Monday takeaway: Inside Missouri's struggles against the run

Each Monday during the football season, Mitchell Forde will use this space to take a deeper dive into one play, trend or aspect of Missouri’s game and what it might mean moving forward.

As Wyoming quarterback Sean Chambers pulled the ball away from running back Xazavian Valladay, opting to keep it instead of handing it off, Missouri linebacker Cale Garrett watched and waited. The play was a zone read, fairly standard among Wyoming’s arsenal of running plays, in which Chambers had the option to give the ball to his running back or keep it himself. On this play, since safety Khalil Oliver moved upfield off the edge toward Valladay, Chambers held onto it.

Garrett, Missouri’s third-year starter at middle linebacker, didn’t appear fooled. He stood about five yards from Chambers, with no blockers between them. Safety Joshuah Bledsoe, too, stood another five yards or so behind Garrett. He, too, saw no offensive players impeding his path to Chambers.

Seconds later, Chambers was galloping down the sideline, en route to a 75-yard touchdown run. First Garett whiffed on a tackle attempt, then Bledsoe fell victim to a Chambers stiff arm, then nothing but open field stood between him and the end zone. The play gave Wyoming a 24-17 lead it would not relinquish on its way to a stunning upset. For the second time in as many snaps, Missouri had allowed a rushing touchdown of 60 yards or more.

Last season, Missouri’s run defense was a strength. The unit ranked No. 22 nationally against the run, holding opponents to an average of 126.5 yards per game. The Tiger defense was especially adept at preventing explosive running plays, such as Chambers’ run. The team allowed just four runs over 30 or more yards, tied for 14th best in the country, and allowed just one run of 60-plus yards all year.

The Tigers also knew entering Saturday’s contest that Wyoming was going to look to run the ball early and often. Last season, the Cowboys ranked No. 39 in the country in rushing offense, averaging just a hair under 200 yards per game. Meanwhile, they tied for No. 125 out of 130 FBS teams in passing yardage. In the three games in which Chambers played significant snaps last season, Wyoming averaged 57 rushing attempts and 14 passing attempts per game.

True to form, Chambers completed just six passes on 16 attempts Saturday. It didn’t matter. Wyoming gashed Missouri on the ground anyway. The Cowboys totaled 297 rushing yards, and 7.1 yards per carry. Missouri has only surrendered more yards on the ground once in the past two seasons, against Georgia in 2017.

So, how did it happen? The causes are multiple, but after the game, defensive players pointed to one chief issue: tackling. As illustrated by Chambers’ long touchdown run, there were multiple instances in which Missouri’s defenders were positioned to make stops but failed to bring down Wyoming’s ball-carriers.

“For us it was just missed tackles,” defensive tackle Jordan Elliott said. “They had a good game plan and executed well, but at the end of the day, we didn’t tackle well. So that’s one thing that we gotta continue to work on.”

Elliott said the team broke down Chambers’ long touchdown run as well as the preceding 61-yard scoring scamper by Valladay during halftime and found missed tackles to be the culprit both times. (Defensive tackle Kobie Whiteside had a shot to bring down Valladay but missed). And it wasn’t only an issue on the long touchdown runs. There were several plays when Missouri looked to have a Wyoming player stopped for little to no gain, only to have the runner push forward for a few extra yards. Those yards added up.

“Tackling is always going to be a big thing in week one,” Garrett said. “But you don’t want it to be that bad — myself, mainly, included on that.”

As Garrett pointed out, tackling is a common issue in season-openers across college football now that teams rarely allow full takedowns in fall camp. It’s a delicate balancing act for coaches, attempting to keep a roster healthy while preparing defensive players to open the season. Head coach Barry Odom acknowledged Tuesday that the team “didn’t do much tackling” during fall camp. It’s impossible to say for sure, but hindsight suggests players could have used some more tackling reps.

“We haven't tackled that much live with this team,” Odom said. “We've done it a couple times. You do all the drill work that you want, but also there's a number of things that go into tackling, and one of them is understanding what you're doing and then doing it that speed that you need to to have a chance to make the tackle.”

Data from Pro Football Focus suggests that Elliott and Garrett are correct — that tackling, or lack thereof, was more to blame for Missouri’s defensive woes than positioning or scheme. The Tigers earned a 69.9 grade for run defense — about average, if not a bit above — but a paltry 46.0 grade for tackling.

However, there were other issues at play as well, from the defensive line to the secondary.

For one, the defensive line failed to generate much push, at least after Wyoming’s first two possessions of the game. Missouri finished with just two tackles for loss on Wyoming’s 42 rushing attempts. And on some plays, defensive linemen were moved with ease from their original gaps, opening up holes. On Chambers’ 75-yard run, for instance, sophomore defensive end Jatorian Hansford tried to move inside, toward the center, to beat an offensive tackle. He got shoved to the ground and out of the way of Chambers.

In addition, Garrett said Wyoming used misdirection to bait he and weakside linebacker Nick Bolton out of position. Garrett admitted he is not the fastest player; he relies on instinct and anticipation to meet runners in the hole. By setting up a running play to look like it would go through one gap and then actually using another, Wyoming caught the two linebackers out of position.

“They kind of played on our over-aggression,” Garrett said. “With Bolt and I usually able to see things a little bit quicker, sometimes we would over play it a little bit and it would head back door, or something like that.

“I’m not a fast guy, but sometimes I get too far out in front of the ball. And I think all of us were doing that, because we all want to make the play.”

Missouri’s safeties share the blame as well. Since Missouri anticipated Wyoming would run the ball, Bledsoe, Tyree Gillespie and Jordan Ulmer were not positioned as deep as normal. That made it more difficult to contain ball-carriers who made it past the front seven, and more costly to be out of position. On Valladay’s long touchdown run, Ulmer over-pursued, running too far down the line of scrimmage and creating a cut-back lane for Valladay. When Ulmer tried to react, he ran into Garrett’s back and fell down, allowing one Wyoming player to block two defenders.

“I don’t want to put it on just one guy out of one gap,” Odom said. “It’s team defense. So obviously we didn’t play very well.”

Entering Saturday, it would not have been stunning to think Missouri might regress a bit against the run, especially early in the season. The Tigers lost run-stuffing defensive tackles Terry Beckner Jr. and Walter Palmore as well as linebacker Terez Hall to graduation. But to surrender 219 more rushing yards than it did in last season’s meeting with Wyoming has to be cause for concern.

As despondent as players were after the game, though, Elliott wasn’t all doom and gloom. He said the mistakes Missouri made Saturday are largely correctable — especially the missed tackles. He believes the run defense can return to the form it showed last year.

“I don’t think it will be an overall thing for the season,” he said. “We’ll get that corrected.”