Notebook: Mizzou not overlooking Troy's explosive offense
With seven more matchups against SEC competition looming on Missouri’s schedule, most Tiger fans might have spent the bye week looking ahead, perhaps to the team’s Homecoming game against Ole Miss on Oct. 12 or a road matchup at Georgia Nov. 9. The coaches and players, however, have their attention firmly on the final non-conference opponent of the season: Troy.
Missouri will host the Trojans at 3 p.m. Saturday. Even though Troy lost head coach Neal Brown to West Virginia during the offseason and is off to a 2-2 start to this season after losing to Arkansas State last weekend, the Tiger coaching staff knows better than to overlook its next opponent. Troy has won road games against Power Five opponents each of the past two seasons, beating LSU in 2016 and Nebraska last season. In 2004, the Trojans beat No. 19 Missouri 24-14.
“They have a program that takes a lot of pride in playing these Power Five schools and going there and beating them, and they do it every year,” Missouri offensive coordinator Derek Dooley said Tuesday. “It’s to me no different than playing an SEC game. I mean, that’s how we’re approaching it.”
Missouri has taken particular notice of Troy’s explosive offense. The Trojans rank No. 9 nationally in passing offense, No. 12 in total offense and No. 14 in scoring, averaging more than 40 points per game this season. Defensive coordinator Ryan Walters said his unit will “get tested more than in any other” game this season.
The Tiger coaching staff was especially effusive in its praise of Troy quarterback Kaleb Barker. Barker missed the latter half of last season due to a torn ACL, but he has rebounded well this year, completing more than 65 percent of his passes and throwing 13 touchdowns versus two interceptions. He ranks fifth nationally in attempts (44) and yards (341.8) per game.
“He is as talented of a guy as we will see all year,” head coach Barry Odom said of Barker. “He can make every throw. ... He runs really well. He’s a really good football player.”
Barker has several weapons to deliver the ball to. Receiver Kaylon Geiger is averaging nearly 100 yards per game and ranks 18th in the country at 6.5 receptions per contest. Reginald Todd is averaging 21.7 yards on 11 catches this year and Khalil McCain has caught four touchdowns through four games. But perhaps Troy’s most important weapon, Walters said, has been head coach Chip Lindsey, who spent the past two seasons as the offensive coordinator at Auburn. Walters said Lindsey has passed on his knowledge of how to read defenses to his quarterback.
“He’s back healthy now, already has a grasp of the scheme,” Walters said of Barker. “You can tell just by the timing and the accuracy with which he throws. Like I said, the guys on the perimeter are doing a good job of high-pointing balls. They come up with 50-50 balls. And then coach Lindsey does a good job of just understanding how to attack different shells that you give them on the back end, and then the quarterback knows where to go with it post-snap, once he sees what you’re in.”
If it mimics its past three performances, Missouri’s defense should be up for the challenge. The Tigers have played lights-out since their season-opening stumble against Wyoming. The unit currently ranks No. 3 nationally in total defense, No. 4 in passing defense and No. 12 in scoring defense.
However, Missouri’s players have already experienced the dangers of buying into their own hype this season, when the team admittedly relaxed a bit and saw an early 14-0 lead against Wyoming turn into a 37-31 loss. Both Walters and middle linebacker Cale Garrett said the performance, in which Missouri surrendered 297 yards rushing, continues to inspire urgency into the defense.
“You gotta learn from your failures, and if you don’t learn from them, it’s wasted,” Walters said. “So you definitely saw an uptick in urgency and intensity just with preparation. And those are lessons that you don’t forget, and guys that are here all season won’t forget it and the guys that come back next season won’t forget it. As a competitor, you never forget those moments, and you count them as blessings when you can learn from them.”
Rotation to continue along offensive line
In a break from the past two seasons, Missouri has shuffled its offensive line around several times this season. In Week Three against Southeast Missouri, Case Cook started in place of Larry Borom at left guard and Bobby Lawrence replaced Hyrin White at left tackle. In the team’s last game, White returned to the starting lineup, while Borom slid over to left tackle in place of the injured Yasir Durant.
Durant told reporters he plans to return to the field against Troy, but even still, Odom said he doesn’t yet know who the team’s starting five will be on the offensive line. Cook and Borom are currently listed as co-starters at left guard. Same with Lawrence and White at right tackle. Dooley said the starters will be determined by how each player practices each week.
We’re moving guys around, we’re looking for the right five,” Dooley said. “I’m not sure we have that yet, and we might not have it all season, and so the guys that practice the best and play with the most consistency, they’re going to be in there playing the most.”
Even though the coaching staff has said that it would like to get to a point where it has five consistent starters up front, Odom said rotating reps isn’t a bad thing, especially if there is no dropoff when the backups take the field.
“I think it will be a rotation in there, which I think that’s okay,” he said. “I don’t feel like we have a drop off when one guy goes in and the other does not. So we’ll get a little more clarity, or I will, as we get toward the end of the week on kind of what will be the first five that go out there.”
Players (mostly) enjoy week off
A bye week is almost always welcome, as it provides players a reprieve from the grind of a season to heal and relax. The one negative is that, usually, once the bye week passes, there are no more breaks until the end of the regular season.
That’s not the case this year, though. Every college football team has two idle weeks this season, with Missouri’s next break coming the weekend of Nov. 2. The two byes divide the Tigers’ season perfectly into three four-game sections, which players say they enjoy.
“You got four games, bye, four games, bye, four games,” Durant said. “That gives you time to rest your body.
“At first I had to look at it twice,” said senior cornerback DeMarkus Acy. “I was like, we have two bye weeks? How is that possible? Coach tells us about the season, break it up into thirds now. It's just a good time to refresh your mind, refresh our bodies, rebuild the state of mind and come back hard. It's really rejuvenating.”
The only player who didn’t seem thrilled that Missouri got a week off from competition last weekend was senior punt returner Richaud Floyd, who joked that it allowed a couple players to pass him on the nation’s punt return leaders list. Floyd currently ranks fourth at 18 yards per return.
“It's great to get recovery, but I didn't like it because I got passed up with some punt return numbers,” Floyd said with a laugh. “But it's great to get off the field, watch some film, get on preparation for Troy.”
Odom congratulates Pinkel on Hall of Fame induction
Odom began his weekly press conference by congratulating a few new members of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame who were inducted Monday. Longtime Rock Bridge tennis coach Ben Loeb and basketball coach Jim Scanlon got shoutouts from Odom, who coached at Rock Bridge in 2001 and 2002. But the majority of Odom’s praise went to his predecessor, former Missouri coach Gary Pinkel.
Pinkel amassed a record of 118-73 during his 15 years at Missouri, making him the Tigers’ all-time wins leader. Odom served on Pinkel’s staff for 10 of those seasons. He pointed to a few areas in which Pinkel has made a lasting impact on the program.
“He had great influence, and his attention to detail and his structure and his consistency on the way that he did it — if you walk into our staff meeting here at 2:30, I do it just like he did it,” Odom said. “We start with the sports medicine report, with academics, go over practice notes. It’s just the way that I learned on how to run a program. And the thing that I admire, when you get tired of doing it, I think back to the things that every single day, he did it exactly the same way. … He believed in what he did, he believed in the structure of the program and the way that he ran it, and it’s had such a huge impact on the things that we still do today.”
Injury report
After its week off, Odom said Missouri is “as healthy as it has been.” The team looked the part at practice Tuesday, as no new players sat out with injury.
The Tigers could even get two players back on the field for the first time this season in defensive end Trajan Jeffcoat and tight end Brendan Scales. Jeffcoat, who has been sidelined since early August with an elbow injury, practiced in full Tuesday and appeared on the depth chart for the first time this season. Scales also practiced in full for the first time since breaking a bone in his foot during fall camp. Odom said Scales’ recovery is “ahead of schedule.”