Notebook: One-two backfield punch helps Mizzou knock out Vandy

The lead storyline at Faurot Field Saturday had nothing to do with Missouri’s rout of Vanderbilt. With the majority of its specialists unavailable due to COVID-19 quarantines, Vanderbilt suited up women’s soccer player Sarah Fuller at placekicker. When Fuller took the field and kicked off to start the second half, she became the first woman to ever play in a Power Five football game. The 11,053-person crowd greeted her with an ovation.

Missouri made sure that would be Fuller’s only appearance. Vanderbilt never crossed the Missouri 30-yard line, while the Tigers advanced into Commodore territory every time it touched the ball in a 41-0 blowout. The win improved the Tigers’ record to 4-3, its first time above .500 under first-year head coach Eli Drinkwitz.

Both Missouri’s offense and defense both dominated. The Tigers out-gained the Commodores 603 yards to 196. Missouri never punted; the Commodores did so seven times. But the most welcome sight for Missouri fans had to have been the team’s offensive eruption, led by a backfield that included both a 100-yard rusher and 100-yard receiver.

The Tiger offense had struggled in each of the past two games, especially on the ground. Missouri ran for 98 yards in last week’s win over South Carolina, and just 40 in a loss at Florida. The team averaged 2.4 yards per carry across the two games. In all, Missouri gained 549 total yards in its past two contests, a number it surpassed during Saturday’s game alone.

The Tigers routinely gashed Vanderbilt on the ground, the offensive line opening up cavernous holes and the tailbacks bouncing off would-be tacklers. Excluding sacks, Missouri gained 246 rushing yards, averaging 6.8 yards per attempt. Eight different rushing plays gained more than 10 yards. Larry Rountree III led the way with 160 yards and three touchdowns. That helped open up the field for quarterback Connor Bazelak, who completed 30 of 37 passes for 318 yards.

“It was huge,” Bazelak said of the running game. “Opened up throwing lanes on third down, second down. … Just proud of (Rountree) and proud of the offensive line.”

Rountree, who last week passed Zack Abron for the most rushing yards by a running back in Missouri history, recorded the 12th 100-plus yard game of his career, and his second of the season. That boosted him ahead of Abron in another category, 100-yard performances, where he trails only Brad Smith’s 18.

Rountree started the scoring when he darted through a big opening for a seven-yard touchdown in the first quarter. In the second, he made perhaps the most impressive individual play of the game. He appeared to be bottled up for a short gain on the right side of the line, but then he broke a tackle, reversed field and sprinted for 21 yards. The next snap, Rountree scored from seven yards out once again.

“He just refuses to get tackled,” Drinkwitz said of Rountree. “The play is never over until you physically get him to the ground. He’s not going to give an inch, and he plays the way a running back is supposed to play. Every yard, he’s going to punish the defense and refuse to go down, and that’s why I love him.”

His yardage total may have been a season-high, but Rountree had to share the spotlight in the backfield. Junior Tyler Badie, who Drinkwitz had said in recent weeks deserved more touches, made some highlight-reel plays as well, both on the ground and through the air.

Badie caught seven passes for 102 yards, becoming Missouri’s first 100-yard receiver since Johnathon Johnson eclipsed the century mark on Oct. 12, 2019, against Ole Miss. Late in the second quarter, he caught a short pass on a tunnel screen, juked a defender and sprinted for the end zone, only to be tackled at the one-yard line. Following the 28-yard gain, Drinkwitz rewarded him with a handoff, and he plunged into the end zone. Badie accounted for the final 67 yards of the 80-yard scoring drive.

“It’s awesome for the quarterback because you can throw it two yards and you end up getting 20, 25,” Bazelak said of Badie. “He’s just a great running back, running the ball and catching the ball. We had plays designed for him, not any more than we did the past couple weeks, but we found him this week, and he made plays.”

Both Badie and Rountree attributed their success to the Tigers’ reinforced offensive line. Right tackle Larry Borom and left guard Xavier Delgado returned to the starting lineup Saturday. Neither player had seen the field since leaving Missouri’s Oct. 24 win over Kentucky with leg injuries.

Players said that both took the field at less than 100 percent, although you wouldn’t have known it from the result. Rountree said that Missouri actually called the exact same play on all three of his touchdowns, the third of which came from 21 yards out in the fourth quarter. All three times, the right side of the offensive line opened up a sizable hole, leaving just one defender between Rountree and the end zone.

“They played their butts off today,” Rountree said of the offensive line. “Every play that I scored on, it was the same play, but it was just like the blocking from my o-line was so good that I was able to just make one guy miss and it was a touchdown.”

After the game, Drinkwitz said the running game wasn’t quite perfect. He pointed to a couple short-yardage situations the Tigers failed to convert on the ground. But Saturday showed how much Missouri’s offense as a whole benefits once its backfield gets going.

“You get those guys running downhill, they gotta respect it,” said Borom. “So the pass protection gets easier, and then certain run plays get easier as well. Once you get them going downhill, the whole game is just totally different.”

After receiving the opening kickoff, Vanderbilt’s offense actually showed signs of life. The Commodores got a 10-yard run from tailback Keyon Henry-Brooks on their first snap, then four more yards from Henry-Brooks and a five-yard completion. But on both third and fourth down and one, Missouri’s defensive front stuffed Henry-Brooks, forcing a turnover on downs.

Drinkwitz pointed to the stop as a tone-setter for a defense that played “lights out.” Each of Vanderbilt’s following five drives ended in a punt.

“It was third and one, didn’t get it, fourth and one, didn’t get it, and we went down and scored,” Drinkwitz said. “That gives your defense just a confidence, your offense a confidence.”

Prior to Saturday, the one thing Vanderbilt had actually done well in recent weeks was move the ball, particularly through the air. True freshman quarterback Ken Seals had thrown for more than 300 yards in three of the team’s past four contests. After averaging just 8.7 points per game in its first three contests of the season, the Commodores had averaged 22.5 across their past four games prior to Saturday.

Missouri shut Seals and the rest of the offense down. Seals completed 11 of 19 passes for just 79 yards. The Commodores benched him in favor of Mike Wright in the second half. As a team, Vanderbilt threw for just 103 yards and ran for 93.

“We kind of just mixed it up on them, really,” linebacker Nick Bolton said. “Just mixing in a couple coverages. Everybody had zone eyes, eyes on the quarterback, and he kind of just took us to the ball a lot. So as long as we could get there and get no yards after the catch, we felt like we were going to be pretty good throughout the game, and it ended up good for us.”

As usual, Bolton led Missouri in tackles with nine stops, all solo. But the key to the shutout might have been the players in front of him. Regular contributors Kobie Whiteside, Markell Utsey and Trajan Jeffcoat all returned on the defensive line after missing last week’s contest. With them back on the field, the defensive front routinely pushed Vanderbilt’s line backward. The Tigers recorded four sacks and 10 tackles for loss in the game.

“Man, they were vicious up front today,” Bolton said. “They caused havoc in the run game and on pass downs. It kind of makes it easier for everyone else on the football field, even the back end included.”

The performance marked a second consecutive domination for the Missouri defense, which this week had Ryan Walters back on the sidelines. The third-year defensive coordinator missed last week’s matchup while quarantining after being exposed to COVID-19. After giving up 514 total yards and 41 points in a loss at Florida, Missouri has allowed a total of just 479 yards and 10 points across its past two contests combined. Asked if this is the unit he expected to see after the Tigers finished 14th nationally in total defense last season, Drinkwitz said it’s “pretty damn close.”

“One-hundred ninety-six yards, no points, one touchdown the last two games, that’s pretty good,” Drinkwitz said. “... You got a pretty good, special unit right now.”

Even though he was coaching Appalachian State at the time, in the leadup to this week’s game, Drinkwitz didn’t shy away from reminding his players what happened last time Missouri took the field against Vanderbilt. The Tigers, ranked No. 22 at the time, lost 21-14 at Vanderbilt last season, their first of five consecutive losses. Drinkwitz printed out copies of headlines from the loss, such as “Knocked out in Nashville,” and hung them in the team room and every player’s locker.

Drinkwitz challenged his players during the week to “do something about” the loss. The message seemed to land. Badie, who said he was pictured in one of the stories, said he “took it personal.”

“I just knew I had to do something about it,” he said, “and this team, we had a chip on our shoulder from the beginning, just knowing what they did to us last time, knocking us off.”

Bolton kept the print-out in his locker all week. With last year’s loss in mind, he said the defense made its goal not just to win, but to pitch a shutout. Mission accomplished.

“I thought about it every day,” Bolton said. “Just seeing their coach was dancing on Homecoming after they won. You saw it all over social media, you saw ‘Vanderbilt stuns No. 22 Missouri,’ it’s just on your mind. We looked at it all week. It’s one of those things that we didn’t want to let it happen again. We came out with that on our mind, we wanted to be focused in, locked in. We wanted the goose egg at the beginning of the game.”

Saturday’s game didn’t provide many highlights for Vanderbilt, but the opening kickoff of the second half will likely lead sports shows for the rest of the weekend. Sporting No. 32, Fuller took the field and lined up to kick off. Once the public address announcer said her name, applause rained from the stands. Fuller pooched the kick about 30 yards to the Missouri 35-yard line, where Mason Pack fell on it.

Fuller, who started at goaltender for Vanderbilt’s SEC Championship-winning women’s soccer team, said she was more nervous for last weekend’s conference title game than her football debut. She got a call from the Vanderbilt coaching staff on Monday asking if she’d be willing to try football. A COVID-19 outbreak sidelined the majority of the Commodore specialists — the team only traveled Fuller, punter Harrison Smith and one long-snapper — and with no students on campus due to Thanksgiving break, the coaching staff couldn’t hold tryouts for the kicking spot. Upon getting the phone call, Fuller said she’d be there within the hour.

Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason said the kickoff was designed to be short, saying he wanted Fuller to do what she was comfortable doing. “She punched it exactly where she needed to punch it,” he said after the game.

That would be Fuller’s only action of the game, as Vanderbilt’s offense never made it into her field goal range. The longest kick she’s made in practice, she said, clocked in at 38 yards. She said she’d love to kick in a football game again and attempt a field goal or extra point “if they’ll have me.” Mason said she’d be welcome back.

“She could have very easily said no to this,” Mason said. “And instead, you know, man, she prepared all week. And she did what she was supposed to do. She was as prepared as anybody.”

* After taking the field with just 52 scholarship players at South Carolina, Missouri’s numbers improved quite a bit in the past week. The Tigers still had seven players unavailable due to COVID-19 quarantines, down from 11 a week ago, but didn’t have any new players test positive in the past seven days. The team also saw Borom, Delgado, Whiteside and Jeffcoat return after missing last week due to injury.

The seven unavailable players included quarterback Shawn Robinson, wide receivers Boo Smith and JJ Hester, defensive ends Sci Martin and Johnny Walker, defensive back Adam Sparks and defensive tackle Keion Wills.

* Robinson’s absence allowed true freshman quarterback Brady Cook to see the field for the first snaps of his career late in the second half. Cook completed all four of his attempts, including a 25-yard touchdown to Damon Hazelton that he placed perfectly. Drinkwitz said after the game that, after watching the touchdown, Bazelak joked over the headset that Missouri would have a quarterback controversy.

* Missouri did see one player leave Saturday’s game due to injury: wide receiver Jalen Knox. Knox, who leads Missouri in receptions on the season and caught one pass for 13 yards against Vanderbilt, left the game in the second quarter and didn’t return. Drinkwitz said Knox had a “little tweak” of his “lower leg.” “Hopefully it’s nothing,” Drinkwitz said, “but didn’t want to risk it.”

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