At this time last year I was inundated with philosophy while processing the random injury losses of Sam Horn and Blake Craig and how the tiny decisions that led to their demise could potentially impact the rest of the season.
Thankfully, I don’t need to do that this year.
Arkansas-Pine Bluff has been a bad FCS team and is currently, still, a bad FCS team. And Missouri was never really threatened en route to their 20th-straight victory over a team hailing from the FCS. Not unexpected, but good.
Missouri
entered this matchup with a ton of questions at the majority of positions that a football team employs, and while I’m not going to say that those questions were emphatically answered, we didn’t learn anything bad about the Tiger starters and, to me, that’s a good thing.
Here’s the advanced box score:
I’ve been vocal in these pieces and on the podcast that you shouldn’t extrapolate anything good you see against an FCS team to the rest of the season. Why? Because any exceptional thing that your team does is not due to better scheme or understanding of the game, but rather a massive talent gap. Again, that’s why the only things you can learn from these things are bad (i.e. wow a vastly untalented team can push around our d-line? etc.)
Similarly, the severity in which in FBS team beats an FCS team also doesn’t mean much. I quizzed Hurst on the podcast about the most and fewest points a Missouri squad posted on an FCS opponent in the Drinkwitz era and there really isn’t any correlation to point differential and quality of offense:
One of the worst offenses that Eli Drinkwitz fielded put up 61 against their FCS opponent. His best offense? 35 points.
But you can take it further than that. Beau Pribula is not a prolific passer and a tremendous runner (despite what NC State thought) and yet Missouri put up 331 net passing yards against Central Arkansas last year.
As you can see in the box score again, Missouri’s net passing yards against Pine Bluff was 357.
Not a huge difference between quarterback with two disparate skill sets.
But who cares! Missouri won the first game and the real tests aren’t from the FCS teams but, rather, the rest of the schedule. And whatever happens for the rest of the year, we for sure have at least one data point of this team’s starters kicking butt. That’s rad.
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
I do appreciate that Missouri has a second consecutive quarterback name that fits nicely with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. But I digress.
Austin Simmons had an 89.5% completion percentage in this game. Do you know the last time an Eli Drinkwitz quarterback had at least an 89.5% completion percentage?
You should! Because it happened last year!
Beau Pribula broke the school record for consecutive pass completions and finished with an 89.6% completion percentage. He also managed an 82% completion percentage against their FCS opponent.
So maybe “completion percentage” is less about the quarterback’s passing talent and more about the throws he chooses to make and the quality of opponent. But, still, Austin Simmons had an impressive night! Especially considering that neither Brady Cook, Drew Lock, Blaine Gabbert, nor Chase Daniel – all NFL quarterbacks – never reached that level of completion percentage.
Two podcast episodes ago I mentioned that an A-grade performance would lead me to be referring to Missouri’s quarterback as “Austin Simmons” and an F-grade performance would lead me to be referring to Missouri’s quarterback as “Fustin Simmons”. We definitely saw “Austin Simmons” on Thursday.
Running Backs
Can we agree that the running game was a disappointment on Thursday?
I don’t have PFF grades to share yet but you don’t really need it: the rebuilt offensive line struggled at opening the holes that last year’s group could create, and the backs weren’t able to get yards after contact like they could previously.
Compared to last year’s FCS experience, Yards Per Carry was down (6.3 -> 4.5). Success Rate was down (62.5% -> 50.0%). Opportunity Rate was slightly better (58.3% -> 59.1%) but Highlight Yards were down (6.0 -> 3.2). It just wasn’t a good rushing effort this year, and everyone has some blame.
I’m not sure if Ahmad Hardy makes all of this better, by the way. The 2025 version of Hardy was able to cover up some inconsistent run blocking from last year’s line, but I don’t know if he has that same ability in 2026. I mentioned in my “Count the ‘Ifs’” piece that Bill C cited Yards After Contact as the secret super power of Hardy and Jamal Roberts, and Roberts didn’t show that same ability against Pine Bluff.
If Hardy does have that same ability as last year when he comes back then we’re in a good spot. If not, then the run game will simply be a lesser version of what we’ve grown accustomed to.
Receivers
Fun quirk: the official scorers credited a Cayden Lee pass to Donovan Olugbode. It happened on the first play of the second drive. Simmons whipped a quick pass to Lee and Olugbode was blocking on the same side. Guess the official scorer didn’t have a good look and though #1 had the ball instead of #19. This sort of mistake happens more than you’d think.
What that means is that Olugbode’s incredibly night was only slightly lessened, and merely caught all seven passes for 111 yards and a touchdown. Still an awesome night.
But, to me, this is a good thing because it means Mizzou had three receivers catch 100% of their passes and at least one touchdown while being targeted four or more times: Olugbode (7-7, 111), Lee (5-5, 89), and Shaun Terry II (4-4, 55). That’s great!
All in all, 11 different receivers were targeted on the night and all but two had at least one catch. And unlike Beau Pribula’s version of a high efficiency night where he completed over 80% of his passes but under 10 yards per attempt, Austin Simmons had his high efficiency night while averaging over 12 yards per attempt.
That doesn’t mean anything yet, but it’s a very positive, singular data point.
When Central Arkansas Has the Ball
Things I didn’t like about the Missouri defense:
- The 3rd Quarter defense. Pine Bluff racked up 118 of their 236 total yards in the 15 plays of the 3rd Quarter against Missouri’s backups.
- Pine Bluff’s 3rd Quarter Offensive Success Rate: 60%. Pine Bluff’s Overall Offensive Success Rate: 28%
- Darris Smith, Langden Kitchen, Marquis Gracial, Jalen Marshall, Sterling Webb, and Daeden Hopkins combined for two hits on the quarterback and two total quarterback hurries. Pass rush was a big question mark heading into this season. At a minimum it is still a question. Worst case scenario it is a big problem. Need to see something more this week.
- Pine Bluff rushing stats against Missouri’s Backups: 16 rushes, 127 yards, 50% success rate
- Pine Bluff passing stats against Missouri’s Backups: 12 attempts, 7 catches, 64 yards, 1 sack, 42% success rate
- 19.4% havoc rate, with only 6 tackles for loss and one pass broken up with no turnovers. Frowny face to that.
Things I did like about the Missouri defense:
- Holding Lion quarterbacks to 95 yards passing on a 45.8% completion percentage and 28% success rate. Beautiful.
- Pine Bluff rushing stats against Missouri’s 1st Teamers: 11 rushes, 19 yards, 0% success rate
- Pine Bluff passing stats against Missouri’s 1st Teamers: 12 attempts, 4 catches, 26 yards, 16% success rate
- Young Jason Dowell getting a sack. Salute!
- Allowing only two explosive passes (16+ yards) and five explosive runs (12+ yards), all of which occurred against Missouri’s 2’s and 3’s.
The Little Things
Pine Bluff had the turnover edge but no other Little Thing went their way. Additionally, they decided to commit 12 penalties – 10 of which were accepted – for 107 yards. Missouri was fairly sloppy on the penalty front as well, especially in special teams, but couldn’t come close to the prodigious rule breaking the Lions conducted.
Extra Points
This year I’m adding a little more context to the success rate by quarter chart. I color code it by team and Mizzou will always be on top, but you can see the number of successful plays run on top, the total number of plays run on bottom, and then the success rate bolded below that. Just more info to give you an idea of who was controlling the ball on top of running a more efficient offense.
This game went to garbage time with 4:01 left in the 2nd half so, for SP+ purposes, the dip in quality on both sides of the ball won’t be reflected in ratings. But it do find it interesting that Eli seemingly did enough chewing out of the responsible parties in the 3rd quarter that they mostly recovered by the 4th.
Missouri gained 52% of its total yards on 1st down. Last year that percentage was 40%. Just a crazy amount of productivity on 1st down. On the flip side, Pine Bluff produced 48% of it’s yards on 1st down, 47% of its yards on 2nd down, and 5% of its yards on 3rd down. Yes, 12 total yards on 13 total 3rd downs. That sucks for them.
I mean…this matches the vibes 1:1. 379 yards in one half is good. 45 yards in one half is bad. UAPB had a good 3rd quarter and then couldn’t do anything else.
When you trot out three quarterbacks, six running backs, and target 11 different receivers you’re bound to generate a lot of unique 1st down combos, which is the exact case here. Obviously the unique combos will wane as we work through the non-conference slate and, certainly, the SEC slate. But for the UAPB game there were 16 combos creating 27 1st-downs. Cousin Xai’Shaun Edwards leads the pack with 4!
Conclusion
You won and no one was injured. That’s a great outcome for an FCS game. On to kansas!
