Barry Odom wasn’t going to admit it. After a 51-14 season-opening win against Tennessee-Martin that was about as stress-free as a major college football game can be, Odom was asked if he’d sleep better than he did after last year’s opener.
“I don’t know,” Odom said. “I’m glad we’re 1-and-0 and I know that here in a couple hours, we’ll be on to Wyoming. Happy for our kids. It’s on to the next one.”
The real answer would have to be yes. Of course it is. In Mizzou’s first live action in 2017, the Tigers trailed Missouri State after a quarter, gave up 35 points in the first half and surrendered nearly 500 yards to a subpar FCS offense. Though it was a win, nobody came out of it feeling very good, even if the Tiger offense did put up 72 points and render the last quarter-and-a-half free of real drama.
You can bet the players—especially those on the defensive side of the ball—felt better on Saturday than they had 364 days ago.
“That was our main expectation,” senior captain Terez Hall said. “We can’t come out like we was defensively. Can’t do it. We let little plays up here and there, but that’s adversity. We did what we needed to do.”
“It felt real good. We went into it completely different. We had a different mindset,” sophomore cornerback Adam Sparks said. “We respected the game of football more. Last year we went into it as a little game, didn’t really respect our opponent like we were supposed to.”
Missouri did exactly what a team that has hopes of being pretty good should do to a team like Tennessee-Martin. The Tigers dominated from start to finish. Mizzou gained 281 more yards than its overmatched opponent, punted only three times, converted more than half of its 15 third down chances, scored on all six trips to the red zone and had this game well in hand by the start of the second quarter.
But it wasn’t just that the Tigers dominated. It was how they dominated that pleased the coach.
“We’ve got to make sure that the turnover margin goes in our favor, the penalty game, I thought special teams was in our favor today,” Odom said. “That’s got to be us. That’s got to be the Mizzou way of how we win football games.
“I am glad we played as clean as we did, penalties and turnovers.”
A year ago, the Tigers finished 111th in the country in turnover margin and 95th in penalties per game out of 130 teams. On Saturday, Mizzou was flagged just four times, never came close to giving the ball away and finished plus-1 in turnovers.
“We just know we’re maturing,” Hall said. “Guys ain’t the same old people we were last year. We’re not selfish no more. We worry about everybody on the field. I just thank Coach Odom for building that around the team.”
Does it mean anything? Nobody knows. The Skyhawks are by far the least talented team Missouri will face this season. In no other game could Mizzou roll out its "C" game and win with relative ease. But what we know it means is that we won’t spend the next week ripping apart a 29-point win in the season’s opening week because it exposed so many flaws that you almost had to know some of them would prove fatal to the season.
The last two years, Odom’s Tigers have dug themselves holes that could easily be mistaken for graves in the first half of the year. In 2016, Odom shrouded fall camp in secrecy only to lose 26-11 to West Virginia in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as the scoreboard indicated. The Tigers were 2-and-7 out of bowl contention before winning two of their final three to salvage something out of the coach’s first season. Last year, the Missouri State game was followed by five consecutive losses in which we learned, yes, the defense really is that bad, before reeling off six straight wins against a—to be kind—favorable schedule to qualify for a bowl game in which they reverted to first-half form.
Throughout camp, and really dating back to SEC Media Days in mid-July, Odom has appeared much more at ease in year three. Certainly some of that is that his on-the-job training should be complete by now and he’s simply much more comfortable in his job. But part of it, too, is that he likes this team better than he did his first two. The majority of the roster is his. The crazy coaching turnover has settled down and he has a staff with which he is comfortable. He is better in front of cameras and microphones. And he’ll admit to you—at least so much as most coaches do—that he thinks he just might have a good football team on his hands.
“We’ve got miles to go,” Odom said. “If we can stay healthy, if we’ll keep on pushing, we’ve got a chance to be a solid football team.”
"If we can do it now, we should be able to translate it into next week and then the next week and then the next week," quarterback Drew Lock, fresh off 289 yards and four touchdowns, said. "That’s where we’re going to get our confidence. It wasn’t, oh we hit a couple deep balls today or we busted a big run because someone didnt fit right, we were just playing sound football.”
Let’s be clear: Saturday doesn’t prove this. Beating Tennessee-Martin 51-14 will win no awards, will silence no critics. The proof of that would come a little bit more next week against Wyoming and potentially much more on the road at Purdue in two weeks. And then the true tests start flying with a three-game stretch against Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama, potentially three of the top four teams in the Southeastern Conference.
So Mizzou has proven little in its one 60-minute performance this season. But it also has offered hope that this year might be one Missouri fans will enjoy quite a bit. By this point the last two years, it was already evident that wasn’t going to be the case.
