'Our standard's higher': No. 7 Mizzou not satisfied with winning via missed Vandy field goal
COLUMBIA, Mo. — In the not-too-distant past, Missouri found catharsis in a game-deciding field goal make. On Saturday, relief came from a miss.
The made kick in question was a defining moment of Mizzou's breakout 2023 season: Harrison Mevis, good from 61 yards as time expired to sink Kansas State. That was a game the Tigers weren't particularly expected to win but managed to.
This year's field goal attempt of note — this time, an opponent's miss — could become a defining moment in its own right. In the eyes of some, including those in the MU program, it should.
Saturday's dance with disaster was as much as the Tigers could take.
No. 7 Mizzou was expected to beat Vanderbilt in its Southeastern Conference opener, and it did, 30-27 in two overtimes . The game-winning play didn't have much to do with Missouri, beyond the fact that it had 11 players on the field: Commodores kicker Brock Taylor missed a 31-yard field goal in the second overtime when the visitors needed three points to stay alive.
There were shades of jubilation on the home sideline — MU coach Eli Drinkwitz saying "Wow" over and over, for example, as the Tigers rushed the field.
But unlike last year's upset over Kansas State, Missouri's fans stayed in the stands. The sellout crowd — the ninth in a row, dating back to that K-State game — looked more shell-shocked than celebratory as they flowed out of the Memorial Stadium gates.
The same was true of Mizzou players.
After spending most of the game not quite looking like his usual self, quarterback Brady Cook looked downtrodden afterward. Running back Nate Noel looked like he'd finally been able to take a deep breath — though in fairness, that might have been more about his 199 rushing yards than how nervy the game was.
Noel had a career night, the only offensive player for whom that was true. Late in the fourth quarter, it looked like Missouri's prided offense having the ball last might determine the result of the game.
But instead, that unit stalled on a 4th and 1 and punted the ball to the Commodores, ceding control in exchange for the chaos of overtime. The duo of Cook and wideout Luther Burden III connected in dynamic fashion for a one-play touchdown drive in the first overtime, only for the offense to regress into a three-and-out and field goal in the second extra period.
"I don't think we did well in overtime," Drinkwitz said. "We kicked another field goal in the red zone. We got to take a hard look at what we're doing in the red area and figure out why we can't sustain drives."
That left the Tigers' scoring talent as spectators on the game's deciding play.
"We're just watching, we're just waiting to see what happened," Noel said. "I think a couple of fingers were crossed."
Cook couldn't watch — not out of any superstition or nerves, but because of game-script necessity. He was buried on the sideline preparing for college football's ultimate roulette wheel: triple overtime and beyond, which consists solely of sudden-death two-point conversion plays.
That's the fate Mizzou seemed to have given itself.
"Honestly, I was just getting ready for the two-point plays," Cook said. "I was definitely pleasantly —"
He paused, verbally hesitating over where he wanted to throw the end of his sentence.
"Um, you know, happy," Cook said.
If his positivity doesn't come off as convincing, it's because just about any Mizzou-related positivity stemming from Saturday's win wasn't relayed with much conviction.
There were no party plans on Cook's post-game calendar. He seemed ready to get on with processing a game that teetered on the brink of problematic, if not catastrophic for the Tigers' ambitions.
"Tonight, tomorrow is just going to be a lot of watching the tape," Cook said "Watching it over and over and over and over and over, to see what we can do better, to see how I can be better."
That's a need to be better five times over, per his count, which might be the degree of improvement that Mizzou will need to avoid falling flat through the rest of the 2024 season.
Missouri has a bye week next, which Drinkwitz agreed is coming at the right time. Three of the Tigers' next four games are on the road, and three of them are against SEC opponents: at Texas A&M, at UMass, homecoming against Auburn, at Alabama is how the month of October stands.
"I'm not concerned about that," Drinkwitz said, leaning into the duality of what Saturday means to his program. "What I'm concerned about is our team enjoying a win, being 4-0 — which is good as we can be, record-wise. But we're not as good as we can be, play-wise."
That, in a nutshell, is what separates this Mizzou season from past ones — certainly under Drinkwitz, but with other coaches at the helm, too. There's a budding chase for a spot in the College Football Playoff.
Every game comes back to that in some capacity, no matter how much hammering the CFP point gets. There's an anxiety-inducing spiral to be experienced when considering what would've happened to Missouri's playoff chances had it lost to Vanderbilt.
But going too far down that rabbit hole would be detaching from reality because the Commodores missed a field goal they probably should've made and the Tigers won a game narrowly that they probably should've won comfortably.
It's not unfair to frame it that way. Nor is it melodramatic to lay this foundation for Missouri's bye week and next eight games: Wins are wins, but the '24 Tigers want a little bit more.
"We are held to a different standard. Our standard's higher," Cook said. "We expect more, I expect more. That's just where we're at. We're not settling for anything this year. So when we're not playing to that standard that we have set, that we all agreed upon, that we know we can play at, it's a little disappointing."
Mizzou beat writer
