I handed out some offensive grades for the season this morning, now let’s look how the Missouri defensive groups performed this season.

Like I did with the offense, I'll grade the defense on the curve of expectations and comparison to last year, while taking into consideration what returned from last year's team.

The Tiger pass rush had 27 sacks, 21 quarterback hits and 129 hurries for 177 total pressures or 13.62 per game.

Just to compare, last year’s pass rush had 39 sacks 33 quarterback hits and 152 hurries for 229 total pressures or 17.62 per game.

So definitely a step back as the Tigers replaced six of the 10 players with the most pass rush attempts from last year (Darius Robinson, Jayden Jernigan, Realus George, Josh Landry, Nyles Gaddy, Ty’Ron Hopper).

Johnny Walker led in total attempts both years, while Kristian Williams and Joe Moore were top 10 both seasons. Chuck Hicks fell out of the top 10 in pass rush attempts.

You might be able to tell since Moore only played in five games, 10 is a big amount for this list. Realistically, the main pass rushers stopped after four, with two extra in the rotation.

I’ll give you a look at the list and number of attempts.

Walker (286), Williams (257), Zion Young (241), Chris McClellan (237). Then you get Sterling Webb (135) and Eddie Kelly (121), then a major fall off to Jahkai Lang (63), Jalen Marshall (51), Marquis Gracial (49) and Moore (49).

So when we cut it down to the main six, you end up with 16 sacks, 12 quarterback hits and 93 hurries.

And that’s mostly Walker with 9.5 sacks, four quarterback hits and 30 hurries.

The pass rush took a step back this year and most of the production came from Walker, but the group got the job done in key moments late in the season.

Grade: B-

The Tigers allowed 1,771 total rushing yards this season for an average of 136.2 per game and 4.1 per attempt. Mizzou opponents scored 15 touchdowns on the ground.

If you take out lost sack yardage, the Tigers allowed just about 2,000 rushing yards.

For comparison, the 2023 defense allowed 1,600 total rushing yards for 123.1 per game and 3.8 per attempt with eight touchdowns allowed.

The Tiger run defense was generally fine throughout the year, but when it was bad, it was really bad.

Texas A&M rushed for 236 yards against the Tigers after Mizzou hadn’t allowed 150 in a game and had three games of less than 100 allowed in the first four games. Then after games of 95 and 110 allowed, the Tigers gave up 271 to Alabama. They allowed 122 and 109 to Oklahoma and South Carolina, respectively, then allowed 147 to Mississippi State and 148 to Arkansas.

So a bit worse down the stretch before allowing 166 to Iowa in the Music City Bowl.

The Tigers had a lot of good individual games, but some severe blow ups in important ones. They were also credited with 58 missed tackles on run attempts, but Marvin Burks (10) is the only one with more than five as an individual. That total of misses gives them a miss on 11 percent of all opportunities (527 total attempts).

Just for comparison, 2023’s Tiger defense missed 70 tackles in run defense for a miss on 13.4 percent of all opportunities (522).

So, shockingly, a step up in run-defense tackling.

OK, other than tackling, a definite step back in run defense from last year, but because of how much production the Tiger defense had to replace from last year, including a new defensive coordinator, a slight step back was expected. Though the blow-up games played major roles in the disappointing portions of the Tiger season.

Grade: C+

Overall, the Tigers allowed 198 completions on 325 attempts (60.9 percent) with 14 touchdowns allowed and seven interceptions. Tiger opponents averaged 181.31 yards per game through the air.

That yardage allowed per game amount puts the Tigers at 18th in the country.

For comparison, Mizzou allowed 250 completions on 406 attempts (61.6 percent) with 22 touchdowns allowed and nine interceptions last year when the secondary included multiple future NFL draft picks.

I know it didn’t feel like it, but statistically, the Tiger secondary was better this year than last year in everything but interceptions and batted passes (29 in 2023 and 23 in 2024).

The Tigers didn’t face an offense like last year’s LSU or Georgia. But also, Memphis put up 300 passing yards against the Tiger defense last year.

This year, the Tigers allowed 300 yards passing one time - South Carolina had 353 - and held teams under 200 yards eight times (Murray State had 27, Buffalo had 55, Vanderbilt had 178, UMass had 142, Auburn had 176, Oklahoma had 135, Mississippi State had 191 and Iowa had 131).

If you really want to stick to “the pass defense was bad this year” you can take out the cupcake opponents and say Mizzou only held opponents under 200 passing yards five times in nine games, oh no!

Only four SEC opponents and a Big 10 bowl opponent held under 200 passing yards!

The pass defense was generally good this year, even at the points early in the year when deep passes were a major issue, the Tigers still held opponents down for the rest of the game.

There were definitely areas it could have been better, like the deep passes and the Tigers missed 53 tackles on pass plays for a miss percentage of 19.6 percent. Not a good percentage, led by Triston Newson’s seven misses and five from Daylan Carnell, Nick Deloach and Burks.

But overall, the unit was good throughout the year.

Grade: B

The defense took a slight step back this year as was expected when it lost a strong majority of the production, multiple NFL draft picks and a defensive coordinator.

But overall, the Tigers allowed 30 points only three times, I’m sure it’s shocking to know those were the season’s three losses, and held teams under 20 points five times, but three of those were the cupcakes.

Texas A&M and South Carolina were terrible defensive performances, Alabama was its own thing because of the way the defense was set up after Brady Cook got hurt.

But otherwise, the defense was generally pretty good this season statistically. The issue was the offense wasn’t usually able to take advantage early in the game, so games were close in the end and needed to be won on the offensive side of the ball, which made the view of the defensive performances worse.

Grade: B

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