Ten Thoughts for Monday Morning
If you missed it, catch my ten thoughts after the win here. There will be some more Mizzou specific stuff in this post every Monday morning and we'll branch out to some other things in the later stages.
1) Saturday's win was shocking. Some of you said we shouldn't have been surprised Missouri won. Maybe a few of you even believed it. Good for you. But most didn't think there was much of a chance and those people shouldn't be made to feel stupid. LSU was a 14.5 point favorite, a number that would have been higher had the game not moved from Baton Rouge to Columbia (it opened around 18 and rose to around 20) or if it had been known more than three hours before kickoff how many players Mizzou was missing.
Anyway, it's the first time in at least 23 years Mizzou has won a game as a two-touchdown underdog (probably more, but I don't have data going back further. Maybe by the end of the year this LSU team isn't going to be very good (sub .500 is possible and maybe even likely when you look at the schedule) and this win won't be as stunning as it seemed in the moment, but it's definitely a surprise.
Is it the most surprising Missouri win we've seen? Let's think about some others.
Georgia in 2013 is probably the gold standard. We weren't sure how good Mizzou was at that point in time, we thought Georgia was great, the game was in Athens, James Franklin got hurt. I remember giving Mizzou a 5% chance to win on the message board.
The very next week the Tigers drilled Florida 36-17 in Maty Mauk's first start. It was surprising by the margin maybe, but Mizzou was only a three point underdog in that game. Some people bring up the 2010 Oklahoma game, but Missouri was ranked and, again, just a three point dog. You might say Nebraska in 2003, but that had more to do with the fact that Missouri hadn't beaten Nebraska in 25 years than it did anything else. The Tigers were every bit as good as the Huskers at that point.
I'd have to say Saturday's result might be the one that surprised me the most of any game I've covered here. The truth is, Missouri just doesn't pull off big upsets. Gary Pinkel did a great job here. But he did it by beating almost everyone he should, losing to most of the teams he was expected to and winning more than his fair share of the swing games (let's call those games where the spread is within a touchdown). Pinkel really didn't have many "Oh man, can you believe Missouri pulled THAT off?" games. In fact, Missouri hasn't really had many of those in 40+ years (Al Onofrio had quite a few of them, then balanced them out with some "Oh man, how did Missouri let THAT happen?" days and got fired for it).In terms of name brand opponents and point spread, Missouri's win on Saturday was the most unexpected I can remember.
2) The offensive line has gotten a good amount of credit from fans and deservedly so. I feel like after the first half against Bama, it' been pretty good. Missouri has allowed two sacks, five QB hits and 16 hurries in three games according to PFF College. One of those sacks, one of the hits and two of the pressures were attributed to Connor Bazelak (maybe that's determining the QB held the ball too long?). Here's how the rest of the linemen break down (snap numbers are only for passing plays):
Case Cook: 116 snaps: 2 hurries (also has 2 penalties)
Mike Maetti: 116 snaps, 1 hit (2 penalties)
Xavier Delgado: 116 snaps, 5 hurries (0 penalties)
Zeke Powell: 67 snaps, 2 hits, 2 hurries (1 penalty)
Bobby Lawrence: 49 snaps, 1 sack, 1 hit, 1 hurry (1 penalty)
3) You'll notice there's one lineman not listed. Larry Borom gets his own section.
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