Missouri’s 46-25 win in its 1976 season opener against USC is a historic day in program history.
Al Onofrio’s Tigers went into the LA Memorial Coliseum and exited with an emphatic victory over John Robinson’s vaunted Trojans, then ranked No. 8 in the AP Poll. The win set a program record for margin of victory over an AP top-10 opponent that stood for over half a century.
That is, until Saturday, when Eli Drinkwitz went gator hunting and emerged with a big trophy: a historic 45-17 walloping of Florida
that bested a standard set more than six years before his birth.
The numbers surrounding MU’s win are eye-opening.
The Tigers put up 560 yards of total offense, including 340 in the air via Austin Simmons and 211 on the ground courtesy of Jamal Roberts. They also held Jadan Baugh, debated as possibly the top running back in the nation, to a measly 13 yards on 12 carries. Finally, they held the Gators to just three points until a garbage time touchdown in the fourth quarter.
Mizzou fans will surely go over those numbers with vigor over the next week. But Eli Drinkwitz made it clear he was tired of talking about numbers following the win, especially the kind attached right before a team’s name.
“Nobody in our locker room could have cared less about that. I couldn’t have cared less about that,” he said when asked about snapping a losing streak against top-25 opponents, “Again, that’s stuff for y’all to tweet about and to make up stories about and try to create some sort of narrative about me or my program. I really couldn’t care less.”
That doesn’t mean numbers lack value, though. They allow you to contextualize a game and how it got to its final result. For example, the Tigers scored 35 unanswered points between the 2:05 mark in the second quarter and the final minute of the fourth.
“If you’re free from the pressure of the scoreboard, the pressure of the previous play, and the pressure of the next play, you can just play free on this play right now,” he said about his team’s response to the early deadlock. “Let’s play fast and free, free of any worry about the final score.”
And after Florida went 3-4 on third down during its opening drive, Death Row Defense held the visitors to a 3-12 mark for the rest of the game and also forced a turnover on downs.
“We kind of got them in long yardage situations, we had quarterback pressure, and then we kept the ball in front of us and tackled,” he said, “which is something that we didn’t do a great job of last week.”
Then there’s Austin Simmons, who was 23-30 for 340 yards and two touchdowns.
“His team gravitates towards him,” Drinkwitz said, “Anytime you have a quarterback that’s playing that well, there’s just a ton of confidence that the ball is in his hands, something good’s going to happen. And he was making some great throws today.”
Speaking of Simmons, he was inspired by the number 77 against UF. Seventy seven yards, that is, the distance Jamal Roberts ran shortly before the end of the third quarter. As the clock ran down to 0:00 to end the quarter Simmons bounced his way from the 10 yard-line to near midfield, waving his arms up and down and imploring the fans to make noise.
They responded with a deafening crescendo, the kind of roar that only happens when you know you’re witnessing something you may never see again.
“Something about that run was really just triggering a lot of emotions for me — positive ones, of course,” he said, “But that one, I just wanted to spark the crowd. In this league, the environment’s a really big factor.”
The win was also a lesson in how numbers can deceive or fail to tell the full picture. Many people in Columbia and around the nation were fixated entering MU’s matchup Saturday on the number one — the tally in its loss column following a narrow road defeat to Mississippi State the week prior.
“Players, coaches, teams are allowed to improve, and a game doesn’t define the season,” Drinkwitz said. “We go back to practice. If things aren’t great, you learn the lesson, you leave the event. And I think that’s the key for our team.
The Tigers certainly learned lessons in Starkville. More importantly, the team was able to apply those lessons quickly, shoring up its discipline, tackling and limiting explosive plays after that trio played a key role the week before.
“We came together and we decided that we’re not going to let this one loss determine the rest of our season. It was a different type of energy and focus throughout practice this week,” defensive tackle Sterling Webb said.
STAR defender Kensley Louidor-Faustin, who racked up five tackles (3.5 for loss), concurred: “We were just hungry. We’re a hungry team trying to prove something to the whole nation.“
Mizzou’s win opens up some intriguing possibilities for the team heading into its next matchup against Texas A&M before a road trip to face Ole Miss, who Florida dispatched with authority on the way to a top-10 ranking.
One big win, no matter how historic, does not define a season — just as much as a narrow loss to a quality opponent does not define a season.
The improvements seen one week could take a step back a game later, something Drinkwitz is keenly aware of. That awareness won’t prevent him, and many other Tigers fans, from basking in the glow of a record-breaking Homecoming.
“It’s constantly figuring out where you’ve got to plug holes, and that’s our job, that’s what we’re going to do,” he said, “But man, it’s going to be an awesome scene tonight downtown; I cannot wait to see that dome lit up. I’m not going to be out, but good god almighty, it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
