It’s not often that a college football team emerges from a 43-6 loss more confident than the week prior. But after Missouri became the latest team to fall victim to the juggernaut that is No. 1 Georgia on Saturday, at least one unit feels like it made positive strides and is looking to build on that momentum moving forward.
Missouri’s run defense has been the team’s biggest weakness all season. The Tigers entered Saturday dead last nationally in stopping the run. That figured to be a major issue against a Georgia team that had been willing and able to pound the ball on the ground all season. Prior to Saturday’s game, Georgia had run the ball on more than two-thirds of its offensive snaps.
Yet the Tigers succeeded in at least slowing down the Bulldog ground game and forcing quarterback Stetson Bennett to beat them with his arm. Bennett obliged, as Georgia threw for 337 yards and three touchdowns, but the fact that Missouri held the Bulldogs to just 67 rushing yards during the first half and 168 yards on the game represented a step in the right direction for the defensive front.
“I thought we did a great job controlling the line of scrimmage, ‘my gap’ mentality,” defensive coordinator Steve Wilks said Wednesday. “You saw that in the first half, where I think they had a total of 69 yards rushing. Guys took responsibility of doing their jobs, staying in their gaps.”
If Missouri can replicate that resistance on the ground this week, it would likely go a long way. South Carolina rushed for 284 yards during its 40-17 rout of Florida last week. Two Gamecock running backs, Kevin Harris and ZaQuandre White, both topped 100 yards on the ground. Wilks and his players said the running game makes South Carolina’s offense go.
“I think that their running backs are a really big part of their offense, and that they have three good ones,” linebacker Blaze Alldredge said. “And when it gets like that, I think it’s hard, especially because they all have little individual things that they can do really well. But the exciting thing about that is it kind of makes the game a little bit more about the front seven, and you kind of get the challenge, and that excites you and gets you going, makes you go a little bit harder in practice.”
Wilks acknowledged that stopping the run was Missouri’s top defensive priority against Georgia. He wanted to make the Bulldogs “beat us left-handed.” But the Tigers didn’t necessarily devote more personnel than usual to the box. Instead, Wilks said the front seven did a better job staying in gaps and playing downhill.
The linebackers, in particular, showed improvement. Alldredge, who lost his starting spot after a rough start to the season, returned to the starting lineup alongside Chad Bailey. The two combined to record 14 tackles and miss none. Alldredge, a graduate transfer from Rice, attributed the improvement to simply getting more comfortable with Missouri’s scheme and the speed of the SEC. He said the game “just felt slower” than Missouri’s first few league contests.
“Georgia’s run game, like, it didn’t feel like everything was just on top of me,” he said. “At Kentucky, it was almost like a non-stop bombardment, it felt like. And then here, it felt like I was doing the attacking.”
The defensive line made the linebackers’ jobs easier by doing a better job of keeping Georgia’s blockers from reaching the second level. Defensive tackle Darius Robinson chalked up the improvement to players taking the field with a bit more intensity against the nation’s No. 1 team. After seeing positive returns, he believes the team will practice and play with similar focus and energy this week.
“Our problem right now has been stopping the run, and we were able to do that against the No. 1 team,” said Robinson. “So I think everybody sees that as a positive and moving forward, we should be able to stop the run on anybody. But we know we’ve got to go to practice every day and get better and just keep working.”
South Carolina’s offense has been plagued by injuries at the quarterback position this season. Expected starter Luke Doty missed the first two games of the season with a foot injury, played in five games, then reinjured his foot and underwent season-ending surgery. That put Zeb Noland, a transfer from North Dakota State who initially planned to serve as an analyst on the South Carolina coaching staff, back behind center. Noland underwent knee surgery during the team’s bye week, which forced first-year coach Shane Beamer to turn to Jason Brown, a transfer from FCS St. Francis.
Brown performed admirably against Florida, completing 14 of 24 passes for 175 yards and two touchdowns. But not surprisingly given the quarterback issues the Gamecocks have dealt, the offense relies on the ground game to get going. South Carolina has averaged 169.6 rushing yards per game during its five wins this season compared to 93.0 during its four losses. Wilks noted that the Gamecocks use their running attack to create play-action opportunities through the air.
“We gotta do a great job up front in trying to control the line of scrimmage,” he said. “We’ve got to stop the run game, which is going to limit their play-action pass game that they’re so effective with.”
After tasting some success against Georgia’s vaunted rushing attack, the Missouri defense is more confident than ever it can rise to the challenge.
“I think just a lot of it is we’re finally finding the confidence that it takes to play as a halfway decent defense in the SEC,” Alldredge said, “and with that confidence just came physicality and speed that we’ve been needing.”
Cook reflects on performance
On the other side of the ball against Georgia, Missouri saw two freshman quarterbacks thrust into a difficult spot. With regular starter Connor Bazelak sidelined by a soft tissue injury, true freshman Tyler Macon drew the start against the Bulldog’s nation-leading defense and split time with redshirt freshman Brady Cook. During his Tuesday press conference, Eli Drinkwitz said the quarterbacks’ performance was a mixed bag.
“I thought those guys both played really hard, they both showed a lot of toughness, and they both did some really good things, but at the end of the day we didn’t play well enough at that position to give ourselves a chance to win,” Drinkwitz said. “We had a couple of really critical errors, specifically in the first half, that would have led us to continue drives. … We missed a couple of throws, took a sack. I was proud that they didn’t turn the ball over, but we were inaccurate in some of our passes. Again, we’ve got to continue to play better.”
Macon has not been made available to speak to the media yet this season due to a team policy that true freshmen don’t do interviews until they play in more than four games. Cook, however, spoke to reporters Wednesday. His assessment of his performance was similar to that of his coach. Cook, who completed 14 of 19 passes for 78 yards, said he needs to clean up his performance, but he believes getting his first significant game day experience will only help.
“I thought it was great experience,” Cook said. “I haven’t been able to really play consecutive drives and get out there and really get a feel for what college football is like, so I was able to go out at one of the best atmospheres in college football and get in a little groove and get some great experience, and it was a blast.”
Cook said he found out the day after Missouri’s win over Vanderbilt that Bazelak likely wouldn’t be able to suit up against Georgia. Macon ultimately started the game and played the first two series before rotating with Cook. Both players wound up quarterbacking six possessions. Asked whether there was a plan in place before the game about how he and Macon would split snaps, Cook said “I think coach Drinkwitz was kind of just seeing how the game unfolded.”
Cook’s first two drives resulted in three-and-outs for the Missouri offense, but he said he found a groove in the second half. Drinkwitz complimented Cook’s intelligence and decisiveness, saying he just needs to clean up the execution a bit. Cook also showed an ability to make plays with his legs, rushing for 32 yards.
“It seems like a lot of people don’t know I can run,” he said. “I can run. I love to scramble, make plays with my feet. That’s something I definitely pride myself on.”
Whether or not Cook has a chance to build on his first extended college action against South Carolina will depend on the health of Bazelak. Bazelak was spotted on the practice field Tuesday. Drinkwitz has not updated his status this week, but the team is expected to release an injury report Thursday afternoon. Drinkwitz did say a decision about whether Bazelak will try to play would likely need to be made following Wednesday’s practice, saying “there’s no way I can prepare three quarterbacks to be the starter.”
Cook handled questions about the uncertainty at his position like a veteran, saying he’ll prepare the same way regardless of whether he’ll continue to split time with Macon or return to his backup role.
“I can’t really speak on anybody else’s injury,” he said. “I’m just going to prepare like every other week, like I’m the starter.”
Hicks tastes first game action
During the fourth quarter of Missouri’s loss at Georgia, Wyoming transfer linebacker Chuck Hicks took the field for the first time in a Tiger uniform. Hicks didn’t record a tackle, but the simple fact that he saw the field would have come as a surprise a couple months ago.
After spending three seasons at Wyoming, Hicks was a late entry into the transfer portal. He didn’t arrive at Missouri until Aug. 26, nine days before the team’s first game. Hicks then had to await a ruling from the NCAA on his request for a waiver that would allow him to be eligible to play this season. Finally, on Oct. 9, he got the word that he wouldn’t have to sit out.
“I know it was a 50-50 chance,” Hicks said. “That kind of was a risk I took going in the portal so late. I was okay with either one, you know. One, I was going to either train, go hard, or one, I was going to be able to participate. And it went the right way, so I’m happy.”
Even once he got cleared by the NCAA, however, Hicks was a long way from seeing the field. To that point, he had only been practicing on Missouri’s scout team, and after missing all of fall camp, he didn’t have a firm grasp of the defensive scheme. Once his waiver got approved, the coaching staff elevated him from the scout team. Actually experiencing the defensive schemes and formations for himself helped him learn the playbook.
“I feel like you can’t really learn a play until you’re running it,” he said. “When you’re learning on the board, that’s one thing, but you’ve got to run it, do it over and over. So now that I’m actually in it, I feel like I’m getting to that point, not really playing catch up no more.”
Wilks complimented Hicks’ ability to play in space and cover opposing pass-catchers, which he said is critical for a modern linebacker. He said Hicks has shown progress since arriving on campus, and the defensive staff needs to “try to find ways to get him a little bit more involved in the game so he can get quality reps there.”
Ultimately, Hicks seems unlikely to see significant playing time at linebacker this season, barring injury. But he said he’s not looking ahead to next year yet. He’s embraced a role on special teams and is eager to do whatever the team needs him to do over the next three weeks.
“Right now, I’m trying to be the best man I can be for this team and do whatever I can,” said Hicks. “If they want to put me in, they put me in. I’m going to do whatever I can. I’m on special teams right now, and that’s what I’m contributing mostly right now.”
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