1) Let's start this week with a nod to the person I'd consider the MVP of the first quarter of Missouri's season. Job well done, Corey Batoon. There were a lot of questions about Missouri's defense and they weren't unfair. Blake Baker had overseen a pretty impressive overhaul in two seasons and the Tigers had lost five players to the NFL off that side of the ball. Through three weeks, Mizzou is playing better defense than it did at just about any point last year. The first two weeks were impressive in that back-to-back shutouts are always impressive, but Batoon hadn't faced a team that could stress his defense at all. You don't really have to come up with a master plan when you're just better than the other team at every position.
Mizzou still had a talent advantage on Saturday against Boston College, but it was far less pronounced. And the Eagles were the first team that brought in players who could strain a major conference defense. Thomas Castellanos ran for more yards than any quarterback who didn't win the Heisman Trophy last year. He'd started this year with six touchdowns and no interceptions. Missouri's defense of him was the reason the Tigers won the game.
Batoon, quite simply, bet against Castellanos as a passer. He came in with a plan to keep the BC quarterback in the pocket. The way Eli Drinkwitz described it was if you rush past a mobile quarterback, you're basically playing 10 on 11 at that point. So the plan was for Missouri to never get further upfield than Castellanos. If you have a pocket QB, you can afford to rush around him. Get a little further upfield and come back for the sack. You do that with Castellanos he's going to run into the spot the defensive end just vacated. So Missouri simply played contain on him, gave him time to throw and bet on him making a couple of mistakes. And he did it. He had two interceptions. They were both brutal throws. The first, to Tre'Vez Johnson, got Missouri back in the game. The second, to Dreyden Norwood, kept momentum with the Tigers.
There's a very simple but almost always overlooked fact in college football (and honestly in most sports): More games are lost than won. Missouri didn't force the issue. Batoon didn't ask his defense to go win the game. He asked it to allow Castellanos to lose it. And that's exactly what happened.
2) But it wasn't just the effort on Castellanos that impressed on Saturday. Boston College came into the game with three other players who had run for at least 100 yards through the first two weeks. Here are those players per game averages in the first two games:
Treshaun Ward: 20 carries, 132 yards, 6.5 ypc, 0.5 TD
Kye Robichaux: 25 carries, 112 yards, 4.5 ypc, 0.5 TD
Turbo Richard: 19 carries, 102 yards, 5.3 ypc, 0 TD
Here's what they did against Mizzou:
Ward: 6 carries, 21 yards, 3.5 ypc, 0 TD
Robichaux: 6 carries, 9 yards, 1.5 ypc, 0 TD
Richard: 1 carry, 3 yards, 3.0 ypc, 0 TD
As a group, the BC running backs were averaging 173 yards per game and 5.4 yards per carry coming in. Against Mizzou, they had 39 yards and 2.6 yards per carry. They were less than half as productive against the Tigers as they had been against Florida State and Duquesne.In the first quarter, Boston College ran the ball 13 times for 45 yards. In the rest of the game, BC ran 13 times for a yard. One yard. The Eagles averaged 0.76 yards per rush for the final three quarters of the game. Even if you take away the two sacks of Castellanos, Missouri allowed 2.4 yards per carry for the entire afternoon. You can't play run defense better than that against a team that wants to run the ball.
Long story short: It is often said that a defensive coordinator wants to make his opponent win left handed. Batoon did that against BC. If the Eagles were going to beat Missouri, it was going to happen because they threw the ball well enough to do it. They didn't.
3) The defense through the first three games is the main reason I'm adjusting my expectations for this team. Well, one of two main reasons.
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