So last week in this space, I told you it would be okay to panic if Missouri lost to Purdue.
Well, the Tigers didn't just lose to Purdue. They got run off the field in one of the five worst single performances I've ever seen out of a Missouri team. A lot of people asked if they quit and my reply was that it's tough to quit something you never started.
So, not that you need it, but, yeah, you can go ahead and reach for that button if you want to now.
I mean, when you lose 35-3 to Purdue (in a game where the Boilermakers didn't appear all that interested in scoring or anything other than staying healthy and getting on the bus for the last 20 minutes), I'm not sure what reaction would be more appropriate. When you look down the rest of the schedule, only two games appear to be as winnable as the one Missouri just lost by 32 points.
As I wrote after the game, everything is in play for this team, including 1-11.
The "fan frustration of the week" seems to be that no one on the team is panicking. At least not publicly. The closest they've come to anything that could be interpreted as panic is making the move every struggling team makes: They held a players-only meeting.
Other than that, it's a whole lot of "we've got to execute better," "we're going to keep working hard" and "we've really got to get in the film room."
Offensive coordinator Josh Heupel: "We have to execute at a higher level. We’ve just got to do the normal everyday things at a higher level. That’s the disappointing thing, but also the thing that can take you through the other side of it. Nobody’s got to do anything extraordinary, you’ve just got to do the ordinary at a higher level. We’re capable of doing that.”
Head coach Barry Odom (in response to the question, Other than execution, can you pinpoint exactly what went wrong last week?): “Defensively, I’ll start there, we were able to get them into a couple third downs early on. One had a coverage breakdown, where a guy trying to do too much, had coverage on his man and for whatever reason fell off and took another guy. That opened it up for a big gain. On another one we had man to man coverage on the back on two linebackers and ended up losing him in the line of scrimmage and they completed a long screen. I think on one of the deep over routes early on, I think it was in the first drive to extend the drive, we didn’t have tight enough coverage. The quarterback made a nice throw. We didn’t play sharp enough to get off the field early and by the time we settled down and started playing a little bit it was already a three score game really. That compounding with not being able to win on the line of scrimmage offensively, not being able to get a first down in our execution. When you’re playing that way on both sides of the ball it doesn’t usually result in playing well enough to win one. That’s kind of where we were.”
So, execution. Because that entire answer is about plays that Missouri didn't execute.
Look, I hate coach speak and generic answers as much as you do. Probably more because I have to write them. Even if people don't mean them. Even if they aren't true and they know it and I know it.
But here's the thing that we media folk don't really want you to know: What they say doesn't matter. Coaches are experts in talking a lot and saying nothing. Barry Odom's as good as any of them at it. Players get media training before every season. Part of that (even if they'd never explicitly admit it) is how to answer questions without divulging any information or actually answering a question.
There are exceptions. Steve Spurrier told you what he thought. Honestly, so did Kim Anderson. Of all the criticisms you can lob at Anderson--and there is no shortage of valid ones--not telling the truth during interviews wasn't one of them. But largely, you can predict a press conference before it starts. Every team is big fast and strong. They're all balanced on offense and fly to the ball on defense. Every coach feels good about his team. Every player has room to improve and is improving. They say it, we write it, you read it, nobody really believes most of it or learns much from it. Lather, rinse, repeat.
That last paragraph may sound like I'm telling you there's no point to read what we write. And I'm really not. (PLEASE READ WHAT WE WRITE AND SIGN UP FOR A PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION SO THAT MY FAMILY CAN CONTINUE TO EAT AND MY OLDEST SON CAN STAY ENROLLED IN COLLEGE). The media's purpose is to provide fans a window into what's going on with their team and to give them a little more insight than they might otherwise have. And sometimes you get that. We try our best to give it to you.
But when a team is losing--especially as fantastically as Missouri did last weekend--there's really nothing they can say. Odom pounded the podium in frustration after the South Carolina loss and some thought that was a bad sign. He was much more calm and somber after the Purdue loss and some thought that was a bad sign. Dave Matter's story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Wednesday quoted wide receiver J'Mon Moore as saying "We can't blame the coaches for what's going on." Fans then took that to mean players are blaming the coaches and don't believe in them.
The point is, there's nothing they can say. Jason Reese told us they held the meeting on Monday to address the issue of "talking too much and not doing a whole lot." So they talked for a while about how they're talking too much.
I tend to fall back on a lot of things Gary Pinkel said and did because he's the only college football coach I've covered for more than a couple of seasons. There were plenty of fallback catchphrases Pinkel leaned upon. A couple seem appropriate here.
When his team was struggling and we asked him about the team struggling, he would often say "There's no magic wand." You can't just snap your fingers and fix everything. Week one it was the defense. Week two it was the offense and special teams. Week three it was everything. You don't just point to one player or one position or one factor and fix it.
The most common question reporters ask when things aren't going well is "How are you going to fix it?" When presented with this insightful query, Pinkel would usually offer up some version of "If we knew, it wouldn't have happened." It sounds funny, but it's true. If they could foresee the problems, the problems wouldn't happen.
In this whole "there's nothing to say" discussion, we in the media play our part too. I spent the better part of the second half Saturday talking to colleagues in the press box saying "I don't even know what to ask. What do you say after this one?"
At one point in talking to Drew Lock, I phrased a question like this: "I know this is a stupid question, but I don't know how else to phrase it. How do you come back from this?"
Yeah, it was a bad question. But there aren't any good questions at that point.
Here's what Lock said: "That is a tough question. It just comes with work ethic. I think we need to come in and treat every day like it's our last. If we start doing that, maybe things will flip around. I think we've really got to indulge in this film tomorrow, watch it, see what all happened, come back from it. There's nine regular season games left. If you win the rest of those nine, you're going to have a pretty good year."
In other words--in this case, those of J'Mon Moore--"I know we have so much talent and we work so hard. It’s kind of confusing for me right now. I can’t really grasp what it is, but all we can do is keep working.”
So that's it. They come back. They keep working. And they hope it gets better. It's boring. It doesn't placate anyone's anger. But what else can they say? Words don't matter. How they play matters. And they've got to start playing a whole lot better.
