Up to Mizzou to show if loss to LSU was a ‘disconcerting signal’ or game to grow from
A few weeks back, the Mizzou football team rewarded its first home-sellout crowd in four years with a thrilling 30-27 victory over then-No. 15 Kansas State.
Harrison Mevis’ game-ending 61-yard field goal was brilliant in itself but also for what it suggested: a purging of the notorious north end zone, where MU’s late-game hopes have so dramatically gone to die, and brighter days ahead.
With Mizzou winning its next two games — in St. Louis (against Memphis) and Nashville (against Vanderbilt) — the Tigers improved to 5-0 for the first time since 2013. So the anticipation and energy were crackling on Saturday when 21st-ranked MU played host to No. 23 LSU.
Here was another announced sellout of 62,621, nicely accented by a north end zone so overflowing that fans in the grass didn’t merely surround the Rock M, but sat on the rocks themselves.
The scene was “beautiful,” left tackle Javon Foster said afterward. An “awesome atmosphere,” coach Eli Drinkwitz called it.
And, wow, all the more so when Mizzou shredded LSU for touchdowns on its first three drives to take a 22-7 lead.
If you didn’t know which team was the preseason No. 5 and which wasn’t even among the “other teams receiving votes,” you would have guessed the Tigers of MU over those of LSU.
And while it might seem the ballad of the loser to make that point after Mizzou wilted before collapsing in the fourth quarter to fall 49-39, the loss wasn’t so much about talent disparity — even considering the contrast in quarterbacks that we’ll get back to — as it was about Mizzou squandering opportunity utterly in its grasp.
That may or may not prove to be a consoling point. But at 5-1 with the bulk of its Southeastern Conference East division scheduled to be played, it’s the hinge on which this season will be defined:
For Mizzou to bust out of its near-decade of mediocrity since winning back-to-back SEC East titles — a 47-46 record from 2015-22 — and Drinkwitz to convert his stellar recruiting into similar results, MU has plenty under its control, but lots to fix.
In a game marked by Mizzou twice being called for “disconcerting signals,” a penalty I’d never heard of before that’s assessed for mimicking an offensive snap count, it remains to be seen whether this setback was, well, a disconcerting signal or a teachable moment.
Because Mizzou needs to clean up more than the gross misconduct of defensive end Johnny Walker Jr., who was ejected after committing a second personal foul and literally called out on an official’s hot mic with a sideline explanation that Walker had “walked by and spit on” an LSU player.
Asked about Walker, Drinkwitz didn’t specify but said the penalty was disappointing and “not representative of the way we want to play this game.”
But it wasn’t just the expectoration that undid the expectation of the early lead.
It was all this:
- An otherwise strong effort (395 yards) by quarterback Brady Cook was offset by two interceptions, including a 17-yard pick-six by — we are not making this up — Major Burns that put it away for LSU with 11 seconds left.
- Nine other penalties, including maybe the most pivotal of the game late in the fourth quarter. With LSU leading 42-39 and MU at the visitors’ 41-yard line facing third and 1, center Connor Tollison was nabbed for an illegal snap.
- A running situation became a passing down, and after Cook was sacked and fumbled, MU was staring at fourth and 32 with 1 minute, 15 seconds left. A desperation pass into a lateral fell well short, leaving Mizzou with scant chance by the time it got the ball back with 45 seconds left from its own 5 with no timeouts remaining.
- A defense that couldn’t contain or turn over LSU’s remarkable Jayden Daniels, who threw for 259 yards and rushed for 130 — much of which was collected after MU, to its regret, flushed him out of the pocket.
“As good as any quarterback I’ve gone against,” said Drinkwitz, who, in fact, recruited the Arizona State transfer.
That caliber of quarterback makes for a different dimension than MU has with Cook. But some key mistakes notwithstanding, Cook is a winner who has come into his own these last few weeks. He threw a number of gorgeous, pinpoint passes Saturday, made plays with his legs (such as a 12-yard run on third and 9) and is a gritty leader this team can get behind — and win behind.
In the locker room after the game, Drinkwitz faced the disappointment with his team but underscored that there’s a lot of season left ... and that its how it responds to that disappointment that’s ultimately “going to determine the fate of our season.”
But he also knows they lost because of ways they’ve been living on the edge — an edge that’s now going to be all the difference between a fast start easily forgotten and a sustained change in the direction of the program.
With the talent gap less and less distinguishable, it’s that thin line of discipline and detail that will be the signature of the season and the true trajectory of this program.
How MU learns from and pushes off of Saturday will be the reveal of where it really is — and whether this game was nonetheless part of a revival or a disconcerting signal in itself.
This story was originally published October 7, 2023 at 6:08 PM.