Missouri took the field for its first defensive snap against Mississippi State with two true freshmen at cornerback and only one other scholarship player available at the position. Two safeties, redshirt freshman Jalani Williams and walk-on Mason Pack, made their first career starts. By the end of the game, the Tigers had a true freshman receiver and a former quarterback playing in the defensive backfield — not exactly an ideal recipe to slow down an offense that throws the ball more than any other in the country.
Due to its lack of bodies, Missouri didn’t have much room for error in its regular-season finale. When the mistakes started piling up in all three phases of the game, the score got lopsided in a hurry. Mississippi State won 51-32 to drop the Tigers to 5-5 on the season.
Missouri actually started the game well. The Tigers marched 75 yards on the first possession of the game, ending with a Larry Rountree III touchdown. Then, the ragtag defense forced Mississippi State to punt.
Walk-on return man Cade Musser called for a fair catch just outside of his own 10-yard line. The ball bounced out of his grasp and onto the grass. It rolled all the way into the Missouri end zone, where Mississippi State’s Paul Blackwell fell on it — the rare touchdown on a muffed punt. It was the fourth muffed kick of the season for Missouri.
The special teams blunder flipped the momentum in favor of Mississippi State. For the rest of the first half, Missouri couldn’t get it back. Starting with the muffed punt, the Bulldogs outscored Missouri 27-3 across the rest of the first half, then scored a touchdown on the first drive of the second half to extend its lead to 34-10.
“Started fast and then the momentum switched and we were never able to recapture the momentum,” Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz said after the game. “Neither side of the ball played nearly well enough to win the football game.”
Missouri’s defense, in particular, got gashed. After punting on its first possession, Mississippi State went on to score points on six consecutive drives. The Bulldogs racked up 446 total yards. Starting quarterback Will Rogers picked Missouri’s piecemeal secondary apart for 295 yards and three touchdowns. Drinkwitz said the Tigers planned to stick to mostly man-to-man coverage, its usual scheme, but had to switch to more zone when that didn’t work.
“We were going to try to mix it up and play man and mix in some zone,” he said. “That was the plan, and it wasn’t very effective”
While Mississippi State did the majority of its damage through the air, the Bulldogs’ rushing performance might be a greater cause for concern for Missouri. Mississippi State entered Saturday averaging a paltry 23.2 yards per game on the ground — far and away the lowest in the country. They had averaged just 1.4 yards per carry. Drinkwitz even said during his mid-week press conference that it was a good thing Mississippi State wouldn’t run the ball, since Missouri was banged up on the defensive line, too (although no defensive linemen missed this contest due to injury).
Against Missouri, Mississippi State found success running the ball. The Bulldogs rushed for 151 yards, averaging six yards per tote excluding sacks. Prior to that performance, Mississippi State had only rushed the ball for more than 40 yards once in a game this season and had yet to eclipse the century mark. Drinkwitz said Mississippi State showed one new play in the running game, but other than that, the Bulldogs didn’t do anything unexpected. They simply took advantage of Missouri’s commitment to stopping the pass.
“We were expecting pass and we were just reacting to the run,” safety Joshuah Bledsoe explained. “so whenever they got to run the ball, we just had to react to it and they got what they got.”
That continues a disheartening trend for Missouri, which has now given up 759 rushing yards across the past three games. Each of the past three opponents has averaged at least six yards per carry.
Given its defensive woes, Missouri needed to score points on the other side of the ball to keep pace with Mississippi State. But a rash of negative plays and turnovers put the Tigers in a hole from which they couldn’t escape. In the first half, Missouri had four negative plays — one handoff, one sack, one bad snap and one errant pitch from quarterback Connor Bazelak to running back Tyler Badie — that netted negative-37 yards. Drinkwitz said the premature snap, which derailed Missouri’s drive immediately following the muffed punt, was caused by a Mississippi State defender mimicking the offense’s cadence by clapping, which is supposed to result in a penalty. The play lost 16 yards.
“They simulated our cadence,” he said. “It’s happened to us four times this year, and it hasn’t been called yet. So that’s a big play, that’s a big miss, and that basically forced us to punt, because it was second and 24. … Supposed to be against the rules.”
Bazelak struggled throughout, completing just 22 of 38 passes and throwing three interceptions. The most damaging of his three picks came early in the second half, when it looked like the Tigers had finally gotten some momentum back.
Missouri’s defense finally got a stop when Isaiah McGuire stripped Rogers and Kobie Whiteside recovered, giving Missouri the ball at the Mississippi State 14-yard line. The Tigers cashed in when Bazelak hit Chism for a two-yard touchdown, then Bazelak found Chism again for a two-point conversion to cut the Bulldog lead to 16. On the next Mississippi State possession, Bledsoe intercepted Rogers in his own end zone. But just three plays later, Bazelak tried to force a pass deep down the left sideline to Barrett Banister. The pass sailed too deep, and Collin Duncan intercepted it. Mississippi State then scored to put the game out of reach.
Drinkwitz said the interception was an example of Bazelak trying to do too much when he should have simply taken a checkdown. He also threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown later in the second half. In all, Mississippi State scored 27 points off Missouri's four turnovers.
“I thought we pressed early, tried to force the ball when it didn’t need to be,” Drinkwitz said. “And then when we cut it 16, we had a wheel route to Banister. They were in Cover Three and the guy trailed with him, you’ve got to come back to the checkdown there, and was trying to force it to try and make a play.”
“That’s just growing pains, that’s part of being in those situations. You can’t get it all back at one time. And that’s what he was trying to do. We’ll learn from it.”
Drinkwitz said he told his players after the game that, while Saturday’s performance may have been disappointing, it doesn’t take away from the season as a whole. Missouri finished the regular season 5-5, he said, after a lot of people picked the Tigers to win two games.
Saturday’s loss wasn’t a matter of effort, but execution. With walk-ons and offensive players seeing significant snaps in the secondary, slowing down Mike Leach’s air raid offense was always going to be a tall task. Once Missouri gave up a touchdown on special teams and had a spree of negative plays on offense, it became impossible.
“I think the fact is we’re down to 52 players,” Drinkwitz said. “The guy that was our starting quarterback for the first two games of the season is playing safety for us for the entire second half. I mean, we’re doing every single thing we can to play the game, and when you get down to this kind of stuff, the execution isn’t where it needs to be in order to be successful. And that’s what happened. … We just didn’t play good football tonight.”
Robinson at safety to stay
One of the few bright spots for Missouri was the play of Shawn Robinson in the second half. Robinson started the first two games of this season at quarterback before being beat out by Bazelak. The former TCU transfer then missed three games due to injury and COVID-19 quarantine. When he returned to the field, he did so wearing a new number and focusing his efforts on defense and special teams.
Saturday, after starting cornerback Jaylon Carlies got ejected for targeting on the first possession of the third quarter and Missouri had to shift players around in its already-depleted secondary, Robinson played almost the entire second half. He looked at home in his new position. Robinson totaled five tackles, including a half-tackle for loss, a pass break-up and an interception.
“It’s been a long year, to say the least,” Robinson said after the game. “So yeah, this moment was really cool. … It’s hard to kind of explain and express how I’m feeling.”
Prior to Saturday, Robinson hadn’t played defense in a football game since eighth or ninth grade. The last time he did, he broke his finger, so he figured he better stick to his primary position, quarterback. But a few weeks ago, Drinkwitz approached him about shifting to the other side of the ball. Drinkwitz raved about Robinson’s willingness to embrace whatever role the team needed him to fill rather than sulk or opt out of the season when he lost the quarterback job.
“The biggest thing for me was, like, if I wanted to play quarterback, I obviously couldn’t play it here and be the guy, because obviously Connor is the guy,” Robinson explained. “So I would have to transfer, and I wasn’t really trying to do that for the third time. So it was just like thinking, do I really want to do that? Or do I want to stay, try safety? And I really love my teammates, I love my team, I love the coaching staff. I really love Mizzou.”
Against Mississippi State, Robinson mostly served as a slot cornerback. He said the coaching staff had only prepared him for a couple packages leading up to the game, not wanting to put too much on his plate. But the position change isn’t meant to be a short-term switch. Both Robinson and Drinkwitz said he’ll continue to play defensive back moving forward.
“Heck yeah, I’m a safety now,” Robinson said. “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t going to play safety. I’m all in, for sure.”
Rountree runs further into record books
Missouri’s offense did do one thing well against Mississippi State: Hand the ball to Rountree. The senior rushed for 121 yards and two touchdowns on 25 carries. The performance marked his fifth 100-yard game in 10 contests this year and 14th of his career, second-most of any Missouri rusher.
Rountree also moved into a tie for second all-time in rushing touchdowns at Missouri with 40. He has a whopping 14 this season, including nine in the team’s past four games. Rountree will need just 28 yards in Missouri’s bowl game to reach 1,000 rushing yards in a season for the second time in his college career.
