With the completion of Mizzou’s second trimester of the 2025 season, I felt like it would be a good time to take a look at how the Tigers’ offense and defense ranks nationally. And not just in your standard
stats like total rushing yards or whatever.
No.
We’re going deeper.
Here’s what I got for you after eight games. We start this week with the offense. Prepare yourself: it’s all worse than before (but still good!):
Overall the offense went from 9th in Week 6 to 26th in Week 10. Whoops. Every metric here has regressed slightly, but that’s to be expected when you go from playing non-conference games (and South Carolina) to some of the best defenses in the SEC.
Obviously there was no realistic way that the Missouri running game of the first five games was going to hold it’s elite-levels of play once SEC games started and…lo and behold, these numbers hold true to that thought. It’s still an excellent running game but every number here has regressed over the past three weeks.
Similarly, the passing offense has regressed as well, although not as severe as I thought it would be. The most damning stat here is the deep shots: it wasn’t good in the first five weeks and has gotten even worse, stumbling to 119th in yards per successful drop back and 118th in completions of 20+ yards. I’m not sure how much better that will get, especially with a freshman quarterback closing out the year.
Missouri is very good in standard downs and one of the best in passing downs, but – as you could predict – explosive plays are not likely to occur in either type of down.
Well…they’re no long 2nd in the nation but, given how much Mizzou has struggled in 3rd downs recently, you can see just HOW elite they were in the beginning that their struggles only sent them to 50% on the year (and 14th in the nation).
Conclusion
Lots of regression but still very good! A quarterback change and more data points against elite SEC defenses will cause most of this to continue to droop but, hey, as long as you do enough to win that’s all that matters.
Next week we’ll take a look at the defense.
