Penalties, other self-inflicted errors doom Mizzou

Throughout Missouri’s matchup at Vanderbilt Saturday afternoon, the Tigers saw their rhythm interrupted and the Commodores’ drives extended by penalty after penalty, mistake after mistake. It was the last of 12 flags that drove the final nail into Missouri’s coffin.

With 2:19 on the game clock and Vanderbilt facing third down at the Missouri 25-yard line, the Tigers used their final timeout. Even if Missouri got a stop, the Commodores would have to miss a field goal to keep the game in reach, but a first down conversion guaranteed that Vanderbilt would be able to bleed the clock dry.

Quarterback Riley Neal lined up under center and barked a dummy signal. For the second time in three plays, defensive tackle Jordan Elliott jumped. A flag flew, and a flat, uninspired performance by the Tigers came to an anti-climactic end. Missouri, which traveled to Nashville as a three-touchdown favorite, lost to Vanderbilt 21-14.

Entering the game, each team could not have been trending in different directions. Missouri had rebounded from a season-opening slip-up by winning five games in a row by an average of 27.6 points per game. The Tigers had clawed their into the AP Top 25 for the first time all season at No. 22 and sat atop the SEC East standings as the division’s lone unbeaten team in conference play. Vanderbilt, meanwhile, had won just one of its first five games — by seven points over Northern Illinois — and appeared to hit rock bottom last week when it lost by 24 points at home to lowly UNLV. The Commodore defense had been particularly bad, ranking among the bottom 25 nationally in scoring defense, total defense, run defense and pass defense.

But Vanderbilt’s defense stymied Missouri early and often, and the Tigers didn’t help themselves. After the game, both head coach Barry Odom and his players pointed to their own execution as the reason for the loss.

“It was just a matter of not executing,” said senior tackle Yasir Durant. “Vanderbilt, they were a better team than us. They came ready to play. And tonight they were just the better team.”

Missouri’s self-inflicted errors began in the first half. After each team started the game with two quick punts, the Tigers found a bit of a rhythm and drove the ball as far as the Vanderbilt 20-yard line. But after a false start penalty on slot receiver Johnathon Johnson and one of three Vanderbilt sacks on the game, the Tigers were left to attempt a 50-yard field goal. Tucker McCann missed wide left.

Odom admitted the series impacted the team’s momentum.

“Any time you’re in the position to maybe convert on a third down and you’ve got a penalty and then the next snap you miss a field goal, that’s draining,” he said.

On Vanderbilt’s following possession, another penalty, this one a pass interference flag on cornerback Jarvis Ware, kept the Commodore drive alive on a third down. Quarterback Mo Hasan, making his first start of the season, then rushed for 21 yards on a third and 15 and bellcow running back Ke’Shawn Vaughn capped the drive with a one-yard touchdown run.

Missouri responded with a touchdown of its own after Kam Scott turned a short crossing route into a 55-yard gain. But the lead was short-lived. Later in the quarter Vaughn caught a screen pass, broke a tackle and raced 61 yards for a touchdown. On the game, Vaughn accounted for 176 total yards and two touchdowns on a whopping 33 touches.

Linebacker Nick Bolton, who finished with a game-high 15 tackles, said the big play resulted from a “blown assignment,” and he blamed himself. As a whole, the defense limited Vanderbilt to 315 yards, but Odom said the unit missed too many tackles.

“I don’t think we tackled very well,” he said. “I thought there were times on the line of scrimmage that we had position, that we had him bottled up, so to speak, and didn’t make the play. We didn’t play winning ball.”

Missouri’s offense didn’t enter the red zone again until midway through the third quarter. The drive initially appeared to stall, but the Tigers got a gift when a penalty actually went their way. McCann missed another field goal, this one from 32 yards, but Vanderbilt’s Tae Daley drew a flag for running into the kicker. The five-yard penalty gave Missouri a first down.

Two plays later, starting quarterback Kelly Bryant handed any momentum right back to the Commodores. Bryant tried to fit a pass for tight end Albert Okwuegbunam into double-coverage. He overthrew Okwuegbunam and defensive back Allan George looked like the intended receiver, catching the ball and getting a foot down in the corner of the end zone.

“It was a bad read by me,” Bryant said of the play. “Just as simple as that. Shouldn’t have forced it, just check it down.”

The empty red zone trip seemed to signify to the crowd of 23,900, at least half of which wore Mizzou garb, that Vanderbilt might really pull off an upset. After the game, center Trystan Colon-Castillo said the Tigers’ two fruitless trips inside the Vanderbilt 20 loomed large in the defeat.

“I think we went down into the red zone twice,” Colon-Castillo said. “To come out with no points — we got down here, kicked a field goal, ended up missing a field goal — it hurts, without a doubt. We left a lot of points out on the field, which you can’t do.”

Missouri would get back into the game when Neal, who entered after Hasan suffered a head injury on a helmet-to-helmet hit by Missouri safety Tyree Gillespie, which resulted in Gillespie’s ejection, threw a pass right into the chest of linebacker Cameron Wilkins. Wilkins returned the ball inside the 10-yard line. On the next play, Larry Rountree III scored from six yards out.

But more penalties and missed tackles ultimately enabled Vanderbilt to answer. Early in the fourth quarter, reserve defensive tackle Markell Utsey gifted the Commodores 15 yards on an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, then Neal hit Cam Johnson on a short out route. Johnson broke a tackle from Ware and carried a couple defenders across the goal line for what proved to be the winning score.

Missouri’s offense responded with another drive that started out promising but ended in a McCann field goal pulled wide left. From that point, the Tiger defense, which kept the team in the game for most of the contest, appeared demoralized. Vanderbilt regained possession with six minutes on the clock. The Commodores marched down the field and whittled away the clock with seven straight run plays until Elliott’s second offsides penalty of the possession ended any hope of a comeback.

“Those guys just ran it down our throat,” cornerback DeMarkus Acy said, “simple as that.”

After the game, Missouri’s players and head coach seemed at a loss for answers about why the team had looked flat and why the offense struggled to move the ball. Everyone agreed, though, that penalties played a large role in the loss. The Tigers finished with 12 flags for 120 yards, both season-highs.

“You look at 120 yards of penalties, we won’t beat anybody when we do that,” Odom said. “We’ve got to take a hard, long look at that.”

“That’s probably the most disappointing part of this game, because that’s something we control completely, the amount of penalties we have,” added Okwuegbunam. “So definitely need to learn from those mistakes, and that simply just can’t happen again.”

Missouri’s mistakes were myriad, from penalties to missed field goals to problematic tackling to an untimely interception. In the end, though, Odom placed the blame on his own shoulders. He said he told his players as much after the game.

“If you look at four quarters of play, I think we got out-coached, and I think we got out executed the entire four quarters,” Odom said.