Look. I’m not trying to say that playing your most hated rival can just be an angst-free affair. That’s part of the fun of intense rivalry: not knowing how its going to turn out and dreading how sad you’ll be if you lose or how elated you’ll be when you win is baked in!
But it’s one thing to be tense and frustrated when a rivalry game start going sour. It’s another to write it off entirely when we’re
not even a quarter of the way through.
And, to be fair, the 1st quarter of the 121st Border War was not fun. Yes, Mizzou struck first with a forced three-and-out countered with a 5-play scoring drive. But all that good energy was sucked out of Faurot with the most unfortunate series of drives possible, including a fumble recovered for a touchdown.
Here’s where I remind you: HOW a team is playing and scoring matters.
For example: in 2024 when Missouri went down big to Texas A&M, do you remember how that happened? Texas A&M went…
- 8-play, 60-yards + touchdown
- 7-play, 46-yards + field goal
- 8-play, 65-yards + touchdown
- 11-play, 88-yards + touchdown
…and in that same time span Mizzou went…
- 5-play turnover on downs
- 3-and-out
- 3-and-out
- 3-and-out
- 8-plays and punt
THAT is what getting dominated looks like.
Compare that to what kansas did in the 1st quarter…
- 3-and-out
- 7-play, 62-yards + touchdown
- Scoop-and-score
- 6-play, 53-yards + touchdown
THAT looks like two good drives – one on a shortened field – and a really lucky bounce that isn’t reliably replicable.
The 1st quarter looked bad and felt bad but wasn’t all that bad because it just so happened to feature an extremely lucky fumble recovery for the bad guy plus one of the two punts Mizzou kicked all game. And it was over a mere 13 minutes of game time, in a sport where the rules stipulate you must play 60 minutes before deciding the winner.
The next time you’re feeling down about your team losing, ask yourself “how did the opponent get there?”. If it’s be stringing together multiple 8+ play drives and whipping your defenses’ ass up and down the field, sure, have a freak out. But if the opponent has benefited from turnovers and short fields then there’s plenty of opportunities and time for the flukes to smooth out and order take its place.
Just like what happened on Saturday!
Here’s the advanced box score:
When writing my five factors on Saturday I mentioned up top that kansas was legit. And I probably should have gone into more detail than what I did but emotions were high and I was hightailing it down to the football meeting rooms to grab a seat for Drinkwitz’ postgame presser.
By “legit” I mean they are no longer the doormat of the power programs. That they have a pulse and can put up a fight. That they believe they can hang with anyone and throw some legit punches and pull off some actual upsets. It was certainly not a qualifier of “they are Missouri’s equal” or “they can win the XII” (although, really, anyone in that conference can in any given year). We as Mizzou fans are used to crummy kansas squads stinking up the bottom of the XII and that is no longer the case. They have their Gary Pinkel (or Larry Smith, depending on how generous you want to be) and they’re on a trajectory of climbing to respectability.
They’re still no where near as good as Missouri, though. A lucky stretch in the 1st quarter showed they can scare the hell out of teams and maybe even pull away. But Missouri was better. And kansas didn’t pull away.
When Missouri Has the Ball
Missouri’s offense ran 86 plays against kansas’ defense. That’s the second-most play runs in a single game of the Drinkwitz era, behind the 92 plays run against both Kentucky and Arkansas in 2020. The Jayhawk defense has some good players – certainly no one elite – and showed that they can bang with an SEC offense for awhile. But their havoc dried up as the game went on, with only 2 of their 7 TFLs coming in the second half. kansas was gassed and Ahmad Hardy and Jamal Roberts were all but happy to continue to run through them.
Run to Win
Goal: 47% rushing success rate
Actual: 44.2% rushing success rate
Winner: kansas
Create Explosive Plays Through The Air
Goal: 9
Actual: 5, although Pribula threw enough 13-15 yard balls that, if you count those as “explosive”, Mizzou would have easily cleared the goal. The spirit was met, the letter was not.
Winner: kansas
Maintain Possession
Goal: 60% 3rd-down conversion rate
Actual: 52% 3rd-down conversion rate (but also 80% 4th-down conversion rate)
Winner: Missouri because they also went 4-5 on 4th down
When Those Dirty Sons of Bitches Have The Ball
Missouri defense absolutely knocked out the kansas ground game. On designed runs – meaning we take out the two Jalon Daniels scrambles for 23 yards – the Jayhawks had 14 attempts for 38 yards, or 2.7 per carry and a 21% success rate. And that’s a team that is typically built around “run to win”.
HAVOC!
Goal: 28% havoc rate
Actual: 29.4% havoc rate
Winner: Missouri
TURN THEM OVER
Goal: +2 in turnovers
Actual: +0 in turnovers…but forced two fumbles and picked off a throw away ball
Winner: kansas, in the most hollow imaginable way.
The Little Things
kansas actually did decently well in The Little Things department, holding steady with Mizzou in field position, punting, kickoffs, and turnovers. Of course the Tigers outgained those terrorists by a full 1.5 yards per play and generate four more scoring opportunities. That tends to trump a lot of other little things we look at.
From a demerit front, Mizzou was more unsportsmanlike that kansas but also didn’t have the case of the dropsies like the Jayhawk skill position player did. I was being generous with the drops – especially for Henderson – as he had three passes carom off of him that could have absolutely broken this game into a thousand pieces. And that trick play pass to Hishaw? Yeah, he’s going to have nightmares about that drop for awhile.
Extra Points
Here’s the statistical version of the argument I made in the opening. Despite falling behind by 15 points Missouri was moving the ball well in the 1st quarter, and continued to do so through the rest of the game. kansas, on the other hand, was buoyed by luck and timing, and promptly fell off a cliff in the second quarter, never matching their decent highs from the first 15 minutes. That’s why you play the full game, folks!
I like this chart a lot. Missouri blasted holes in the kansas defense in 1st down and never really let up on any other down. The Jayhawkers, on the other hand, had much less success on 1st-down and, subsequently, needed big second downs to maintain momentum, lest they underperform on 3rd. It’s also nice to have you defense only play 48 snaps, especially when the other side is out their for 86. Daylan Carnell et al were still fresh as we entered the back stretches of the second half while kansas defenders were gassed and half as effective as usual.
To belabor that point even further, Missouri’s biggest quarter gains were the 2nd and 4th quarters. kansas? 1st quarter and 4th quarter, while the 2nd featured a net -19 total yards over 4 plays.
24 1st-downs gained on the day with Hardy and Pribula-to-Coleman as the most effective 1st-down conversion machines of the game and of the season (so far).
Finally, I attempted to track the number of runs and the direction they went. Without knowing play scheme or having a camera angle behind the quarterback, my best attempt was to see where the runner ended up as far as gaps went and credit the run to the appropriate gap. In this instance I determined the three directions thusly:
- If the runner goes between a gap with Connor Tollison on either the left or right = run up the center
- If the runner goes either between the left guard and left tackle OR outside the left tackle = run to the left
- If the runner goes either between the right guard and right tackle OR outside the right tackle = run to the right
On Saturday Mizzou hit the center gap a ton, hoping Tollison and one of the guards could pave the way to glory. The right side saw the second-most usage although with the highest success rate. And running left had a massive amplifier when the late 63-yard sprint from Jamal Roberts was sprung off the left hand side with huge blocking assists from Kevin Coleman and Marquis Johnson. Without that run the left hand side would have had 7 attempts for 7 yards and a fumble. Yikes.
And – for what it’s worth – I credited 2 sacks to Tollison, 1 sack to Green, and 1 sack to Trost. While I’m glad PFF rated Green so highly and Giudice was listed as the conference offensive lineman of the week, I’m not sure that this week’s performance was the one that either of those two gentlemen would submit and expect external praise.
Conclusion
Missouri played confidently and aggressively and weathered a bad opening stretch to win comfortably by 11 (and it probably should have been more). The first emotional hurdle of the year is cleared, and now the Tigers get a tricky non-con test by a quarterback-less Sun Belt squad before hitting the second emotional hurdle of 2025 in South Carolina.
