As a program, Missouri has probably played the role of Charlie Brown as much as any in major college football. Over and over, the Tigers have watched Lucy pull the ball away right before they kicked it.
Whether Lucy was played by the officials that forgot how to count to four and then decided Charles Johnson made it to the end zone on fifth down, whether it was Shevin Wiggins kicking the ball and Matt Davison catching it, whether it was Curtis Lofton taking the ball away from Chase Daniel or Tre Mason running for a million yards, there’s always been a Lucy.
On Saturday night, Lucy wore blue and white and may have pulled her cruelest trick ever on poor Charlie Brown…err, Missouri.
With seven-and-a-half minutes, Missouri had the ball and a 14-3 lead over a Kentucky team that had not come anywhere close to scoring a point in 49 minutes of game time. From that point, Missouri was going to have to do virtually everything wrong to lose the game. The Tigers did.
A 65-yard punt return from Lynn Bowden Jr. made the score 14-9 and gave the Wildcats life. Mizzou’s seventh consecutive three-and-out offensively gave the ball back to Kentucky, but DeMarkus Acy seemingly iced the game with an interception at the 2:38 mark.
From there, Damarea Crockett gained eight yards on two carries and lined up in the backfield, presumably to get the ball again and either pick up the two yards that would give Missouri the win or at least force Mark Stoops to use his final timeout. Except that didn’t happen. Missouri threw an incomplete pass on a designed rollout, not only stopping the clock with 1:36 to go, but preserving the Wildcats final timeout.
At that point, according to ESPN.com, Missouri had a 95.1% win probability. Except this was Missouri. Theoretically, Charlie Brown has a 95.1% chance to kick the ball. And yet he never does.
If you’re reading this, you watched it. A Kentucky team that can’t pass went 81 yards in 84 seconds, using that one timeout after Missouri’s second sack of the drive. Yes, Missouri got two sacks and still let Kentucky win the game by going 81 yards in 84 seconds; believe it or not, Wilson actually threw for 87 yards on the 81-yard drive. It took a questionable pass interference call on what was supposed to be the final play of the game.
“I feel like I played it perfectly as I could,” Acy said. “The guys’ hands were all over my helmet. I tried my best to get his hands off. I guess the referee saw otherwise.”
Maybe it was a terrible call. But Missouri never should have had it get to the point where it could matter. The end result was a 15-14 loss that defied explanation.
Missouri has had its share of gut punches. We listed a few of them here, and there have been others. But in the wake of this one, a number of people who have followed Missouri football for fewer years than I have asked where this one ranked. And it’s hard not to say it’s at the top. Even the head coach agreed…and he was on the field for the kick-and-catch loss to No. 1 Nebraska.
“This will be one that you live with forever,” Odom said. “I know what it will take to get over this one, just mentally. We’ll have our work cut out for us.
“It will hurt for a long time. There’s no doubt. There’s losses that I carry with me from years and years ago that you use as motivation, you use as opportunities to learn and grow and this ranks right up there as probably the most difficult.”
There was almost no way to lose this game. It wasn’t just that Missouri had led for the final 45 minutes of the game. It wasn't just that it still led when the clock read 0:00. It wasn’t just that Kentucky looked as capable of throwing for 87 yards in 84 seconds as most of the guys sitting around me in the press box. It wasn’t just that all Missouri needed was two yards or one stop or one first down at any point in the final 30 minutes or to not allow a punt return for a touchdown or to not play some logic-defying defense where it stood five players at the goal line and blitzed the other six to allow Kentucky go move 17 yards closer to the end zone for its final play. It was all of that.
The pessimists—and to be fair, it’s hard to disagree with them—will use this as ammunition that the coach has to go. The Tigers have had three games decided in the final five seconds this season. They have lost two of them. They had a 17-point lead in the one they won. It’s not just that the Tigers are losing games. It’s that they are losing games it seems impossible for them to lose.
The optimists—and they’ll be understandably hard to find for the next six days—will say that there are four games left in the season and that this team is close and that football is weird and you never know what’s going to happen. It’s impossible to prove them wrong at this point, but it’s nearly as difficult to find any belief in what they are saying.
As far as the team, the answers after this game are going to be unsatisfying. The offensive players simply said they didn’t execute. They liked the calls and they stand behind them and they just have to be better. The defensive players said they played really well for 58-and-a-half minutes, but it is their job to get one more stop. After a loss like that we ask questions because we have to and they give answers because they have to and there’s simply nothing that can be said or written to adequately explain it away.
“The cliche thing would be to say, don’t worry about it, we’ll just come back and work, but honestly, man, it stings,” Brandon Lee said. “It hurts to keep saying multiple weeks we’re hearing that we beat ourselves. I mean, that’s obvious, we had the game in the bag and couldn’t convert to get first downs, couldn’t stop them on the last drive, and that’s disappointing.”
The Tigers have to pull themselves off the mat and come back and find a way to win in the Swamp next weekend and maybe erase a little bit of the sting of this one…but they won’t be able to get rid of all of it.
“We put this behind us. We never speak of it again,” Damarea Crockett said. “It’s gonna be rough. I will not lie to you. I will not stand up here and lie to you. It’s gonna be rough. We just got to bring it together and we just got to make sure that this brings us closer instead of pulling us apart. Because from here, we’re either going up or we’re going down. We’ve got to make sure that’s going up.”
We’ve seen a range of emotions from Barry Odom after these gut punches. After the Georgia loss in his first SEC game in 2016 (Lord that seems like a lot of terrible losses ago), he was so distraught you wondered if he could handle losing. After Auburn last year he was fiery and insistent he was the guy to turn it around. After South Carolina this year, he seemed hopeful.
After this one? He seemed numb. He seemed sad. He seemed out of meaningful explanations. Because no matter how insistent he is that his team is close and he likes his locker room and this staff can get the job done, coaches are judged on wins and losses. And the ones that turn two wins into losses in the span of a month quite often don’t survive it.
His explanations for throwing on third and two and for playing a defense that gave Kentucky 17 free yards were curious at best. But in the heat of the moment just 20 minutes after the most devastating loss of his career if not his life, I’m not going to harpoon any coach for not eloquently explaining what happened. The problem isn’t what he said. The problem is what happened. And what has happened a few times now.
There’s no explanation he can give because there simply is no explanation. Losses like Saturday’s can’t happen. Losses like Saturday’s derail seasons. Losses like Saturday’s torpedo programs. Losses like Saturday’s put new coaches on the sidelines.
“I hate that for Coach Odom because he’s a great guy and he’s a great coach, and everything he’s done, he’s moving us in the right direction, and we are literally right there, man,” Crockett said. “He really is doing it the right way and he’s moving us forward the right way, and all I can say is it’s going to break through soon. I promise you that. He is going to get it done. He’s going to get us where we need to be.”
There is time, in theory, to change that storyline. As hard as it is to see, maybe it will happen. One of these times, Lucy has to let the kid kick the damn ball. Doesn't she?????
