Saturday was a unique circumstance, especially considering our modern conference scheduling era:
Missouri was playing a conference opponent that had no chance of beating them.
Sure, the Texas A&M defense was all that it was hyped up to be and certainly did great work against Missouri’s passing offense. Austin Simmons achieved a measly 50% completion percentage only after completing his last throw of the day and averaged 5.3 adjusted yards per attempt, his worse A/YPA of the year. Yes, that’s even worse than his performance in the Troy game.
But Texas A&M’s offense was absolutely pathetic. I knew there had been regression since the halcyon days of Collin Klein in the coordinator chair, but A&M’s offensive line was leaky, their backs had no ability to break away. and Marcel Reed had accuracy issues that were reminiscent of Isaiah Marshall from kansas, wherein the receivers would find open space and the ball was incapable of being reliably delivered anywhere near their vicinity.
It was pathetic.
And while I’m shocked at how inept the Aggies were on offense, it also reassured me that there was no way that Missouri was losing that game. The postgame win expectancy from Bill C’s SP+ echoes that sentiment, calculating that the performances that Mizzou and A&M put out on Saturday ends up in a Tiger win 99.8% of the time.
But sports are weird, and college sports are particularly weird. Saturday’s win was an excellent, team win by Mizzou but also a terrible showing by a declining opponent. A&M’s defense forced a season-high four 3-and-outs, but so much of Missouri’s offensive plan was revolving around “protect the ball, run out the clock” once the 2nd Half kicked off. A&M put the lock down on Mizzou’s receivers but got worn down trying to tackle an inefficient Jamal Roberts who then used the Missouri Running Back Power of “I AIN’T TIRED BITCH” and ran rough shod over their defense in the final two quarters.
It was not a great Missouri offensive performance, but it didn’t need to be against this opponent. In the eternal boxing match that football forever pulls from, Mizzou simply dodged or blocked most hits while landing a few key jabs, never knocking their opponent down, and winning on points.
It worked on Saturday. I don’t think that approach will work on any other opponent – minus maybe Oklahoma? I’m not even counting Arkansas – going forward.
Yes, you’d like to see more from an offense that put up 45 on a former Top 10 opponent but getting to take it easy-ish against an overmatched opponent when you, as a team, are super banged up is a nice respite, especially before playing yet another Top 10 opponent on the road.
But don’t think what we saw on Saturday was a winning formula. Most other SEC teams will be able to move on Missouri’s defense and build a lead if the Tiger offense gets stuck in the mud. Aka the Mississippi State experience.
Here’s the advanced box score:
Neither offense was elite but Missouri’s did enough over sustained blows. The Tigers outgained the Aggies by 2.2 yards per play, generated one more scoring opportunity while averaging nearly 4 points more per opportunity, and wound up being a little more efficient than their counterparts. A +1 in the turnover category helps tremendously, especially since one of those occurred with A&M starting 14 yards away from the end zone.
An oddity: both teams averaged 5.2 yards per play on 1st-down, and Mizzou’s average 3rd-down distance was 7.2 and A&M’s was 5.8. Missouri’s 3rd-down conversion percentage: 37.5%; A&M’s: 27.8%.
Texas A&M’s offense is otherwordly bad.
When Missouri Has the Ball
Jamal Roberts was slightly more efficient than he usually is, finishing with a season-high in-game success rate of 44.1% (thanks to an excellent 4th quarter). That’s not Hardy-levels of efficiency, but it’s better than his usual. Which is good, since Missouri’s passing offense was gummed up by a secondary that was prone to getting burned if they got beat… and didn’t really get beat.
In the post-game press conference, Austin Simmons was happy to be frank about the passing issues, specifically to Cayden Lee, when he said that A&M opened the game with man coverage on Lee, but once Lee broke that big touchdown, A&M stopped singling him up and rarely ran straight man. That was enough to cloud the passing windows, but of course Drinkwitz and Lindsey had decided at that point to simply not throw it anymore, which worked this time. The passing game had a career day against Florida, and the running game had their moment against A&M.
It’s been great to see this offense be able to pivot and counter punch based off of what the defense is doing, and that willingness to pivot certainly gives me hope that they will rarely be pinned down for long against defenses this year.
But the slow starts continue, specifically in the 1st Quarter, and while I don’t know how the team can fix that, I’d like to see them do so.
Generate Explosives
Goal: 10 explosive plays created
Actual: 11 explosive plays created – 7 rushes, 4 passes (238 total yards)
Winner: Missouri
Stay Out of 3rd-Downs
Goal: 45% success rate (or higher) on 1st- and 2nd-down
Actual: 37.0% success rate on 1st and 2nd-down (20 successful plays on 54 1st- and 2nd-down plays)
Winner: Texas A&M
Finish Your Dang Drives
Goal: 5 points per scoring opportunity
Actual: 5.4 points per scoring opportunity
Winner: Missouri
When Texas A&M Has the Ball
This is now the third time this season that the Missouri defense has been the benefactor of inconsistent quarterback play. Isaiah Marshall of kansas was able to dance all around the backfield to avoid pressure but would under or overthrow his wide open receivers. Florida’s Aaron Philo had no capability to carry his team when the run game stalled, and certainly didn’t have the process or power to hit his targets reliably. And now Marcel Reed emulated the Marshall experience, horribly missing (or never seeing) wide open receivers on at least six different instances that I can recall. Just as a reminder, Missouri’s defense is excellent, and most likely elite at run defense. But this Tiger secondary will allow opposing receivers to find holes, and while Mizzou has benefitted from lackluster passing accuracy, Trinidad Chambliss, Arch Manning, Gunner Stockton, and Kenny Minchey will not be missing targets like the opening slate of quarterbacks have done recently.
Make ‘em Throw
Goal: 40% or less rushing success rate
Actual: 21.1% rushing success rate
Winner: Missouri
HAVOC!
Goal: At least a 20% havoc rate
Actual: 27.3% havoc rate
Winner: Missouri
The Little Things
A&M wins in starting field position, punting, and field goal accuracy, while Missouri sweeps Yards Per Play, Scoring Opportunities Generated, Points Per Opportunity, and the turnover balance. I will point out, though, that even with two fortuitous starts – the 86 and 60 yard lines, essentially – A&M won the averaging starting field position count by merely six yards. That says a lot.
On the demerit side, BY MY LUCKY STARS IT’S ANOTHER GAME WITH ONLY FIVE PENALTIES FOR MISSOURI. AND ONLY 45 YARDS! Meanwhile, A&M is over there breaking the rules seven times, most of them in a holding fashion because Mizzou’s d-line was whipping the Aggie o-line so bad. You love to see it.
Extra Points
Ignore the success rates for a second: what a wild swing in number of plays run by quarter. Texas A&M ran more plays in the 4th quarter than they did in the first half! And only ran six total plays in the 3rd-quarter! Meanwhile, Mizzou was fairly consistent until only attempting to score on 8 plays in the 4th.
Ok, now look at the success rates. It’s not super impressive for Missouri but at least it’s consistent. A&M…yuck, man. Not having a quarterback that can throw the ball is such a bummer.
In my preview I mentioned how important I thought it would be to stay in 1st and 2nd-down situations to avoid 3rd down against the creative defensive mind of Mike Elko. And while the success rates weren’t quite where I wanted them, the yardage total certainly was! Meanwhile, the further A&M got into the down counter the less productive they became. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of this sport would understand how that would be a bad thing.
Texas A&M generated 17 yards in the 2nd and 3rd quarter. What a wild stat. Second wild stat: 66.4% of A&M’s total yardage came on the last 14 minutes of their total possessive time.
Here’s a fun exercise I just decided to do: Eli Drinkwitz has talked about “the middle 8” as an effective game management tool, wherein a football team tries to capitalize on the last 4 minutes of the first half and first 4 minutes of the second half to stack possessions and either build on a lead or cut into one. This week’s middle 8 performance:
14 plays, 109 yards, 35.7% success rate, 1 blocked field goal, 1 made field goal.
Just as Cayden Lee’s first down explosion against Florida was the totem of an excellent passing day for the Tigers, so too is Jamal Roberts’ 8 1st-down generating day indicative of the reliance on the ground game against A&M. Roberts and Lee (via Simmons) remain the most reliable players to move the chains, and Donovan Olugbode’s 3rd place ranking in this stat spent the week losing pace. The defenses don’t get any easier from here so it’ll be necessary for other guys to noticeable step up in this stat.
Conclusion
Eli Drinkwitz is nigh unbeatable at home and hasn’t lost to an unranked team since 2022. The college football zeitgeist all thought that Texas A&M would be much better than it has shown, so what was once viewed as a doozy of a matchup probably gets tossed in the scrap heap of “unranked team at home” win categories.
But winning is good! Especially against bad teams! Definitely at home!
Eli now gets the chance to make a dent in the pile of games that he doesn’t own as many tokens from: ranked team on the road. And an opposing Heisman-caliber quarterback, to boot. Get ready!