lot to lose, his team played their best ball of the season.

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