Monday Takeaway: Another running QB gives Mizzou fits
Missouri’s defense doesn’t deserve the bulk of the blame for the Tigers’ 29-7 loss to Kentucky on Saturday night. Let’s get that out of the way first. Several offensive players, including center Trystan Colon-Castillo, said after the game that the defense played well enough to win; for the second straight game, it was the offense that let the team down.
“They did a good job of trying to keep the offense up, telling us they got our back, keep going,” Colon-Castillo said. “As an offense, we didn’t help them.”
But Missouri was far from perfect defensively, and considering the offensive struggles the past two weeks, the Tigers couldn’t afford many mistakes. Plus, the circumstances surrounding how Kentucky scored its 29 points made the performance a bit maddening.
Due to injuries to their returning starting quarterback, Terry Wilson, as well as backup Sawyer Smith, the Wildcats started converted wide receiver Lynn Bowden Jr. at quarterback for the third game in a row. Bowden entered Saturday having completed 12 of 30 passes on the year while having run the ball 54 times. The previous week, he completed just two of 15 attempts in a loss to Georgia. Throw in the fact that Saturday’s game was played in a torrential downpour, and everyone in Kroger Field knew Missouri was going to get a heavy dose of the run.
Indeed, Kentucky ran the ball 48 times. It threw just eight passes. Bowden, far and away the Wildcat’s most dangerous playmaker (he now leads the team in both rushing and receiving on the season), accounted for 21 of those carries.
Yet even though Missouri knew the run was coming, the Tigers couldn’t stop it. Bowden rushed for 204 yards and two touchdowns. Kentucky as a team racked up 297 yards on 6.2 yards per carry and three rushing scores.
Head coach Barry Odom said he felt the coaching staff had prepared the defense well to defend Bowden and the rest of the Wildcat running game and appeared frustrated that the unit didn’t execute.
“He made some plays, we overran it,” Odom said. “... I’ve said all week, if anybody would listen to me, he’s a good player, he’s going to make some plays. We needed to limit those, and we didn’t.”
Kentucky certainly deserves credit for creating a capable, one-dimensional offense. The Wildcats have now rushed for 787 total yards across in Bowden’s three starts at quarterback. The main keys to their offensive success Saturday were the use of misdirection and strong offensive line play.
Bowden’s second of two rushing touchdowns on the game, a 33-yard run that sealed the game, illustrated both. Missouri began the play with seven defenders in the box. A fake pitch to running back Chris Rodriguez occupied two of them by forcing both linebacker Devin Nicholson and safety Khalil Oliver to take a few steps toward the right side of the formation. When Bowden kept the ball and ran right, the Wildcats’ right guard and tackle both pulled to lead the way. That allowed the five Kentucky offensive linemen to account for the remaining five Tiger defenders near the line of scrimmage, and each lineman delivered a perfect block. Darian Kinnard’s seal of linebacker Nick Bolton allowed Bowden to get to the edge, and a downfield block from a wide receiver on cornerback Christian Holmes ensured he would not be caught.
“They’ve got a really good offensive line,” Odom said after the game. “They were able to get up to the second level and get on the linebackers and kind of wash them by, and (Bowden) is patient enough to get a little crease.”
But as much as Kentucky deserves praise, Missouri’s defensive performance should cause concern, as this wasn’t the first time this season the Tigers have struggled to stop a rushing attack headlined by a quarterback. The Wildcats took the clear blueprint to beat the Missouri defense and exploited it.
Bowden is the third player to rush for 120 yards in a game against Missouri this season, joining Wyoming’s Sean Chambers and Ole Miss’ John Rhys Plumlee. All three have lined up behind center. Those also mark the only games this season in which Missouri has allowed more than 200 yards on the ground and more than 21 points on the scoreboard. In fact, Kentucky’s final offensive stat line wound up eerily similar to Wyoming’s in Week One. In that game, the Cowboys completed just six of 16 passes for 92 yards but ran the ball 42 times for 297 yards. Saturday, Kentucky completed four of eight passes for 63 yards but gained 297 yards on 48 carries.
Missouri’s defenders weren’t in much of a mood to break down their struggles against running quarterbacks this season. But one common issue in both the first and most recent loss of the season has been clear: tackling. Missouri missed 13 tackles at Wyoming, according to Pro Football Focus. Against Kentucky, the Tigers missed nine. Their team tackling grades from those two games represent two of their three lowest tackling grades on the year. Bolton cited tackling as an issue after the game.
“I know we had a couple missed tackles in key situations,” he said. “We just gotta get better.”
Running quarterbacks present a tackling challenge because they force the defense to account for an extra potential ball-carrier and allow the offense an extra blocker. That leads to more one-on-one tackling opportunities, rather than gang tackles. Complicating matters is the fact that, against run-heavy teams, Missouri typically positions 10 defenders near the line of scrimmage with just one deep safety, making a missed gap or tackle more likely to lead to an explosive play.
Kentucky’s offense had seven running plays of more than 20 yards. Bowden accounted for six of them, including a 46-yarder, a 34-yarder and the 33-yard score.
“If you’re out of your gap just a little bit,” Odom said, “they’re going to find it.”
The good news for Missouri is there don’t appear to be any starting quarterbacks remaining on the schedule who have proven to be much of a running threat, though it’s possible an opponent could incorporate a more mobile player behind center into its game plan to take advantage of the Tigers’ Achilles heel. Regardless of whether or not the unit faces another mobile quarterback, however, safety Joshuah Bledsoe said the defense needs to execute better than it did Saturday. He attributed Kentucky’s success on the ground less to the Wildcats’ scheme or Bowden’s ability than to miscues Missouri’s part.
“It was basically just everybody has to read their assignments, stay in their gaps, and, like I said, we just got to play better,” said Bledsoe. It’s unacceptable.”