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West Virginia possessed the ball at the Missouri 32-yard line, threatening to erase Missouri’s 3-0 first quarter lead, when, in linebacker Nick Bolton’s words, the football “just kind of landed in my lap.” Mountaineer quarterback Austin Kendall threw wide of his intended receiver, who batted the ball into the air. The ball then found Bolton, who initially bobbled it before corralling his first interception of his career and the first of Missouri’s season.

Even though an illegal block penalty negated most of the return, the defense stormed to the Missouri sideline in celebration after the play. Three plays and 40 seconds later, quarterback Kelly Bryant found tight end Albert Okwuegbunam for a 26-yard touchdown and Missouri seized the momentum for good. The Tigers ultimately cruised to a 38-7 victory for their first win of the 2019 campaign.

Following Missouri’s gutting Week One loss at Wyoming, the Tiger coaching staff gave each player a laminated piece of paper the size of a business card that read “Takeaways=Victory!!” Against the Cowboys, Missouri turned the ball over three times and didn’t force any takeaways of their own. Wyoming scored 17 points off those turnovers.

Apparently, the cards worked. In Week Two, the script flipped. Missouri forced three turnovers and didn’t give the ball away. Ronnell Perkins intercepted a pass that looked to have been tipped by linebacker Cale Garrett on the possession following Okwuegbunam’s first touchdown, and Bolton put an exclamation point on the performance with a second interception, which he returned for a touchdown, in the fourth quarter. The three takeaways led to 21 points.

“When you walk out of a game and you’re plus-three in the turnover margin, that’s always going to be good for us,” head coach Barry Odom said after the game. “Like last week, we were the opposite, we were minus-three. There’s a fine line between winning and losing.”

It wasn’t just the takeaways that looked to be the opposite of Missouri’s defensive performance against Wyoming. After surrendering 297 yards rushing last week, Missouri’s defensive front dominated West Virginia’s offensive line. The Mountaineers gained 30 yards on 32 rushing attempts. Even if you discard the Tigers’ three sacks, West Virginia averaged 1.8 yards per carry. Overall, the Mountaineers accumulated just 171 yards of offense, and 78 of those yards came after Missouri had removed its starters from the game.

Those results might say more about a West Virginia offense that only rushed for 34 yards in its season-opening win over James Madison than they do about Missouri’s defense, but the game felt cathartic for the Tigers nonetheless. After the game, Odom went out of his way to praise defensive coordinator Ryan Walters, a popular scapegoat after the season-opener, and the rest of the defensive assistants. On Bolton’s interceptions, Odom said Walters “called it on the headset, … and then it played out just like he called it.”

Both Odom and his players insisted the defense didn’t do anything different schematically than in Week One. The defense played its base 4-2-5 defense nearly every snap, not even bringing extra defensive backs onto the field for third down and long situations as it normally would. Instead, they attributed the improvement to attitude and execution.

“No alignment, no scheme (change),” defensive end Chris Turner said. “We ran the same defense that we ran last week. Just focused on alignment. Alignment and assignment every play. Just playing with way more effort than we did last week.”

“We came out there ready to dominate start to finish,” said defensive tackle Jordan Elliott. “We didn’t have lulls in between, kind of like last week, where we started off strong then kind of died off. So it’s just about consistency.”

Players noted a few other factors that led to a better defensive performance, such as better tackling and discipline. Both helped prevent West Virginia from breaking any big gains on the ground. Last week, Missouri missed 13 tackles, according to Pro Football Focus, and allowed rushing touchdowns of 61 and 75 yards.

The improvement was most evident on the defensive line, which seemed to have at least one player in the West Virginia backfield on every snap. Missouri finished the game with three sacks and 13 tackles for loss, which netted a combined 68 yards lost. A week ago, the defense had two tackles for three yards lost and no sacks.

“They did their job at a very high level,” Bolton said of the defensive line. “It cleared things up for me and Cale and everybody else to fit, and we had a very good game today.”

“Any time you can control the line of scrimmage, you can control the game,” said Elliott, who had two of those tackles for loss. “That plus the takeaways our guys had on the back end, those things just really all came together, made us look like a good unit today.”

Missouri players weren’t surprised that the defense finally generated some turnovers. Bolton, who joked that Saturday proved he had the best hands on the defense, said the unit regularly spends time doing drills to simulate interceptions, especially off tipped balls. The Tigers nearly came down with three or four more picks that were ultimately dropped by defensive backs.

When the defense was able to come down with an interception, the impact was visible. Players mobbed the player responsible on the sideline and jumped up and down in celebration. Offensive and defensive players alike said Missouri was energized by the takeaways. As the card read, they did indeed equal victory.

“It’s big time any time you get any takeaway, any turnovers, just for the morale of the team,” Elliott said. “It’s not just for the defense, it’s for the whole team. That gives the offense motivation to go score. … There’s nothing negative that can come from us taking the ball.”

Bryant caused a bit of a scare late in the third quarter when the first-team offense took the field without him. Taylor Powell lined up under center while Bryant sat on a bench on the Missouri sideline, a white towel draped over his head. The Tigers led 31-0 at that point, so a quarterback exiting the game normally wouldn’t have caused much concern, but Bryant had taken hard hits on quarterback runs on both of the final two plays of the previous drive and trainers surrounded him on the sideline.

Bryant never returned to the game and did not speak to reporters afterward, but Odom did not express concern about his health in his postgame press conference. A team spokesperson said Bryant simply felt overheated.

“He said they nailed him pretty good,” Odom said of Bryant. “… But he brushed himself off, said ‘I’m good.’”

Before he left the game, Bryant’s toughness was on full display. On multiple occasions, a West Virginia pass rusher charged toward what looked like a sure sack, but Bryant escaped and used his scrambling ability to extend plays. On a second down and 17, he twirled out of the hands of a defender, rolled right and found tight end Daniel Parker Jr. for a 19-yard gain. A few plays later, he side-stepped an unblocked blitzer and coolly hit Okwuegbunam in the end zone for a 16-yard touchdown, the second scoring connection between the two players in the game.

“Some plays you think they’re just done for and he gets there and he just runs around,” slot receiver Barrett Banister said of Bryant. “That changes things for us, and it brings a great aspect to our offense.”

Overall, Bryant completed 17 of 25 passes for 160 yards and three touchdowns. A week after throwing an interception and losing a fumble against Wyoming, he did not turn the ball over.

Perhaps Bryant’s most impressive escape act didn’t actually count. With Missouri in the red zone in the second quarter, West Virginia’s Darius Stills came untouched through the middle of the offensive line and wrapped Bryant in his arms, driving him backward. Bryant remained on his feet and, after about a second, spun out of Stills’ grasp, heading toward the left sideline, where no one stood between he and the end zone. By that point, however, the officials had already blown the play dead, claiming Bryant’s forward progress had been stopped.

The “sack” proved inconsequential, as Missouri ended up scoring a touchdown on the drive, but the play impressed Odom.

“He’s going to be able to extend the play,” Odom said of Bryant. “He’s going to break tackles, he’s going to make moves, he’s going to make throws. … I can’t put too many restrictions on him You hold your breath a little bit. He gets outside the pocket and then all of a sudden it’s a 17-yard gain.”

Missouri’s third and final touchdown of the second quarter, which gave the Tigers a decisive 31-0 lead, came just two plays after Sills’ sack. Bryant rolled right and found Banister, who caught the pass, absorbed contact from a defender and snuck the ball across the goal line.

It was the first career touchdown reception for Banister, who has played regular snaps since earning a scholarship during the offseason. Banister, who had five receptions all of last season, has already matched that total with five catches for 37 yards through two games in 2019.

“It was a thrill,” Banister said of the touchdown. “I’ve been looking forward to that. Kelly made a great throw, we had great protection and all that. It was a team effort. It was a lot of fun.”

If there’s one cause for concern after Saturday’s win, it’s penalties. Missouri got flagged a whopping 10 times for 100 yards during the first half alone. The Tigers had 10 or more penalties in four of 13 games last season but only eclipsed 100 yards as a result once.

The good news for Missouri fans is that the Tigers played the second half without drawing a flag. Still, Odom said after the game that he intends to watch film of the calls so he can correct the behavior that drew them.

“I want to see what they are by film and do we need to correct the habit and fundamental of the technique and then we’ll look at if there’s someone that continues to show up,” he said.

In a bit of a surprise, sophomore cornerback Jarvis Ware did not play Saturday. Ware was announced as a starter before the game, but Odom said Ware sprained his ankle during the team’s practice on Wednesday. He did not provide a timetable for Ware’s return. Junior Christian Holmes started in Ware’s place.

Sophomore defensive end Trajan Jeffcoat and junior linebacker Aubrey Miller Jr. also did not participate in the game. Jeffcoat is still recovering from an elbow injury suffered on the first day of fall camp, Aug. 2. Miller injured his knee against Wyoming and is expected to miss several weeks.