Two years ago, Damarea Crockett ran for 1,062 yards as a true freshman for Missouri. Last season, with Crockett injured, Larry Rountree III went for 703 in his first year as a Tiger while splitting time with Ish Witter. Both of them were coming back—along with all five starting offensive linemen—and Missouri fans had visions of a running game that might actually be even better than a passing attack led by Heisman hopeful Drew Lock.

Through two games, it has yet to materialize.

“We’ve got to get a little bit better in the run game,” offensive coordinator Derek Dooley said. “We’ve got to run the ball better. It’s going to be important.”

“We obviously had some issues the past two weeks running the ball,” right tackle Paul Adams said.

The Tigers haven’t exactly run the ball poorly. They’re averaging 183.5 yards per game on the ground, which ranks them smack in the middle of the national rankings at No. 61. The numbers are fine, but the numbers don’t tell the whole story.

“We’ve just got way more room for improvement,” left tackle Yasir Durant said. “The last two weeks, we haven’t played near as good as we could.”

The run game has been good enough so far with less than stellar competition and with Lock and the passing game playing at an elite level. But as the schedule gets tougher, Missouri is going to have to improve in that area.

The Tigers are playing three tailbacks. Crockett, Rountree and Tyler Badie have 76 carries for 285 yards. That’s an average of 3.75 yards per carry. That figure would have ranked 105th in the country a year ago. And the defenses are only going to get better.

Here is the breakdown of each back’s production so far:

“We’re going to have to be able to control the line of scrimmage,” head coach Barry Odom said. “We’ve got the people in the right places to go do that. We’ve just got to keep working at it. We’ve also got to be creative enough in how we run the ball. I don’t think that we’re a team that can line up and go run the power play 25 times a game. That’s not really who we are either, but we’ve got to have some run game presence.”

So it’s established the Missouri running game needs to improve. The question now is how. There is no shortage of answers.

“We have something to prove. Us five up front are pretty pissed off about it,” Adams said. “We have plays that go for about four or five yards that could go for 30 yards if we all just get to our landmarks and block for as long as you can.”

“Just finishing,” Durant said. “An extra second or two. Not even two seconds. Probably most of our runs, if not all, probably would have been big runs.”

The Tigers have had only ten negative yards total in the ground game so far, but they also have just six runs of ten yards or longer. The longest run by a non-quarterback has been 15 yards.

“The holes are there,” Lock said. “I know I did not an up to my standard job in my run fakes week one. I couldn’t have taken a couple hits off of our backs and busted a big run.”

“It’s more on us just going out there and getting it (even) when there’s nothing to get,” Rountree said.

So each group is taking accountability for the failures. There’s likely some truth to all of it. The lack of production doesn’t fall on one player or one group. There’s room for improvement across the board. But the improvement needs to come in a hurry. Purdue is allowing just 3.22 yards a carry through two games. The Tigers’ next opponent, Georgia, is giving up just 2.96 and that includes a game against South Carolina.

“Our guys on the outside, EMan (Emanuel Hall), Drew, everybody around them, have really bailed us out,” Adams said. “So we’re very thankful for that but hopefully this week we can change it.”