1) Somebody was going to pay for Saturday and that somebody ended up being Jethro Franklin. I want to be clear here, I'm not saying Franklin was made a fall guy or that his firing was unjustified. Missouri's defensive line has been very bad this season. Whether it has been the worst part of the defense is up for debate. There is plenty of room for company in that discussion. But it has been bad.
I said on Saturday I wouldn't fire Steve Wilks. My reasoning was very simple: When you fire the defensive coordinator you picked after five games, that's a pretty clear admission of a huge mistake on the most important decision you have had to make and it puts the head coach in the crosshairs. Not that Eli Drinkwitz is or would have been in danger of losing his job. That's not my reasoning. But Wilks is Drinkwitz's hire. He's the guy Drinkwitz either got rid of Ryan Walters for or at least didn't fight to keep Walters for. He's Drinkwitz's hand-picked second in command. You don't want to have to admit you messed up that hire five games in. Firing a defensive line coach simply doesn't have quite the same repercussions. The die-hards notice it. Everybody writes a story on it. But Saturday might have been the first time most Missouri fans have even heard Jethro Franklin's name. The level of angst and scrutiny simply isn't the same. This is just basic strategy. You fire from the bottom up in sports. If you can get things going in the right direction by making a small change, it's much better than having to make a much larger change, which getting rid of Wilks would have been. So this is the first shot at a fix. I have no idea whether it will have any real impact or not. If it doesn't, Wilks is probably up next. And if that happens, then there are more questions about Drinkwitz headed into year three than there would have been otherwise.
Side Note: Stop suggesting Dave Steckel, Craig Kuligowski and Justin Smith as the defensive line coach. They're not going to happen. Drinkwitz knows plenty of people and he'll hire someone. And it's most likely not going to be someone you know from previous association with the program. Maybe it's Al Davis, who is serving as the interim. Maybe it's somebody else. Who knows? But there's a whole world of football coaches out there who have never been at Mizzou before who are probably qualified.
2) We need to stop the "Well, they just don't have the talent" stuff. I'm not saying Missouri has elite defensive talent. It doesn't. We've been pretty clear about that. Tell me which of these teams has more talent than Missouri: Hawaii, Texas State, Rice, Louisiana-Monroe, New Mexico State, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Akron, UNLV, Western Kentucky, UCONN, Utah State, Memphis, Louisiana Tech, East Carolina, Tulane, Kansas, South Florida, Georgia Southern. The answer is none of them. Those are the 19 teams directly ahead of Missouri in total defense. Missouri has more talent than every single one of them and I don't have to look at recruiting rankings to know that's true. The Tigers aren't trotting out the collection of freaks that Georgia is on defense or anything, but they most certainly aren't the fourth least talented team in the country. Not even close. Illinois, which has recruited significantly worse than Mizzou over the last decade, and has a defense run by the guy Missouri decided wasn't good enough, ranks 30 spots ahead of the Tigers in total defense. And even that's not a good defense. It's just a heck of a lot better than Missouri's.
Stop with the "they just don't have the guys" excuse. It's foolish. They have the guys to be a lot better than this. It's up to Wilks and Drinkwitz to figure out how to get that done. And that means Saturday. Not five weeks from now. The days of 290 rushing yards and 500 total yards need to end immediately.
3) So just how bad are these numbers we're seeing from the Tigers?
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