Commentary: Honeymoon's over. Is this rock bottom?
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment the honeymoon ended. Was it after Connor Bazelak’s first near interception? Or his second? Or the third, which actually turned into an interception? In the middle of Tiyon Evans’ 92-yard touchdown run? Or after the one-yard plunge—his third touchdown of the day—that gave Tennessee a 28-3 lead with 1:31 left in the first quarter?
It could have been any of those times, really. But make no mistake. The honeymoon ended for Eli Drinkwitz on Saturday in a 62-24 loss to Tennessee.
Obviously, Drinkwitz is gonna be the coach for a while. And he still may end up being a very successful coach. This isn’t a column calling for his firing, or even that of his defensive coordinator Steve Wilks (although if that’s your desire today, I won’t argue with you and I don’t think it’s impossible). But gone are the days of rainbows and unicorns where everyone wanted to offer him a lifetime contract and “back up the Brinks truck” and “give the man whatever he wants.”
Games like Saturday do that.
Missouri went three-and-out on its first offensive possession. Tennessee took 75 seconds to score a touchdown. That’s as close as the game would be all day.
It’s not that Mizzou lost to Tennessee. It’s that the Tigers were blown out. In the first quarter. I object to the word embarrassing in sports, I think it's way overused; but Mizzou was embarrassed on Saturday. This is a Vols team in the first year of a rebuild under a new coach that lost a million players to the transfer portal and came into CoMo 2-2 as a two-and-a-half point underdog. The Tigers made them look like a collection of NFL all-pros.
The numbers don’t do it justice, but are worth mentioning. Tennessee had 217 yards of offense in the first quarter, 161 of those coming on the ground. They were averaging 14 yards per pass, 16 yards per run and 15.5 yards per play. Evans said earlier in the week that the Vols were “going to have some fun” against the Tiger defense and then three of his first four carries went for touchdowns. That’s backing up your words with action.
It didn’t get any better. The Tigers gave up 677 total yards and 452 on the ground. They’re now surrendering more than 300 yards per game rushing and will have college football’s worst run defense tomorrow morning (and quite possibly worst defense overall) unless Akron can run for about 400 on Ohio later today. And to be honest, the numbers were only that low because Josh Heupel took the foot off the gas early in the third quarter. If the Vols had wanted to, 100 points might not have been out of their reach. The only time a Tennessee drive ended without points was when the Vols were “stopped” inside the Missouri one-yard line on fourth down. I use the quotation marks because I thought the replay showed the Vols scored on that play. Maybe the officials followed Heupel’s lead and showed a little mercy to a toothless Tiger defense.
I’ve watched Missouri lose 77-0 to Oklahoma and 73-0 to Texas A&M and 66-0 to Kansas State. If those games were less competitive than this one, the margin wasn’t large. At least those were some of the best teams in the country. This was a Tennessee team that might manage to scrape its way to the Liberty Bowl.
I’ve talked a lot about the onus being on Mizzou fans to back up their words and to support Drinkwitz as he tried to build his program. That onus is back on the coach now. The Tigers are 0-3 in swing games. They’ve gotten progressively worse in each one. A bowl game looks incredibly unlikely right now. It’s not a given right to have the fans show up. The team has to give them a reason. Missouri offered no reasons on Saturday. A defense that had looked awful all year somehow looked worse. An offense that had been pretty good looked pretty bad. Hey, at least Missouri still has good kickers.
There was a second—actually 91 of them—-where it looked like Missouri could make things somewhere in the neighborhood of respectable. The Tigers had gone on a 12-play, 75-yard drive capped by a Tyler Badie (who else because I’m not sure anyone else actually even touched the ball for Mizzou and that’s a whole other issue because if you’re not going to play the backups and the young guys in this game, when are you?) touchdown run and it was 28-10. You weren’t really thinking about a comeback, but you were thinking maybe at least Missouri could fight and claw and find some way to make it interesting. The Vols then went 73 yards in five plays, capped by a 35-yard screen pass on third and 12 on which Jamie Pettway and Akial Byers missed tackles. The drive took 91 seconds. It was Tennessee’s second-slowest scoring drive to that point. The Vols had held the ball for all of four minutes and 55 seconds and had scored 35 points.
These are the days that cost people jobs. These are the days that cause empty seats. I often say recruits don’t make decisions on individual wins or losses, but something like Saturday has to at least make you wonder if there isn’t a cost to be exacted on the recruiting trail. Drinkwitz and his staff saw their jobs get harder on that front today.
We’ve talked all year about the talent deficit at which Missouri is operating. That’s still true. I’ll listen to the argument Tennessee has more talent than Mizzou. The recruiting rankings say it’s true. But not this much. This looked like Vanderbilt against Georgia. I’ve been told a story about Missouri’s 2012 game against Alabama. The Tigers trailed the Tide 7-0 after two plays, 21-0 after a quarter and 28-7 at halftime. According to the story, the coaches had some choice words for the players at half, telling them they were making the Tide look like the greatest team in football history or something along those lines. At least that was Alabama. Nobody’s confusing this Tennessee team with that Alabama team.
So is there a talent deficit? Maybe. But not one that explains what happened on Saturday. Missouri was uncompetitive. The Vols scored touchdowns on their first six drives. They faced only two third downs in that time period. At halftime, they were on pace to score more points and gain more yards than any team ever has against Missouri until they basically just started hoping to get back to Knoxville healthy. (By the way, they held the ball for a grand total of 11 minutes and 45 seconds in the first half so you can take your time of possession stats and throw them in the dumpster fire that is Missouri’s defense any time you want).
This wasn’t just a loss. This was a meltdown. In every phase. Well, that’s not fair. Erik Link probably deserves a raise because Missouri’s special teams were great.
Other than that, Missouri had seven first-half penalties and nine for the game. I’m not gonna use the Q word, but it’s fair to question the effort. Deuce McAllister certainly did on the broadcast. It’s fair to question everything, including whether someone (or someones) is going to pay with his job. Saturday was as bad as it can possibly get. At least you would hope it is.
There’s no more complaining about the attendance (there were 45,655 announced as there and if you were one of the dozens left at the end, you deserve an award and maybe free tickets to the next game). No more insinuating the last guy just left no talent. There have been some unreasonable and unreachable expectations from Missouri fans before Saturday. This wasn’t that. This fell short of even the most basic expectation. When that happens, the equity and the goodwill go away. The next seven weeks will determine how much of it can be reinstated. But make no mistake, all the shots fired today and tomorrow will be fair. Missouri earned every bit of them on Saturday. The honeymoon’s over. Whether this ends up as the day Eli Drinkwitz hit rock bottom and rebounded or the day that showed us it just wasn’t going to work will be determined over the next few weeks and years.
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