Catch up on previous 2025 opponent previews!
Arkansas
Thirteen weeks ago I began my previews of every regular season opponent on Missouri’s
2025 schedule, and as of last week, I’m done! My hope is that you learned something interesting about the dirty dozen the Tigers will be squaring off against this year and get a better idea of what Mizzou will be facing heading into Eli Drinkwitz’s sixth year at the helm.
With the team-specific previews done, let’s take a step back and look at the collection of teams as a 12-unit sample size and rank them based on various factors. Say…Bill Connelly’s factors that go into preseason rankings, what do you think?
Let’s start will Bill C’s factors that go into rating college football teams headed into the season.
Missouri’s 2025 Opponents Ranked by 5-Year Recruiting Rankings
In the 13-team sample size of the 2025 opponents (plus Missouri), you can break down the 5-year recruiting rankings into four tiers: Tier 1 has Alabama as far and away the best recruiting team, followed by a gigantic gap, followed by Tier 2 of Texas A&M/Oklahoma/Auburn. Tier 3 holds Missouri/South Carolina/Mississippi State/Arkansas with Tier 4 containing Vanderbilt/Kansas and the dreadful “they’re trying!/G5 teams” Tier 5 of Louisiana and Massachusetts. I put Central Arkansas’ recruiting rankings in there but…uh…yeah it’s FCS and they ain’t great so I’m not really putting them in a tier.
Of this list, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Vanderbilt, Kansas and UMass all saw their recruiting efforts dip from 2024 to 2025 which, given the context of the House settlement and an overall rebudgeting effort LET ALONE how you invest re: keeping your existing team, none of those are a big surprise. Why? Those teams either hit the portal SUPER hard or had a talented team they wanted to keep around, which means less funding for high school recruits. On the flip side, A&M, Auburn, Missouri, South Carolina, Mississippi State, and Louisiana saw either steady recruiting efforts or improvements.
It’s also worth noting that Missouri plays four teams with Blue Chip Ratios over 50%. As a reminder, the blue-chip ratio takes a look at all the recruits a team has brought in and divides the number of players on the roster ranked a 4- or 5-star as a prospect by the total players that are currently on the team (minus walk-ons). Missouri’s current BCR is 42% while they will go up against Auburn (64%), Oklahoma (70%), Texas A&M (82%), and Alabama (89%) this year. All other teams the Tigers will play have BCRs under 50%. As a final note, last year Mizzou faced four teams in the regular season with a BCR over 50% and went 2-2 against those teams (wins against Auburn and Oklahoma, blow-out losses to A&M and Bama).
Missouri’s Opponents Ranked by Returning Production
For the first time in three years Missouri is not near the top of the nation in returning production, nor is it even the top returning production team among its schedule.
Instead, the Tigers rest in the middle-top portion of the country at 56th overall with a 58% returning production rate. If you’ve followed this team even remotely for the past eight months you know that the offense returns almost nothing from last year’s squad (44%, 101st) and a ton on defense.
Those high returning production numbers have been a quiet factor in Mizzou winning 21 games over the past two years as they’ve had the luxury of playing mostly opponents with under 50% returning production, and rarely went up against an offensive or defensive unit that ranked 25th in RP.
This year, the inverse is true. Mizzou’s schedule features seven opponents with over 560% RP – let alone 50% – and Mizzou has some of the lowest RP numbers on its schedule. What’s worse is that the two games that probably count the most in terms of momentum this year – kansas and South Carolina – are at the same level of RP as the Tigers, meaning there isn’t much of a built-in advantage in those matchups.
Also….I’ve mentioned several times on the podcast and in my previews and this chart backs it up: Vanderbilt is going to be dangerous and Missouri can absolutely lose to them this year.
Missouri’s Opponents Ranked by 5-Year SP+ Ratings
College football teams are more likely to resemble their quality over a 5-year stretch than what it looked like the previous year so this is a good reference to heat check some hot commodities. And, for the first time in this measurement, we have the Barry Odom years fully scrubbed out and now it’s only measuring Drinkwitz’s time at the helm. Notice how Mizzou is now the 4th best team on its schedule in 5-year SP+!
And in case you were wondering…
- Missouri’s 5-Year Record vs. Teams Above Them in 5-Year SP+ Average: 1-4
- Missouri’s 5-Year Record vs. Teams Below Them in 5-Year SP+ Average: 16-4
Missouri Opponents Ranked by Preseason SP+ Ratings
All of the above numbers get rolled into one metric, the SP+ ranking system, to figure out the projected quality of the team heading into a given season. Missouri heads into the 2025 season ranked 21st in the nation in SP+ and the 5th-best team of this 13-team sample, projected to be about 13 points better than the average 2025 college football team. Alabama is, of course, projected to be nearly 28-points better than an average college football team, with Texas A&M (17.2), Oklahoma (16.5), and South Carolina (16.1) also expected to have at least a two-touchdown bump over the average ‘25 squad. As a comparison, last year’s team was playing four teams projected to be two touchdowns better than the average team, while this year’s squad also faces four teams projected as such.
Alabama has quite the projected lead while Oklahoma, Texas A&M, South Carolina, and Auburn are all packed into a 10-point range – along with Missouri – which makes sense as those are widely perceived to be the Tigers’ toughest games of this season. Of those games, only Oklahoma and Auburn are on the road.
2025 Projected Opponent Starting Quarterbacks in Scheduling Order
The quarterback position lends itself to starting guys who are either a.) wildly talented, or b.) mega experienced. Last year’s Tigers went up against seven quarterbacks who had at least four years of playing experience and this year features the same. Age and experience do not necessarily equate to “better” but having experience is certainly nice. The breakdown looks like this:
- 6th-year QBs: 3
- 5th-year QBs: 1
- 4th-year QBs: 3
- 3rd-year QBs: 4
- 2nd-year QBs: 1
Keep in mind these are the projected starters: who knows if a freshman, transfer, JUCO, or walk-on somehow wins the starting job for any of these schools in fall camp. But, for what it’s worth, there are four projected-starting quarterbacks that Missouri will face off against in 2025 that they also played against in 2024. Part of that phenomenon is the busting up of divisions in conference play, the other is due to portal losses and graduation. It’s a fun little quirk that I’m not going to bother to research but feel safe in saying is an instance that doesn’t happen all that often, and certainly not in the pre-portal/NIL era.
So, with all of the numbers out of the way, let’s revisit the 2025 schedule one more time:
Once again Mizzou gets two “Bye” weeks built into their schedule. As an additional quirk, the Tigers won’t play outside of Faurot Field until Week 8 when they travel to Auburn on October 18th.
Still, thanks to the Bye Weeks, there’s a not-as-neat-but-still-helpful division of runs that you can break this season down into.
The first group of five are all the winnable games plus two heart-attack inducing matchups against kansas and South Carolina. The next three are a potential season-killing stretch of Alabama at home and then consecutive road trips to chaos agents Auburn and Vanderbilt. The back stretch feature two tricky road games, let alone a visit from Texas A&M.
Last year’s squad played five true road games and this year’s group only plays four. But the fact that all four matchup fall into the “toss-up” category – and we know Eli Drinkwitz’s 8-15 road record is less than sterling – there is a chance that Mizzou does not win a game away from home this year. Add to that the fact that the last two road games are the last two games of the year and this season has the potential to end on a very sour note.
Or. OR. They could win them all. I have no idea.
Still, while there is no easy schedule in the SEC this is one of the more manageable slates out there. It’s tricky and there are some near-guarantee losses on the docket but, in this era, if you go 10-2 in the SEC you are a serious contender for the Playoff.
But that’s for later discussion. For now, this is the starting point for the grand endeavor that will begin in August.
