TUSCALOOSA, AL--We will spend the next six Saturdays judging this Missouri football team. The cumulative grade will go a long way toward determining what the future looks like in Columbia. But Saturday simply wasn’t a day to make any sweeping judgments. The Tigers lost a game 39-10 that everyone knew they would lose and most expected them to lose by about four touchdowns.
Missouri was down a field goal to top-ranked at the end of a quarter. It was down 20 until the final play of the third quarter. Both marks are the closest anyone has come to the Crimson Tide this season at that point in time. Power Five programs are beyond moral victories, but the simple truth is there really aren’t any other types of victories to be had against the machine Nick Saban has built in Tuscaloosa.
“As good as I’ve ever gone against and as I’ve ever seen,” Missouri head coach Barry Odom said. “You see it on video and there were things that you wondered how it would look up close and personal. It was as good. And maybe even better.”
It’s not really popular to give the other guys credit or to admit that they are just better than you. Even when it’s true. And while it’s admirable for players to say, as Missouri’s Kevin Pendleton did “I expected to win this game,” that wasn’t really based in reality on Saturday night.
The Tigers are now .500 on the season. They make no bones about where they need to go from here.
“We already know what we bring to the table,” DeMarkus Acy said. “We run the decisions right now. For us to be 9-3, that’s the goal.”
Is it realistic? The Tigers certainly think so.
“The last three weeks have been tough. They’ve been tough on everybody,” Odom said. “I don’t want to be around people that don’t have the belief that we’re going to go get that done. That has not ever not one time crossed my mind.”
“We know we can play football," Drew Lock said. "We know we’re good at it. We’re here for a reason, playing against teams like that in stadiums like that for a reason. We’ve just got to go show it.”
They have been here before. In fact, they were actually in a significantly worse spot just a season ago, sitting 1-5 after a 53-28 loss to Georgia. At the halfway point of another season, the Tigers are facing major questions and many doubts, most notably from their own fanbase.
“We’ve been through worse than this, for sure,” Lock said. “It just hurts a little more with the, I’m not even going to call it expectations, just how we know we can play.
“We know we could have played better these last three losses. We know we could have pulled out wins and that’s why it hurts worse.”
So how do they respond? The most accurate assessment came from a visibly frustrated (for the second week in a row) Larry Rountree III. The sophomore running back said, “Right now, at this point, we just need to stop talking. We need to stop talking and just play. That’s really where we’re at right now. That’s the honest truth. We don’t need to be talking anymore.”
And while it’s no good for guys like me who are charged with talking to these players and coaches and getting their insight and passing it on, Rountree is right. What Missouri says doesn’t matter. The goals for this season are clear: Missouri needs to show progress from a year ago. With Lock and Terry Beckner Jr. and Terez and Emanuel Hall and others on their way out, they need to offer hope for the future and tangible signs that this thing is headed in the right direction.
What does that mean? It means at least five wins in their last six games. It means beating a good team, i.e., one that will play in a bowl game some time after Christmas that you have heard of before. It means going on a run like they did a year ago against a schedule that is significantly tougher than the one they faced then. It means doing it, not talking about it.
“We’ve been through some stuff,” Kevin Pendleton said. “But saying that is a lot different than doing it. Myself included. Myself especially. I have a lot of work to do. I have a lot of ground to get better in. I have a lot of things to improve. I hurt this team tonight. I did.
“There’s a lot of progress that needs to be made and will be made by next Saturday.”
“We’ve got to go do it,” Rountree reiterated. “At this point right now, we’re being tested. Just like last year. It could be worse. But right now, backs against the wall, we just gotta be quiet and play.”
Missouri could walk out of Tuscaloosa a wounded team. The Crimson Tide is capable not just of beating teams, but of ruining their seasons. They are a college football juggernaut; Saban’s best team in a decade in which he has dominated college football unlike any coach in the modern history of the game.
But the Tigers could also burn this one like Odom did the box scores of a month’s worth of games last year. They could do what so many seem incapable of doing and put it in perspective. Admit you took the field with the best team in college football, took your beating and moved on.
Can they do it? The next six weeks will tell that tale. And answer a lot about the future of the program.
