Deliberate Missouri offense works out winning formula

The numbers paint a grisly picture for Missouri’s offense in SEC play.

During conference games, the Tigers rank dead last in total offense at 250.2 yards per game and also average an SEC-worst 4.05 yards per play.

Missouri’s passing offense also ranks last in conference play (110.8).

If the four specials teams/defensive touchdowns at Florida are wiped away, only Vanderbilt averages fewer than the 15.6 points per game the Tigers’ offense generates against SEC competition.

Of course, those struggles are sugarcoated by a sterling 4-1 conference record, which has Missouri alone in first place in the SEC East division.

The defense deserves the lion’s share of credit. The Tigers rank second in conference play in total defense (299.6) and pass defense (178.0) and third in scoring defense (18.2) and run defense (121.6).

Missouri coach Gary Pinkel cautions against becoming too dependent on even the stoutest of defenses.

“You’ve still got to score points,” Pinkel said Monday during his weekly news conference. “You’ve still got to outscore your opponent.”

That will be the goal again at 6:30 p.m. Saturday against Texas A&M at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, where the Tigers put an eight-game road winning streak, which includes six SEC wins, on the line.

Despite the struggles, Missouri insists there was no special focus on the offense during the recently completed bye week.

“Execution and game planning,” Pinkel said. “We had a couple practices and I thought we got a lot of work done, but it’s just the consistency of playing and practicing.”

Part of the MU offense’s uncharacteristic production level can be explained by the slower tempo at which the Tigers are playing this season.

Since 2004, Missouri has averaged at least 70 plays per game each season, but the offensive game plan has become more deliberate in 2014.

The Tigers average only 65.7 plays, a number that dips to 61.8 plays per game in SEC action.

“We made a little bit of an adjustment there toward running the football, leaning on that a little bit,” Pinkel said.

MU averages a play every 25.4 seconds, which is the slowest the offense has operated since 2003.

Contrast that with 2005, when Missouri averaged a play every 21.2 seconds during Brad Smith’s senior season, or 2007, when the Chase Daniel-led Tigers’ average was 21.8 seconds.

It’s been an at-times arduous process to figure out what works offensively, but there’s still no panic on the part of Missouri, which totaled 385 yards against Vanderbilt and 320 yards against Kentucky after bottoming out with sub-150-yard performances against Georgia and Florida.

“We just watched film,” quarterback Maty Mauk said when asked about the offense’s approach last week. “It’s a bye week, so we don’t want to go out there and do too much — just lay low, lay back and relax, watch some film. That’s where you get the most stuff.”

Sustaining drives has been critical for the Tigers in the last two games.

Missouri, which was seven of 37 on third down in its first three conferences games, has converted on third down 19 of 36 times in the last two weeks and boasts seven scoring drives of eight plays or longer compared to 11 during the first seven games combined.

Now, the Tigers hopes that kernel of building momentum carries over through the off week.

“We got our legs back under us, got rested up,” senior running back Marcus Murphy said. “We needed a week to sit back and relax and just watch some football, but we’re going to bring the intensity down to Texas A&M.”

This story was originally published November 11, 2014 at 12:42 PM with the headline "Deliberate Missouri offense works out winning formula."