No. 23 Missouri (4-0) has managed to get to Southeastern Conference play unscathed with an undefeated record heading into its Week 5 matchup with Vanderbilt (2-3).
A lot of the Tigers’ success can go to their offense. Something that wasn’t really the case too often last year.
That side of the ball is humming at a good rate to start the season but it's not all peaches and cream.
There are still many things that the Tigers have to clean up on offense if they wants to accomplish the goals they have set out for themselves.
Let's start with the positives about the offense.
In three of the first four games, it scored 30 or more points and currently averages 30.5 points per game, good for 55th in the FBS.
It averages 433.2 total yards per game which ranks as the 42nd offense, it's 15th in passing yards per attempt at 15.03 and is tied for third in giveaways with only two on the season.
Its quarterback, Brady Cook, is playing the best ball of their career, having completed 72% of his passes for 1,073 yards and seven touchdowns while he also added three rushing touchdowns.
The offense has another All-SEC level wide receiver in Luther Burden III, who already has recorded 32 receptions for 504 yards and three touchdowns.
On top of all of that, Missouri also has the league's incumbent rushing leader, Cody Schrader, who has 403 rushing yards and two touchdowns on 65 carries (6.2 yards per carry).
Yes, the Tigers have managed to improve their offense and three of its most important offensive players have all taken a step forward this season. However, there's something this offense isn't good at and it's third downs.
Mizzou is 16-of-44 on third down (36%) this season and in its last two games, it's 3-of-21 and went 0-of-8 in Week 4.
So, why did it convert only 14% of its third downs in Weeks 3-4? Probably because it's stuck in third in long all of the time.
*Missouri converted a third and 21 on a defensive pass interference vs. MTSU.
**Missouri converted a third and 15 on a game-winning 61-yard field goal.
Look at the chart above, the Tigers find themselves in almost as many third and long situations as they do third and short.
That's like taking a similar amount of layups and three-pointers. Except, Missouri doesn't have the success rate on third downs that Stephen Curry has on three-pointers.
How does Mizzou end up in so many third and long predicaments anyway? By not controlling what it can control.
"It's the same thing we're researching. A lot of the issues begin with penalties. The drives that we have penalties put us behind the chains, and then we're not able to get back into a manageable down and distance," Drinkwitz said. " So, those are things that are under our control. We had several false starts, we had a personal foul penalty (and) we had a sack on second down on a dropback pass (all versus Memphis)."
The chart shows that Missouri's third and long situation has gotten progressively worse through the course of the season, going from one third and long in Week 1 to four in each of the two games after that and five in Week 4.
It's also notable that Drinkwitz said the Tigers want to get in more third and medium/manageable situations, yet that's where they struggle the most.
Even if you remove a couple of third and long conversions the Tigers converted via a penalty and a field goal, Mizzou's still better at third and long than third and medium/manageable.
That doesn't mean it shouldn’t try and get to third and medium situations, it just proves that Mizzou isn’t just struggling because of the distance but on the down in general.
Third and longs certainly don’t help it get a rhythm in third and medium when they're behind the sticks and are in third and 10-plus on almost 33% of their third down attempts.
Schrader thinks getting more favorable third downs comes down to simply being more effective in the earlier downs.
"Yeah, I think it starts with being better on first and second downs. Putting us in better and more manageable third downs, and then we just got to execute better on offense on those third downs because those are critical downs in the football games," Schrader said. "They're going to come up more and more when we get into SEC play, so we definitely got to clean that up."
But how do the Tigers actually get better on third down itself?
Schrader thinks they have to attack the details. The ones that people not on the field may not think about.
"Really being more intentional about the way we go about practice and stuff like that. And it starts with just little things like hustling on and off the field," Schrader said. "That's going to be a huge point of emphasis for us, just getting on the field. So, we're not worried about the play clock and we can just relax, get the looks and understand what our assignments are."
It'll have to be a mix of what Drinkwitz and Schrader said. More early down success, not committing so many pre-snap penalties, not getting sacked or tackled for loss and paying attention to the details.
Again, this is a much better offense than last year's, but to take the next step, it has to convert on third down a lot more and it’s going to have to control those controllable a lot better. Not only to sustain what it's already doing, but to go to the next level.
"Potential means we haven't arrived yet. But yeah, we know we're capable. We've got to really dial in on third down,” Drinkwitz said after the game versus Memphis. “I mean, 0-for-8? I don't know that I've ever been 0-for-8 on third downs. So, that's something we got to really look at and fix.”
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