Knoxville, Tennessee — For about two and a half quarters Missouri was neck and neck with the No. 2 scoring offense and the No. 5 Tennessee Volunteers. Then the Volunteers flipped a switch and scored 38 unanswered points to win 66-24 on Saturday.
Missouri's defense didn't just have a bad game for this year’s standards, but any defense in school history. Besides the 66 points, Missouri had six defensive penalties and would allow Tennessee to get 33 first downs which are three shy of the record. Also, it would allow 724 yards of total offense which is 26 yards shy of the record.
Entering week 11, Missouri had the 14th-ranked defense in the country and was allowing 303.7 yards per game and 21.44 points per game. By halftime, Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker had 286 yards of total offense and the Volunteers entered the half up 28-17. The 28 points were the most points allowed in a half this season by the Tigers.
Anything that could go wrong defensively did go wrong.
“Hooker and those guys played really well, but we weren’t ourselves,” Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “We missed some tackles and didn’t cover the way we normally cover.”
Hooker finished the game completing 25 of 35 passes for 355 yards and three touchdowns. He also added eight carries for 50 yards and a touchdown on the ground.
Tennessee wide receiver Cedric Tillman is a player many consider a future first-round draft pick. He didn’t even play and Missouri still allowed two wide receivers to get over 110 receiving yards. Bru McCoy had a game-high nine receptions for 111 yards while Jalin Hyatt had seven receptions for a game-high 146 yards and a touchdown. This marked Hyatt’s fifth game with over 100 receiving yards.
McCoy and Hyatt basically took turns abusing Mizzou's secondary in the slot since the group was playing so far off the ball to prevent any deep ball action. Drinkwitz had a plan for the pair, but it clearly didn't go as planned.
“First, we were trying to mix in some man-to-man and zone coverage and we just felt like we were too loose and Hyatt was getting too much of a run on our safety when we were in man,” Drinkwitz said. “So, that’s when we put a cornerback on him. On that 68-yard touchdown, our cornerback went to his normal position and Hyatt was in the backfield and we didn’t unravel it from a safety position.”
To top it off, Tennessee had touchdown drives that took less than a minute and of its 10 scoring drives the longest drive was two minutes and 20 seconds.
Usually, it's Missouri’s offense that is lacking and isn’t able to produce adequate production to get the win. This week, it was the defense.
The offense played its best game of the season, but it still wasn't good
Prior to Saturday, Missouri had only reached 24 or more points twice and both of those games were against non-Power 5 teams in Louisiana Tech and Abilene Christian. Until Saturday, Missouri’s highest-scoring game against a Power 5 opponent this season was 23 points against South Carolina in week nine.
The 24 points on Tennessee were good — for Missouri’s offensive standards.
Wide receiver Tauskie Dove had his best game of the season with four receptions for 72 yards and a touchdown. His first touchdown since 2020. Wide receiver Dominic Lovett had four receptions for 47 yards and a touchdown.
Quarterback Brady Cook was the best player offensively for the Tigers and completed 19 of 32 passes for 217 yards and two touchdowns. He also rushed for a career-high 106 yards on 16 carries.
This was Cook’s and the offense's best game of the season against a Power 5 team and it wasn’t even close to being almost good enough.
Missouri was down 28-24 midway through the third quarter after Cook had led Mizzou on an eight-play, 85-yard touchdown drive. Then the bottom would fall out from Mizzou and it wouldn’t score again.
Mizzou would punt the ball five times and fumble in its last six possessions (not including the two-play possession to run out the clock in the fourth quarter).
“Offensively, we did a nice job keeping pace and then we just weren't able to keep pace in the second half,” Drinkwitz said. “A lot of unforced errors. I hadn’t seen that many false start penalties on wide receivers before.”
Drinkwitz was referring to a drive in the middle of the third quarter when wide receivers Lovett and Mookie Cooper and tight end Ryan Hoerstkamp had false start penalties. Wide receiver Barrett Banister, who had a team-high seven receptions for 73 yards said the sellout crowd of over 100,000 people had a part to due with that.
“It was loud no doubt about it, but these atmospheres aren’t going away,” Banister said. “I think sometimes you get in this routine of whenever you’re able to hear the cadence you are able to tighten up a little bit and it’s a little bit of an advantage. As a receiver, you’ve got to learn to watch the ball. (Center) Connor (Tollison) is trying his best to hear and it’s our job to watch the ball move whenever the cadence is said.”
Missouri’s running backs were pretty bad.
Cody Schrader, Elijah Young and Nathaniel Peat combined for 16 carries for 58 yards and a fumble.
The offensive line didn’t have a penalty until there were less than four minutes left in the game, but by that point, Mizzou was down by 42. The offensive line played one of its better games, but that’s not saying much when it still allowed seven tackles for loss and two sacks.
Missouri can't stop the unforced errors
The theme of Missouri’s season has been self-inflicted wounds. In some form, it always comes down to turnovers, easily missed field goals, terrible third-down play and penalties.
Mizzou kicker Harrison Mevis made his only field goal attempt from 32 yards out and all three of his PATs. That field goal was actually huge considering Mevis’ struggles inside of 40 yards this season.
That was the only self-inflicted wound that was healed in week 11 while all the other wounds seemed to get worse.
Mizzou had 14 penalties. The more perplexing part about that is who the penalties came from.
Missouri’s offensive line leads the team in penalties (27 entering week 11) and it only had one penalty. Missouri had five false start penalties with four of them coming from position players (Cooper, Lovett and Hoerstkamp twice) and Lovett also had an offensive pass interference. There was a delay of game that Mizzou took on purpose to get better field position on a punt, but there was also a delay of game on the first play of one of the Tigers' offensive drives.
Missouri’s last six offensive penalties came after it scored its last touchdown.
Defensively, the Tigers had six penalties with cornerback Ennis Rakestraw having a pass interference and a holding call, safety Jaylon Carlies and defensive end Tyrone Hopper each had horsecollar penalties, defensive tackle Darius Robinson had a roughing the passer call and DJ Coleman was called offsides on the same play he tried to rush off the field and avoid a 12-man on the field penalty. He was called for both, but the offsides is what Tennessee accepted.
Mizzou was 5 of 17 on third down and to make matters worse the Tigers lost the turnover battle. Late in the fourth quarter Young fumbled the catch on a toss-crack run play that would’ve easily gotten the Tigers a first down.
The turnover bore no result on the game, but it was more salt on Missouri’s proverbial wound.
Talk about this story and more in The Tigers' Lair
Make sure you're caught up on all the Tiger news and headlines
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for video and live streaming coverage
