Will LSU game be wake-up call for Missouri Tigers? Thoughts from Mizzou’s 1st loss

Missouri football took LSU down to the wire. It was a shootout loss that had everything, but it requires much more context.

Here are seven thoughts on Missouri’s loss to LSU on Saturday, starting with this:

Missouri’s defense has to shake this performance.

If you want to know how much this game meant to Missouri, consider these two postgame quotes from the head coach and a defensive captain.

“We all wanted this game really badly from top to bottom, from fan to player to coach,” MU coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “We knew what this game was for us and didn’t get it done.”

“I think our locker room was dead silent,” MU defensive end Darius Robinson said. “I think you could’ve went in there and dropped a pen and you would’ve heard it.”

As a unit, I gave Missouri’s defense a C-. After sitting on it for a day, I feel like I might’ve been too generous.

Save for Kris Abrams-Draine, Ennis Rakestraw and the Missouri defensive line, this unit was not very good on Saturday.

It was a challenge Saturday with Jayden Daniels and Malik Nabers on the other side. Plus, others like Brian Thomas Jr. and Logan Diggs are less-heralded players who are really talented. Daniels should be a Heisman candidate. He was clearly the best player on the field.

But having six penalties by the defense was just rough. Especially since this defensive unit carries high expectations from where it was last season.

Two of those penalties were unsportsmanlike conduct on Johnny Walker Jr., which earned him an ejection. The second one was apparently due to him spitting on an LSU player, which is what the referee’s open mic relayed to the press box when he was explaining it to Drinkwitz. That’s unacceptable for a player who’s bided his time behind some successful players only to become Missouri’s best pass rusher this season.

That’s difficult, especially as the LSU offense started to figure out Missouri’s pressures and understood how to take advantage of MU’s coverage scheme.

“Jayden (Daniels) did a great job of recognizing pressures and we were able to check into some favorable looks,” LSU head coach Brian Kelly said. “The second thing that they had a plan was they wanted to play a lot of two-deep safety and play off, and they were willing to give us the short routes. They weren’t going to give us the ball down the field. And it gave us some favorable runs where the numbers were in our favor.”

All of that equaled to a day when Missouri’s defense allowed 533 yards. This defense has some more to prove this year.

Missouri’s self-inflicted wounds seem familiar

I remember last season when the self-inflicted wounds Missouri had were game-losing mistakes.

Brady Cook’s pick-six against Florida, Nathaniel Peat’s fumble against Auburn and the offensive line penalties against Georgia that made field goals out of touchdowns were all the moments that cost MU in games in 2022.

On Saturday, it felt like 2022 because of those penalties. Missouri committed 11 total, six by the defense and five by the offense.

The good news is the turnovers and back-breaking plays that plagued Missouri last year are gone. No more bad interceptions or costly fumbles. Peat recovered a fumble in the first quarter that kept a drive alive which ended in one of Cody Schrader’s three rushing touchdowns.

But three of Missouri’s five offensive penalties were pre-snap penalties. Of the pre-snap flags, one was a false start on Schrader, another was a false start on Tyler Stephens and a third was a snap infraction on Connor Tollison. The other two flags were holding calls on Cam’Ron Johnson.

The bright side is that cleaning these mistakes is easier at 5-1 than it is at 2-4, which is where Missouri was last season.

It still stings considering how close Missouri was to being 6-0. Especially when you understand how bad Missouri wanted this one. And I do mean they wanted this win maybe more than any other game this season.

“I think Coach Drink hit it on the head about getting better, and we have a lot of ball left,” Robinson said. “Obviously, this hurts today, but tomorrow watch the tape and get better and we can move on to Kentucky.”

Just to be clear, this is what ‘disconcerting signals’ are

Speaking of the penalties. if you were like me yesterday you had no idea what the referees meant by “disconcerting signals.”

Not only is it a pretty unusual penalty, but doing a quick Google search shows that it comes up every year or so. Most notably, it was called in the first quarter of the 2022 College Football Playoff championship game between Georgia and Alabama.

It was called three times yesterday. Once on LSU and twice on Missouri.

The call is in the NCAA rulebook under the delay of game section. That rule defines disconcerting signals as: “Defensive verbal tactics that disconcert offensive signals.”

Clapping is the notable action that falls under this category since snap counts in college football are quarterbacks clapping instead of using verbal cues like in the NFL.

It’s weird, to be clear. Somehow we heard it three times Saturday.

All that considered, Missouri’s start was blistering

If you had told me Missouri would be up 22-7 in the first half against LSU, and that LSU would be going for it on fourth-and-1 from the Missouri 21 instead of taking a field goal, I would’ve said there might not have been a better start for Missouri.

Brady Cook, two interceptions aside, threw for 395 yards. Luther Burden had 11 caches for 149 yards, and 85 of those yards came after the catch. Schrader had three rushing touchdowns and 114 yards on the ground.

At halftime, Missouri had thrown for 227 yards to LSU’s 70.

New offensive coordinator Kirby Moore is just flexing at this point. The different kinds of sweeps and misdirections are my favorite plays, as he finds different ways to use Burden, Cook’s legs and more of Missouri’s weapons.

Moore also put his trust in his players on display. He called the same pass play to Theo Wease Jr. — a shot to the end zone where Wease had single coverage and beat his defender — twice. Wease dropped it on first down but made up for it on third down for the first score of the game.

Moore has done a fantastic job. This offense looks night and day from where it was in Week 2. Missouri having a chance to win a shootout is something that’s unheard of considering where the offense was last season.

Kris Abrams-Draine is playing his way up NFL Draft rankings

The weekly Burden update is simple: Burden leads the nation in receptions and receiving yards. If he was draft-eligible, he’d be a first-round pick and land somewhere between Keon Coleman, Xavier Worthy and Emeka Egbuka.

But Burden is not draft-eligible. Kris Abrams-Draine, however, is.

Abrams-Draine had another great game. He had two pass breakups and a quarterback hit, including a breakup on an end-zone shot on third-and-10 from Missouri’s 12-yard line. Abrams-Draine won the matchup with Malik Nabers there and prevented a touchdown.

Abrams-Draine is currently the country’s leader in passes defended. He’s also rated as CBS Sports’ sixth-best cornerback prospect in the 2024 NFL Draft. I imagine that’s going to change if Abrams-Draine keeps playing like this.

The corners ahead of him are Alabama’s Kool-Aid McKinstry, Penn State’s Kalen King, Clemson’s Nate Wiggins, TCU’s Josh Newton and Iowa’s Cooper DeJean. I’d argue he’s better than at least Newton and plays much better in competition than DeJean does.

Abrams-Draine will be in the conversation to be a first-round pick.

To some LSU players, winning at Faurot meant a little more

Missouri fans remember the goal-line stand MU made against LSU at Faurot Field in 2020 to give Drinkwitz his first win as Missouri’s head coach.

There was excitement and vitality. On the other sideline, there was heartbreak. The LSU players from that season who are still on LSU’s roster in 2023 remember the bitter pill they swallowed.

“We lost. That was a close game,” LSU senior running back Josh Williams told me at SEC Media Days. “I remember Myles Brennan getting hurt.”

Brennan did suffer an injury. The abdominal injury from that game sidelined him for the remainder of the 2020 season. Brennan would medically retire before the 2022 season.

Those LSU players that remained watched as then-coach Ed Orgeron departed — and watched as Brian Kelly arrived from Notre Dame. Kelly’s staff helped land players like Mekhi Wingo, who transferred from Missouri.

Those LSU players who remained got some retribution Saturday, and also got to enjoy an SEC road game with a different perspective.

“It means a lot,” Williams said in July. “Not only because it was a bad feeling leaving Mizzou the first time, but also because Mehki Wingo, I mean, he talks about Mizzou all the time. I just can’t wait to go back and meet all his friends and play against that ... team. So, I’m excited.”

RGIII had high praise for Missouri’s offensive stars

Before the game started, I sought out Robert Griffin III, ESPN’s color analyst, in the booth at Faurot Field. Above all, I was curious about what he thought about Brady Cook’s 2023 season.

Griffin had some high praise for him. He had one of the best analogies I’ve ever heard when describing his season, saying Cook’s injury against Kansas State was like how a “bee loses its stinger, it’s useless.”

He had more to say, too.

“For Kirby Moore to come in and kind of mesh the two systems of what Eli’s been doing and what he did at Fresno, I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty sure a lot of people are shocked at how well Brady Cook is playing because of all those other things,” Griffin said. “Last year, I think ... he had 11 interceptions, something like that, and 17 touchdowns. And now he’s got no interceptions and he’s got the SEC record for most (passes) without an interception. So, that’s real growth.”

Take it from a guy who knows success as a quarterback.

Griffin threw for 4,293 yards and just six interceptions the year he won the Heisman. He was, in my opinion, the most exciting college football player I watched as a fan until Lamar Jackson came around a few years later.

It goes beyond Cook, too. Griffin also said Burden and Wease look like they belong in the league.

“The connection between him and the OC is incredible,” Griffin said. “It seems like the game has slowed down for him and it helps when you have two NFL wide receivers out there as well with Luther Burden III and Theo Wease Jr. ...

“When you have those bona fide guys, I call them ‘HBO-type players,’ they can Help a Brother Out. They can make the crazy catch. They can stretch the defense, and Brady Cook’s taking full advantage of it.”

7A: I understand Missouri falling out of the top 25, but Kentucky didn’t even make it a game against Georgia. How is UK in the top 25? That’s a question I don’t have the answer to, but MU simply beating Kentucky solves the problem.

7B: Missouri opens as a two-point underdog against Kentucky on The Strip according to Circa Sports

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