Commentary: The time has come for Mizzou to make its case

Mizzou beat Abilene Christian 34-17 on Saturday. The Wildcats were paid $575,000 to come to Faurot Field and give the family weekend crowd of 53,253 a semi-entertaining few hours of American football before rolling over and losing to Mizzou by multiple touchdowns. They largely played their part.

As for the Tigers? They were…acceptable? Maybe?

“The good news is we got a win,” head coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “That’s the goal every week.”

It’s hard to complain too much about a 17-point win, especially the week after a 28-point loss. And wins are rare enough that you don’t want to spend the hours immediately after one of them pointing out everything that was wrong. But this game was never going to be anything but a win. Missouri has nine games left on the schedule and none of them will be as sure a thing as this one was. Getting a win was the bare minimum expectation.

So whether Missouri was good enough on Saturday is immaterial. They could have played backups all day, or run the ball on every play, or let one of the fans call the plays and the Tigers would have won this one. Things get a little more serious next week.

Next Saturday at 11 a.m., Mizzou makes its first ever trip to Auburn. While those Tigers aren’t one of college football’s perceived powers this season, they’re a representative Power Five team. Missouri has only played one of those this season and it was an implosion.

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The best news for Missouri fans is that last year’s biggest problem seems to be significantly less of one this season. Through three weeks, the Mizzou defense has been good enough to at least give the team a chance all three times out and has looked looked better than a couple of garbage time touchdowns will make it appear. Yes, Kansas State put up 40 on the Mizzou defense, but the Cats started four drives in Missouri territory and their average starting field position was their own 40-yard line. The final numbers for K-State were less an indication of defensive incompetence than a sign that no unit could hold up under the weight being applied by Mizzou’s own listless offense.

“I thought our defense played really well specifically in the third quarter,” Drinkwitz said.

But even with a defense that appears to be able to give Missouri a chance in most games, the real question is if the offense is good enough to hold up its end of the bargain. Despite the way many are probably feeling, here were some good things on Saturday. Brady Cook had a quarterback rating of 184.8. He was efficient throwing the ball, ran when he had to and for the most part did what Missouri asked of him. Dominic Lovett had the first 100-yard game of his career and Luther Burden was once again included in the playbook.

But at the front of the list of question marks about this Missouri team is the, well, the front. The Tigers’ offensive line had five of the team’s six holding penalties. The numbers look okay in the running game (42 carries for 195 yards) but Mizzou had just 40 rushing yards at halftime and averaged less than four yards a carry if you take away Cook’s six for 42 yards. The only Abilene Christian touchdown of consequence came when Cook was nearly broken in half on a blitz and fumbled in his own end zone.

Through three weeks, the line has struggled with each opponent it has played. And that includes two of the three non-Power Five teams on the schedule. It only gets tougher from here.

“We gotta go back and see what the best five guys are, to be honest,” Drinkwitz said. “We gotta go figure that out because penalties and poor execution don’t win in this league.”

The upcoming game has always been the expected pivot point in the season. Louisiana Tech was going to be a win barring disaster. Abilene Christian was going to be a win if it wasn’t a forfeit. The goal and the expectation beyond that were clear: Between Auburn and Kansas State, Missouri needed to find one win. The first chance at that went up in flames in Manhattan last week, which makes this week a virtual must-win.

Where are the Tigers headed into that matchup? Here’s what one player on each side of the ball said to that question.

Ennis Rakestraw: “We’re very raw. We’re finding out what we can do as we’re playing. This week of preparation is gonna be big for us because going to Auburn, that’s a tough environment. SEC play is what we all came to the SEC for, to play versus people who we feel are closest to the next level. We’re just going to keep getting better, take it day by day.”

Brady Cook: “I think we made improvements this week. Still a lot of work to do. I think this is gonna be a big game to improve off of, learn from, watch the tape. But I think we’re getting there. I think we’ve improved so just got to keep that ball rolling.”

My assumption is that those of you still reading this column have said a minimum of three times “What the hell are they talking about? If you can’t beat Abilene Christian by more than 17 points, you sure as hell aren’t winning anything in the dadgum SEC!” And certainly your skepticism is not unwarranted.

But weird things happen in college football and it’s generally a bad idea to write a team’s eulogy just a quarter of the way through its season. So, like it or not, we wait to allow Missouri the time to put all the evidence on the table before we pass ultimate judgment. This Saturday provided almost none of that evidence. Next Saturday, the case will have begun to be built. Eli Drinkwitz and the Missouri Tigers have seven days to put together their argument. It needs to be a convincing one.