Mizzou entered Saturday holding onto its College Football Playoff hopes by the slimmest of margins, hoping to pull off an upset of third-ranked Texas A&M and stay in the chase for at least one more week.
Slowly at first, and then in overwhelming fashion during the second half, the Aggies crushed those hopes with a 38-17 deconstruction of the Tigers.
“Devastated,” head coach Eli Drinkwitz said after the game, “That’s one of the toughest locker rooms I’ve been in, because we all believed that we were going to win.”
Instead, Mizzou suffered a loss of at least three touchdowns at the hands of Mike Elko and A&M for the second straight year — and a loss that dramatically shifts the realistic expectations for the rest of the season.
The defeat to the Aggies all but eliminates Drinkwitz’s squad from CFP contention and dramatically lowers its odds of a third consecutive 10-win season.
Much of the Tigers’ hope for victory entering the game hinged on how true freshman Matt Zollers could command the offense in place of injured starter Beau Pribula.
Zollers completed seven of his 22 passes (31.8%) for just 77 yards, looking like you’d expect a true freshman making their first collegiate start to look against an undefeated team.
Kirby Moore’s offense struggled to generate momentum on first and second down, forcing the Tigers into frequent third-and-long situations. Mizzou went 5-of-13 on third downs and needed to pick up an average of more than eight yards for the first on those opportunities.
Zollers was also forced to contend with pressure throughout the game from a strong Texas A&M defensive front that often got the best of the Tigers offensive line.
“We’ve got to do a better job, with a freshman quarterback, protecting him,” Drinkwitz said, “There can’t be free runners on him and that happened too many times on third downs.”
A stagnant offense put excess pressure on the Mizzou defense, a unit that had been playing some of its best football lately and rated out as a top-10 defense in the nation by Bill Connelly’s SP+ entering Saturday.
Corey Batoon’s group held on for as long as it could, forcing Marcel Reed and the Aggies offense to punt on four of their first five offensive drives, but wore down as the game went on.
Drinkwitz pointed to the third quarter drive where Texas A&M executed a successful fake punt for a 48-yard gain, forcing the defense back onto the field in the red zone, as the unit’s breaking point.
Death Row Defense held the Aggies to a field goal after the fake punt, but allowed two touchdowns in the fourth quarter to push the game to blowout territory. The score late in the game prompted A&M to run the ball four straight plays in the red zone with the clock winding down — including on fourth-and-7 — in a sportsmanlike move that underlined how far the game had gotten out of control.
The road ahead for the Tigers gets somewhat easier, but obstacles remain: most notably, 12th-ranked Oklahoma. The Sooners have the fourth-best defense in the nation, per SP+ entering Saturday’s slate, and have not lost to Mizzou in Norman since 1966.
The Tigers also have two opponents on the lower rungs of the SEC ladder remaining in Mississippi State next week and Arkansas in the season finale. Each team, though not likely to pose the same challenge as Oklahoma, could provide an upset if overlooked.
The Bulldogs knocked off Arizona State in Starkville during the non-conference slate and have suffered overtime losses to Tennessee, Texas and Florida. And the Razorbacks have utilized their top-10 offense to make Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas A&M sweat out narrow, high-scoring victories.
Another offensive performance similar to the one seen Saturday could result in a loss either of the opponents above. And though Pribula’s return during the regular season is a possibility, the chances of a quick return to the field seem slim given the nature of his injury and the state of Mizzou’s season.
The defeat Saturday likely sets the Tigers up for a dramatically different end to the season, looking to upset Oklahoma and hold off Mississippi State and Arkansas, than seemed possible just two weeks ago.
The loss also likely cements the 2025 season in Mizzou fans’ minds as a “what if” year.
What if Blake Craig or Sam Horn weren’t injured in the season-opener against Central Arkansas?
What if the Tigers defense didn’t commit an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the first drive against Alabama, or the Mizzou offense converted on one of four second-half drives where a touchdown would have put them ahead in that contest?
What if Pribula scored on the quarterback keeper against Vanderbilt instead of having his ankle dislocated, or Zollers’ Hail Mary went one inch further?
There have been several “what ifs” that could have negatively impacted the Tigers’ year had they gone the other way, to be sure. But 2025 has been an excellent demonstration of the impact just a few moments, and a few plays, can have on an entire season.
Something else is clear, though: no matter how ugly the loss to Texas A&M got for Mizzou, and no matter how far expectations have shifted for the Tigers over the last 14 days, two winnable matchups and an upset opportunity remain on the table — starting with Senior Night against Mississippi State.
“Now you’ve got to pick yourself back up, you’ve got to put your guts back in, and you’ve got to find something else to fight for,” Drinkwitz said, “And our team will. Our team is going to fight for each other. Next week, for the seniors, we’re going to fight to finish strong.”
Drinkwitz compared this year’s A&M loss not to last season’s defeat to the Aggies in the postgame press conference, but instead to the team falling short late in the regular season against South Carolina. He expects to see a similar fight in this year’s team as they regroup and focus on their final three SEC games.
“We found a way to just keep fighting and believing,” he said about last year’s squad, “and that’s ultimately what we’re going to do. This team has a lot of strong leaders on it, and we’re not going out like that.”
With three weeks of SEC play left, Mizzou faces two stark paths: get back on track with a strong finish, or see the wheels fall off on the season like they did in the second half against the Aggies.
