The Missouri Tigers continue to be the same kind of program, year after year.
This isn’t entirely a good thing, and in September, it’s definitely not a good thing. However — and there’s absolutely no snark here — being the same kind of program has worked out pretty well for Missouri in recent years. If the Tigers, under head coach Gary Pinkel, really are the same as they’ve been in 2013 and 2014, they’re on their way to another successful season in the SEC.
The problem, after a shaky (and that’s being generous) 9-6 win over the Connecticut Huskies on Saturday afternoon, is that this year could be different.
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Missouri lost at home to Indiana in September of 2014, throwing in the kind of clunker which you’d never expect from a defending SEC East champion. That result came from nowhere, and subsequent results over the rest of the season — Indiana failing to make a bowl game, the Tigers marching to a second SEC East crown — affirmed the contention that Hoosiers-Tigers was an aberration.
Therefore, you might think that Missouri’s narrow escape from Connecticut — sealed when the Huskies refused to kick a tying 42-yard field goal in the final minute of regulation, instead opting for a fake field goal which was easily snuffed out by the Tigers — rates as a considerable surprise. However, if we’re discussing what’s an aberrational result and what isn’t, it’s harder for the Tigers to say that this performance is out of character for them.
Indiana in 2014 turned into a loss. This game against Connecticut didn’t. However, in terms of quality of play and consistency of offense, this game actually might have been worse than last year. At least in 2014, Missouri’s offense showed a pulse in the second half, but in this game — as well as UConn competed on defense — Missouri’s offense scored on only one drive. There was never any prolonged stretch in which the Tigers showed they could get out of their own way.
You might look at film and say that what happened last year against Indiana exceeds this display against UConn in terms of ineptitude. On defense, that’s certainly the case — Missouri’s defense couldn’t have been much better against Connecticut. The Tigers were far worse against Indiana on that side of the ball.
On offense, though? This performance against Connecticut was plainly a tire fire, whereas last year’s Indiana loss was much more the product of failures from both Mizzou’s offensive and defensive units.
The one nagging element of all this for Missouri fans, even though their team is still unbeaten: With yet another year of experience for Maty Mauk under center, why is this September struggle bus still lumbering along a year after the Indiana game?
The truly puzzling aspect of Mauk’s identity is that when you put him in the cauldron of fourth-quarter pressure, and also in the November spotlight, he’s been golden for the Tigers. Septembers and first halves of games, though, agree with him the way a Republican and a Green Party member agree with each other.
Yet, this propensity of Mauk to struggle for much of a game and a season, only to deliver the goods in fourth quarters, Octobers, and Novembers, has lifted Missouri to a pair of 7-1 SEC regular seasons, complete with division championships and a transformed status in the college football world. Missouri’s slow September a year ago led to a prime seat at the college football table.
If another slow start in 2015 is responded to the same way Missouri handled that 2014 eyesore against Indiana, the Tigers are headed for more prosperity.
If they overcome this game against Connecticut — even though it didn’t cost them in the loss column — we’ll be left to marvel once again at how Gary Pinkel gets his team to address its mistakes in the middle of the season, rising to the top of a winnable division no one else is quite as able to claim.
