Getting into a detailed analysis of a Missouri vs. Alabama football game is like breaking down a fight between a 10-year-old boy and his 13-year-old brother. The 10-year-old might be a real scrapper, but the 13-year-old can just place his palm on his younger brother’s forehead and wait patiently until the little guy exhausts himself swinging at air. Then the older brother can sit on his sibling’s chest, dictate the terms of capitulation and — depending on his benevolence — exploit his superior position with personal flourishes up to and including forced exposure to flatulence.
Fortunately, Nick Saban was above all that.
Sooner or later this season, Missouri will find some fellow 10-year-olds, maybe even some 9-year-olds. Ideally, the Tigers will eventually turn 11 or 12 themselves. But at the moment, Eli Drinkwitz is fighting for little scraps of turf in his players’ heads.
Drinkwitz showed SEC speed scampering down the sidelines when Dominic Gicinto was tackled inbounds with eight seconds left in a 25-point game. Drinkwitz was desperate to call timeout to give his team a few more shots at the end zone. Even when there is no hope of winning, there is still a game within a game. The stakes are pride and confidence. Perhaps those between-the-ears levels could be manipulated ever so slightly with a backup quarterback’s 7-yard scramble for a touchdown on the game’s final play.
I’ve often wondered if there is a difference between high-level athletes and the rest of us in their mental response to success or failure, if maybe that is part of what separates the two camps, along with the whole size, strength and speed thing.
Imagine the best compliment of your life that you never heard. Sounds pretty good, right? But to hear the compliment, you also have to hear the most hurtful insult ever said behind your back. Would you accept that offer?
No way.
You could offer that trade at a 100-1 ratio and I would still turn it down. The solitary insult would retire me to a darkened bedroom with a Leonard Cohen album under one arm and a soon-to-be-soggy pillow under the other, and I would remain in that pit of self-loathing for weeks, emerging only to shuffle to the kitchen for a sad bowl of soup and a fresh box of Kleenex.
But that’s me.
High-level athletes are just as sensitive, but they seem eager to seek out their doubters and use that disrespect as fuel. If you watched the Michael Jordan documentary last spring, eight of the 10 hours were devoted to recaps of every affront he ever suffered — real or imagined — and Jordan, stiff drink at the ready, got to relitigate the past and dunk on his enemies one last time. He gave the impression that without those doubters, he would have been just another 6-foot-6 guy with a 48-inch vertical leap.
On Monday night, when Patrick Mahomes put away Baltimore with a late touchdown pass, he counted to four on his fingers as he approached the sidelines. His peers ranked him fourth in an offseason poll of the 100 greatest players in the NFL. He had just thoroughly outplayed the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson, who was ranked No. 1. So amid the intensity and euphoria of a big victory on Monday Night Football, Mahomes, who is an MVP, a Super Bowl champion, an owner of a Ferrari, a co-owner of a Major League Baseball team, a man with a $500 million contract, a man about to marry his high school sweetheart, a man with a baby on the way, a man in his youthful prime who has it all … was wringing the only chopped liver he could find for every drop of bile it contained.
I guess when your professional performance is judged by scoreboards, you can’t stop keeping score.
On Saturday night, the final score of 38-19 was closer than the oddsmakers expected, but it was also closer than the game really was. Saban was in control of the scoreboard, and because Alabama got so far ahead so quickly — 35-3 early in the third quarter — he yanked some starters quicker than usual. That allowed the Tigers to tack on two late touchdowns, including one on the last play of the game.
The scoreboard was beside the point by halftime, so I will limit my critique to four brief points.
It was easy to pick out the Tigers who knew they belonged. Linebacker Nick Bolton and safety Tyree Gillespie weren’t content to just make tackles. They were cutting loose and delivering big hits on their big-name opponents. Those guys could start for Alabama. They are probably the only Missouri players who could start for Alabama, but two is better than none. I also thought safeties Martez Manuel and Joshuah Bledsoe acquitted themselves well. And for true freshman cornerback Ennis Rakestraw to not get totally exploited in his first start against that crew of future NFL first-round pick receivers was impressive, too.
With the above niceties noted, the Tigers still got picked apart when starting QB Mac Jones was in the game. A lot of that can be directly pinned on the defensive line, which generated no pressure until the game was out of reach. It’s been a long time since Missouri had a defensive end who caused a sleepless Friday night for an offensive tackle. I know the scheme has changed since the Gary Pinkel era, but it’s also true that the defensive ends are bigger and slower and haven’t been very disruptive since Charles Harris left in 2016. That is several consecutive years of recruiting failure to not find a quicker athlete at defensive end — even an undersized one who could be a situational pass rusher.
Shawn Robinson was a more accurate passer and less self-aware runner than I expected. He took some negative-yardage plays in which he badly misjudged his own elusiveness. Overall, though, he was reminiscent of Kelly Bryant — a solid QB who isn’t going to singlehandedly win or lose a game for you. I am interested to see if he can make the speed option work against less impressive SEC defenses, because it did not work whatsoever against the Crimson Tide. It needs to be a reliable short-yardage choice to avoid relying on a shaky offensive line to win at the point of attack.
This is my annual plea to get Tyler Badie on the field more often at the same time as Larry Rountree, either as a second running back or a slot receiver. Badie coming out of the backfield with a linebacker trying to cover him will always be a winning formula. I liked the way Drinkwitz used Jalen Knox in the slot, and Badie could do that stuff, as well. Ruling out the offensive line and quarterback positions, there are five offensive spots left, and Badie is one of the five best skill players. Missouri ran 75 offensive plays, and Badie was on the field for only 24 of them.
That’s more than enough lightly informed analysis for one week. Kudos to the Tigers for not crying “uncle” in the fourth quarter when the Crimson Tide were sitting on their chest, and now we move on to fairer fights and a chance to see if any of the positivity from end of the Alabama game carries over to Tennessee.
