Barry Odom’s struggled following bye weeks at Mizzou. He thinks that changes Saturday

After Missouri’s win over South Carolina, Barry Odom was asked about MU’s next opponent, which has proven to be one of his toughest in his four years as the Tigers’ football coach: the bye week.

Under Odom, Missouri is 0-7 against FBS teams in games where it has more than a week to prepare, including two bowl games. While some football coaches, such as the Chiefs’ Andy Reid, have developed reputations for winning after a bye, Odom has the opposite track record. When asked about it, Odom didn’t hold back about his need to change.

“I know I’m not very good coming off of a bye to this point,” Odom said. “I know it’s been well documented. That’s why we’re changing our routine. We’re going to treat it like we’re going to play next Saturday.”

Now Missouri goes into Saturday’s 3 p.m. home game against Troy seeing if any of Odom’s changes helped MU. The Tigers opened as 25 1/2-point favorites over the Trojans and have an additional bye week in November before their Nov. 9 game at Georgia.

In previous years, MU’s bye weeks were very relaxed as coaches spent the whole week on the road recruiting, while players had general practices and workouts. Local players would travel home on weekends.

After the South Carolina game, Odom went right into game prep for Troy and had MU practice throughout the week, with the entire coaching staff waiting until Friday to recruit. Missouri also spent the bye week self-scouting, focusing on areas it would like to improve.

MU defensive end Jordan Elliott said the Tigers’ bye week was completely different. He said players can feel rusty coming into a game week after having the previous week off, which can carry over into the game.

“We had a sense of urgency last week and we carried it over to this week,” he said.

A win over Troy would mark Odom’s first against an FBS team following a bye, even though the Trojans play in the Sun Belt, which isn’t in a Power Five conference. While the Trojans are a completely different team than Georgia, it will give Odom some kind of measuring stick to see if MU responded better to two straight weeks of game prep.

Senior linebacker Cale Garrett said Odom didn’t put too much on the Tigers’ plate. Odom broke up the amount of scouting MU did on the Trojans so the team had fresh material for this week.

“It doesn’t feel as if we had a bye week last week,” Garrett said.