Oh what wild twists and diverging paths the future of this season might have experienced on Thursday when Missouri took on Central Arkansas.
When the game kicked off Missouri had two quarterbacks competing (in theory) for the starting role.
Then a fairly innocuous QB power play was called for Sam Horn. He has probably run that play 100 times in his football career! Six yards later…BAM. Shot to the knee. Game ender for sure. Month ender probably? Career ender?
And just like that, Mizzou now has one quarterback
and a freshman quarterback who has been on campus for three months.
The ripples from that are unknown at this moment. What happens if Beau Pribula is injured? How often is the offensive staff comfortable with the risk to let him run? What happens when he gets into a funk and something needs to change? How does that limitation affect every potential game going forward?
Later on, Missouri kicks off after scoring. Done it thousands of time. Blake Craig decides to run down the field as a tackling assistant. How often does he do that? I don’t know! You don’t either, don’t lie! But he certainly did it on Saturday. Fell oddly. Slammed his fist into the ground. Wasn’t seen again for the rest of the game.
And now (allegedly) Drinkwitz and friends are hitting up every D-II/DIII/JUCO kicker out there to bring on campus.
How many one-score games will Missouri now lose because of Craig’s foray into special teams coverage? How much does this staff’s offensive decision tree alter now that a field goal is far from a guaranteed thing? Is that good, or bad?
Johann Gottlieb Fichte once wrote, “You could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby … changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole.” A butterfly flaps its wings and a gust of wind travels across the world. A quarterback runs through a hole and his knee explodes. A kicker gets amped up and his leg falls apart. Depth is removed. Decisions are altered. A million iterations of the same season are incinerated with trillions more taking its place.
We know not how the injuries of August 28th will affect the 2025 season, but we’ll soon find out. And as we drift through the chaos theory mechanism known as college football, where the precipice of 10 wins and 2 wins teeters on the same knife edge, all we can do is hope that this team and this staff can adjust in a manner to maintain the ceiling without detonating the floor.
Good luck.
Because this was an FCS matchup with no real worry of outcome nor specific goals mentioned, I’ll just walk through some general stat-based observations for each side.
When Missouri Has the Ball
Let’s just go through this by position:
Quarterback
Beau Pribula had an 82.1% completion percentage in this game. Do you know the last time Brady Cook did that? Don’t think too hard because the answer is “never”.
So let’s take it a step further!
Do you know the last time an Eli Drinkwitz quarterback had at least an 82.1% completion percentage?
Well, I do!
You have to go all the way back to Game 3 of the Drinkwitz tenure when Connor Bazelak lit up LSU for 406 yards on an 85.3% completion percentage.
In fact, that level of accuracy has only been matched seven other times this millennium, with Pribula joining Bazelak (85.3% vs. LSU 2020), Drew Lock (83.8% vs. 2017 UConn), Blaine Gabbert (83.9% vs. 2010 McNeese), and Chase Daniel (SEMO, Nevada, Buffalo, and Colorado in 2008). And Mizzou has played FCS teams every year since 2005 so don’t write this off as a “well anyone can do it” scenario. He needs to continue to be great but what he did on Thursday was rare.
Running Backs
After a slow start where he only ran for more than 5 yards once (and twice for zero), Ahmad Hardy showed he was as advertised, bowling over worn out Central Arkansas defenders for 82 of his 101 yards in the 3rd quarter.
Jamal Roberts will give you four yards when you need four yards or when you need ten yards; his carries went or 4, 2, 4, 4, 4, 4, and 9 yards on the day.
Marquise Davis wasn’t nearly as impressive as our mind-hype-machine made him out to be but he had to deal with the lowest opportunity rate (20%) provided him by the o-line out of all the guys who carried the ball.
Good to see Tavorus Jones get some carries and a catch but fumbling the hand off seemingly sent him into gameday jail after his lone series. A lot of this is small sample size but his 33% success rate running the ball was the lowest on the day.
Receivers
Let’s play the game again!
Missouri receivers piled up 338 yards through the air. When is the last time Missouri threw for more than 300 yards in a game?
Think, think, think.
Hint: yes, Brady Cook did this.
Give up?
It was against Florida in 2023.
That’s right: it’s been 649 days, 15 games, and one whole-ass season since we last saw Missouri pass for more than 300 yards in a single game.
(And, even then, this instance was the combined effort of both Pribula and Zollers)
Still: against Murray State in 2024 Missouri attempted 42 passes and generated 7 explosive plays for 152 yards in those 42 attempts (16% explosive rate); against Central Arkansas in 2025 Mizzou quarterbacks attempted 31 passes and generated 6 explosive plays for 187 yards (20% explosive rate). That’s improvement!
Five receivers were targeted at least four times in the game which is something I LOVE to see. Every receiver in that target bracket had a success rate over 50% and seemingly played their role beautifully: Johnson the deep shot artist, Coleman the steady star slot guy, and Manning the big veteran who could body corners out of jump balls.
My favorite sequence of the game was the three straight passes from Pribula to Manning that all went at least 13 yards and for a 1st-down. Masterpiece.
The best part? Pribula was distributing to this brand new cast of receivers like they were all in year three of this system. UCA sucks but STILL it was damn impressive.
Offensive Line
Hmm.
Well.
The left side of the line was a problem.
Connor Tollison, Curtis Peagler, and Keagan Trost combined for 1 penalty, 0 pressures, and 0 sacks by my count. And, obviously, that’s excellent.
Cayden Green had 1 penalty, 1 sack allowed, and 1 hurry allowed on 32 pass-blocking snaps, while Dominick Giudice had 2 penalties and 2 hurries allowed on the same 32 pass-blocking snaps. Last year Cayden Green allowed a 0.8% pressure rate on 397 pass blocking snaps; on Thursday he allowed a 6.25% pressure rate on 32 pass-blocking snaps.
Yes, small sample size. Yes, first game acclimation jitters. Also: not great against an FCS opponent, gentlemen.
Still, it’s one game and college players can vary wildly in their caliber from week to week. While Green mostly looked like a guard trying to play tackle he did shore up his efforts as the game went on, especially in run blocking. Left-side woes is something monitor as the year goes on but no need to freak out yet.
When Central Arkansas Has the Ball
Things I didn’t like about the Missouri defense:
- Allowed a 45.9% success rate rushing the ball. Granted, 12 of their 17 successful runs came in the second half but, still, I gotta find something to be mad about, right?
- Additionally, UCA’s opportunity rate for the game (that is, percentage of yards that go at least four yards) was at 51%. Again, six of which happened with Mizzou’s starters on the field. Not bad, but something to monitor.
- Zion Young, Darris Smith, Langden Kitchen, Nate Johnson, Javion Hilson, and Daeden Hopkins combined for 114 snaps and and four total quarterback hurries. Feels like that should be more against Central Arkansas, yeah? Maybe the fact that the Bears only attempted 25 passes helps influence that.
- There were three instances of receivers running downfield with space to catch a deep shot. None of them connected but the opportunities were there. Frowny face to that.
Things I did like about the Missouri defense:
- Holding Luther Richesson to 71 yards passing on a 56% completion percentage and 28% success rate. Beautiful.
- 23.6% havoc rate against UCA’s offense. That’s 7 TFLs, 2 sacks, 1 forced fumble, 4 passes defensed, and 1 interception. I’ll take that every day.
- Damon Wilson II: 2 sacks in 19 snaps. Yes.
- My favorite signing of the 2025 class – Dante McClellan – getting a pick six in his first game. YES.
- The Trotter axe man celebration. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
The Little Things
Central Arkansas would have needed to ace The Little Things to stay within 20 of Mizzou. Spoiler: they did not.
Extra Points
The game went into garbage time the second that the 3rd quarter started. Awesome.
Missouri averaged 7-yards per play on 1st and 3rd down and 10.8 on second down. Central Arkansas on the other hand: 4.3 on 1st, 3.8 on 2nd, 1.8 on 3rd. Yikes.
If you had to guess purely from this chart the exact point that Missouri’s 3rd stringers entered the game, which quarter would you pick?
22 first-downs gained in this game, and only three of the players listed on this chart were on last year’s chart. To the surprise of no one Ahmad Hardy led the pack with 5 but Beau Pribula was an effective conversion machine both through the air and on the ground.
Conclusion
You lost your backup quarterback and kicker but discovered a robust offensive attack and a ton of depth on defense. We should hope that Drinkwitz is right about the talent level of this team AND that it keeps them out of tight, one-score games.
Here’s to the hurricane that stemmed from the tiny butterfly.
