Yuck-tober: Mizzou looks to avoid another midseason football swoon vs. Alabama
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Missouri faces recurring October collapse after promising early-season starts.
- Win vs Alabama would boost CFP case and reshape Missouri’s season trajectory.
- Coach Drinkwitz must solve late-season timing issues to avoid another collapse.
Right around this time of the season, the Missouri Tigers football team typically starts to find itself in trouble.
Halloween scares come early for MU. Since establishing themselves as contenders in the Southeastern Conference over the last couple of years, the Tigers have suffered a loss in its first matchup of October. Each loss has correlated with the first major test on Mizzou’s schedule.
Much like in 2025, Missouri began its 2023 campaign with a 5-0 record. That included a 38-21 win on the road over unranked Vanderbilt — proving MU could take care of business away from Memorial Stadium. But when No. 23 LSU came to Columbia the following week, the undefeated streak came to a close.
Led by future Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels, LSU scored a whopping 49 points on No. 21 Mizzou to walk away with a win. While Missouri recovered and finished the season with a strong record and big bowl victory, that game sticks out as a missed opportunity to take things further.
The 2024 season was an entirely different case. The Tigers took to the road for the first time, heading to College Station, Texas, for their first true test, against No. 25 Texas A&M. Just a slight underdog, Mizzou underwhelmed in a way it couldn’t recover from for the rest of the season.
The Aggies rolled through the Tigers in a 41-10 clinic. Missouri dropped 12 spots in the AP poll the next week and never came close to those heights again. It suffered two more losses in SEC play, against South Carolina and Alabama. The loss to the Crimson Tide came by a 34-0 score on the road in, you guessed it, October.
Mizzou isn’t the only team to struggle when the calendar turns to October. Maryland started out with an undefeated record entering the month in 2013, 2016, 2021 and 2023, only to crumble in the weeks before Halloween. It could be on the same trajectory this year; the Terrapins jumped to a 4-0 start before blowing a 20-0 lead at home in a 24-20 loss to Washington on Saturday.
The Tigers have a chance to defy the trend in a rematch with the Crimson Tide. It will be the first time Columbia has hosted an AP top-15 matchup since No. 5 Missouri fell 21-0 to No. 4 Texas back in 1979.
No. 8 Alabama has swiftly recovered from its dropped season opener against previously unranked Florida State. It has won its last four games, including a 24-21 victory over Georgia on the road and a 30-14 win over Vanderbilt at home.
Instead of succumbing to a treacherous part of their schedule, the Crimson Tide have built themselves back into a championship favorite under coach Kalen DeBoer.
This could be considered coach Eli Drinkwitz’s most important regular-season game as head coach of the Tigers. Alabama might not be the insurmountable dynasty it once was under Nick Saban, but it is still one of the most prestigious programs in college football.
If No. 14 Mizzou can take down the Crimson Tide at 11 a.m. Saturday, it will enter a new hierarchy.
The timing, though, brings back bad memories. Missouri’s loss to Texas A&M last year came after a bye week. The Tigers sticking at home could be a key difference. After all, they exited their second bye week of 2024 by notching a 30-23 win over Oklahoma at Memorial Stadium.
“Each bye week is uniquely different based off the circumstances of the team, what the team needs in order to continue that season,” Drinkwitz said Tuesday. “Last year — we’ve already addressed it — it was a little bit more to do with the first road trip than necessarily the bye-week plan.”
Mizzou certainly isn’t favored over Alabama, but it is in more of a position to win compared to 2024. The expectations are high now that it is the No. 14 team in the country.
Any talk of this being a trap game for the Crimson Tide has quickly been dismissed.
“They’re 5-0,” DeBoer said of Missouri. “They’re a ranked team.”
The Tigers have a chance to make their case for a potential CFP bid a lot easier down the road. A win would likely lift them into the top 10, and approaching back-to-back road games against Auburn and No. 20 Vandy with an undefeated record would give them plenty of cushion. The course of the rest of the season could be decided.
Mizzou will either pass this test or fall victim to this cruel time of year in Saturday’s duel. As musical group De La Soul once said, “The stakes is high” in this one.
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