Mizzou missing resilience lacks in loss to Aggies: 'There wasn't much of a response.'
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Fresh out of a cheesy ad for a dubious weight loss product, Missouri has undergone a 21-day transformation. But the results aren't particularly flattering.
The before, from the immediate wake of the Tigers' win over Boston College on Sept. 14 that involved coming back from a slow start to win, is a portrait of resilience.
"Today was not pretty, was not our best performance, top to bottom — but (we) really responded," MU coach Eli Drinkwitz said after beating the Eagles . "We hadn't been challenged all year, and (I) was concerned, with so many new faces, what that response would be. Today, I think you saw a team that's committed to each other, a team that responds, a team that's never out of the fight."
A week after that game, Mizzou held on in double overtime against Vanderbilt, letting that bout come down a missed field goal. MU spent its bye week working on third downs and red-zone offense, then a week prepping for the wrong Texas A&M quarterback.
Sure enough, three weeks later, what the Tigers lost is eye-catching.
They lost 41-10 Saturday to the Aggies, with their poll rankings and chances at making it into the College Football Playoff dropping in lockstep.
That's the after: A team that fell behind early in its first away game of the season only sank deeper.
"I mean, (we) come out on the first drive of the second half and we give up a 75-yard touchdown," Drinkwitz said after the loss to A&M, "so there wasn't much of a response."
It wasn't for lack of a ready-made setting.
Three weeks ago, the Tigers lamented that they weren't getting the spot on the national radar that they so dearly craved. ESPN's "College GameDay" spurned that MU-BC game three weeks ago, drawing the ire of wide receiver Luther Burden III.
"To me, it's disrespect," Burden said after that game, "not to have us on the big stage with the big TV cameras. I took that personal. I'm pretty sure everybody else in that locker room took it personal. We ain't going nowhere. We're here to stay."
They didn't get the "GameDay" treatment this weekend, but as the only matchup of Top 25 teams, Missouri-Texas A&M earned a visit from the "SEC Nation" pregame show on SEC Network and a national TV spot on ABC.
Burden was interviewed on "GameDay" during pregame warm-ups. Fellow Mizzou wide receiver Theo Wease Jr. appeared on the show, too, when he arrived at Kyle Field wearing the Aggies-branded blanket that someone — not affiliated with A&M, apparently — left in his room as a party favor from a cornerback whose nickname is "the Blanket."
Blanketed and bulldozed in the national spotlight, Wease didn't know where the team so ready to respond at a moment's adversity went.
"I don't know how to answer that," he said when the Post-Dispatch asked players what kept them from responding how they did a few weeks ago.
"I wouldn't say that something kept it from happening," defensive tackle Kristian Williams said. "I feel like it was just that we've got to lean more on our preparation."
He suggested that the Tigers could have used their bye week "a little more," and that their less-than-maximal use for the bonus prep time held them back in the game. Maybe so, but there are questions about what this Missouri team is or can be that now factor in more than one blown bye week or blowout.
In its three games against Power Four teams, Mizzou has scored 67 points while giving up 88. Quarterback Brady Cook has thrown for 676 yards and four touchdowns, which might be passable, but his picking up just 24 rushing yards in those three games has made him look rather one-dimensional. In fairness to him, MU's offensive line isn't doing a whole lot to help his case, allowing 10 sacks in those games.
The ground game that flourished against the Eagles and Commodores vanished against the Aggies, in part because such a steep deficit required Cook to keep rolling out of the pocket and heaving the ball downfield.
A defense that opened the year with back-to-back shutouts has made up for lost time when it comes to allowing points.
It probably will take a performance of a lifetime in Tuscaloosa at the end of the month — even after Alabama's loss to Vanderbilt — or some help from teams not even on Missouri's schedule for the Tigers to make it into the College Football Playoff. They've got a get-right game next Saturday against a Massachusetts team that has only beaten Central Connecticut this year, which likely won't do much to answer the questions or assuage the concerns.
"Just go back to work," Wease said of what the team will do next. "It's the same recipe."
Drinkwitz, even while declining to engage in talk of Mizzou's national stature or what Saturday's defeat does to its goals for the season, seemed to think the stakes are a little bit higher than that. His postgame message in the locker room wasn't quite that of a campaign on the brink, but certainly a season that has bumbled along to a fork in the road.
"You got one of two choices. You can fall apart or you can dig deep and find the resolve to get better," Drinkwitz said. "The season really starts today, and how we respond will determine what kind of football season we're going to have.
"At the end of the day, this is one loss. And it's a tough loss because you're embarrassed by the performance — I'm embarrassed by the performance. But it's just that: It's one game. There's really a whole heck of a lot of football left, and it's going to be up to us to either seek comfort in placing blame or have the resolve to get it fixed."
Mizzou beat writer
