Chants of “Overrated” rained down on the field as entire sections of fans knew it was safe to leave midway through the fourth quarter.

And they were right.

Missouri entered Saturday’s game with Texas A&M as the No. 9 team in the country and played like it should have been unranked. And it might not be come Monday.

That was embarrassing, or at least it should be for coach Eli Drinkwitz and the Tiger players.

They got bullied in the trenches, the defensive backs couldn’t cause any passes to fall and Brady Cook looked closer to the Cook of 2022 playing with a torn labrum than the Cook of 2023 who had fans excited about the prospects of this season.

Drinkwitz said after the game he spent more time during the bye week doing “good-on-good” practice, meaning the starting offense facing the starting defense, than he ever has before in his coaching career, yet the Tigers looked the least ready to play I have seen them in three years covering the team.

If you want a bright side, they at least tried to find the deep passes that had been missing the first four games, and even hit on a couple of them. But it became incredibly clear they were forcing the attempts and refusing to take the plays available underneath early.

Not to say Cook had enough time to let plays develop most of the game.

He didn’t play well, there’s no sugar-coating that. He missed open receivers, looked pretty slow on his scrambles and there were a couple of throws in the third quarter where I started taking the “Is Brady hurt?” question very seriously, underthrowing a wide-open Brett Norfleet on a reverse pass and then immediately doing it again to Theo Wease.

Speaking of Wease, that blanket he found in his hotel room and wore to the game didn’t seem to come off until it didn’t matter anymore. His first catch was the 59-yard touchdown, which was his sixth target of the game, when the Tigers were already down 34-0.

Missouri even kicked a field goal down 41-7 with less than 10 seconds to play because the starting offense failed to score from within the Texas A&M 3-yard line on six consecutive plays.

It was the perfect ending to sum up a terrible performance.

Even in garbage time, even against backups with the starting offense on the field, the Tigers couldn’t get three yards on six tries.

Just an awful game start to finish.

And if you want to blame the refs, sure there were some questionable calls. The no-call pass interference on the opening drive, the offsetting penalties on Texas A&M’s first third down, the ineligible man downfield on the long touchdown to Luther Burden and a holding on a Cook scramble for a first down.

Those all played a role.

But the refs didn’t dominate at the line of scrimmage, Texas A&M’s linemen did.

The refs didn’t get open every time the Tigers played zone coverage, Texas A&M’s receivers did and they were the ones making tough contested catches against man coverage to convert on third downs, too.

And the refs didn’t push Le’Veon Moss and Amari Daniels into the end zone for five rushing touchdowns.

You can use the ref excuse if you want, and they did make it worse, but it’s not their fault the Tigers forgot they were supposed to play in College Station on Saturday.

That’s on Missouri.

Head on over to the Tiger Walk to discuss the game, any thoughts on the story and so much more.