MU freshman wide receiver Dominic Lovett makes a reption in Missouri football's 31-28 win against South Carolina.
It took 10 games and an offense that ranks in the bottom third in the FBS in both yards and points per game, but the Missouri football defense finally did it.
Defensive coordinator Steve Wilks’ unit played its best game of the season, allowing a season-low 250 yards and forcing three takeaways to hold South Carolina’s offense and pick up a 31-28 win to claim the Mayor’s Cup at Faurot Field on Saturday.
“We’ve been finding our feet,” junior defensive back Martez Manuel said. “Defensively, I speak for us just really just trying to pass around positive vibes and just try to keep guys uplifted. I feel like it’s been a big deal in us turning things around.”
Sophomore defensive back Kris Abrams-Draine set the tone for Missouri’s defensive effort on the second play of the afternoon. As South Carolina redshirt senior quarterback Jason Brown dropped back to pass, he glanced up at redshirt junior receiver Dakereon Joyner cutting back toward the middle of the field on a post route. Brown fired the ball up, but Abrams-Draine leaped in the air to snag the ball and give Missouri good field position at its own 44-yard line.
All levels of Missouri’s defense wreaked havoc on Brown, who rarely had a clean pocket throughout Saturday’s contest. On several occasions, Brown had to roll out of the pocket to make throws on the run or throw the ball away to avoid negative yardage. He finished the contest throwing for 16-30 and 193 yards with two touchdowns and an interception.
Brown wasn’t always lucky enough to evade the consequences of Missouri’s pass rush. With the Gamecocks trailing 17-14, two Missouri penalties brought South Carolina out from inside the 5-yard line to midfield. On a second down dropback, graduate defensive lineman Akial Byers plowed through and met Brown in the backfield. Brown heaved the ball out before Byers wrapped him up, but it resulted in an intentional grounding to halt the drive.
“They held their side of the ball down,” Eli Drinkwitz said. “Every time I looked up, the quarterback was scrambling one way or the other.”
But the biggest example of Missouri’s disruptiveness up front came on a blitz up the gut by Manuel. The Columbia native punched the ball out, and before it could roll out for a safety, redshirt junior defensive lineman Trajan Jeffcoat dove on the ball to put Missouri up 24-14 with 4:28 remaining in the third quarter.
Brown wasn’t the only member of the South Carolina offense to struggle. The Gamecocks scraped together just 57 rushing yards on 35 attempts. Prior to Saturday, the Tigers’ best rushing defensive performance came last week, when they allowed 168 rushing yards against Georgia.
Missouri racked up six tackles for loss and forced a fumble that turned out to be crucial in the outcome of the game. With the Gamecocks on the precipice of the red zone, junior defensive lineman Isaiah McGuire met redshirt freshman running back MarShawn Lloyd as he took a handoff to his left. McGuire pried at the ball and ripped it out of Lloyd’s hands, cradling it into his. The officials blew the whistle and signaled that Missouri had possession of the football.
Manuel said he thought Saturday’s performance was one of the team’s best, and while he wants to relish the Mayor’s Cup victory, he also wants to make efforts like Saturday’s more consistent.
“I’m just really thinking about next week already,” Manuel said. “[I’m] just really looking forward to just stacking them and being consistent. Consistency will be key for us if we want to get to a bowl game.”
While the defense played its best performance to date, it still needed a boost from the offense, which came in averaging 21.8 points per game against SEC opponents.
The offense answered the call on Saturday, as redshirt sophomore quarterback Connor Bazelak returned to form after a shaky six-game stretch. Bazelak missed the end of Missouri’s victory against Vanderbilt and didn’t suit up for the Tigers’ blowout loss at the hands of No.1 Georgia last weekend. Even before the injury, his touchdown-to-interception ratio after Missouri’s Sept. 18 win over SEMO was 4 touchdowns to 7 interceptions.
Bazelak returned to start on Saturday, and while he got off to a rough start by throwing an interception to South Carolina redshirt sophomore defensive back Cam Smith, he gave the Tigers a big boost with two touchdowns on 180 yards passing.
Drinkwitz eased Bazelak back into his starting role by mostly scripting plays for senior running back Tyler Badie through the early going. Of Missouri’s first 14 plays of the game, 12 were designed to get Badie the ball.
But once Missouri neared midfield on its third drive, Drinkwitz flipped to the back of his playbook to close the drive with some unorthodox offensive plays. A direct snap to graduate wide receiver Micah Wilson for a first down, a double pass attempt to graduate wide receiver Keke Chism and a jet-motion run from freshman wide receiver Dominic Lovett for another first down led to a double play-action for Bazelak to find senior tight end Daniel Parker Jr. for a 2-yard touchdown.
“We felt like we could get them to the perimeter,” Drinkwitz said. “They played six technique and seven technique, so we felt like we could get outside without having to utilize our outside zone scheme.”
Bazelak settled in and threw six consecutive completions, capped off with a perfectly-thrown 60-yard touchdown to redshirt freshman wide receiver Mookie Cooper on a deep post route.
“He hasn’t played in like two years where he can actually touch the field,” Badie said. “I’m just happy for him being able to just go out there and just score a touchdown.”
Badie also received his fill of action with his fourth 200-yard effort of the season, finishing the contest with 209 rushing yards and a 19-yard touchdown run.
The performance came not without adversity. Drinkwitz noted after the victory that offensive line coach Marcus Johnson worked with a cobbled-together offensive line with injuries to the starters up front.
“What we did tonight was with a patchwork offensive line,” Drinkwtiz said. “We were very limited in what we could call and how we could call it.”
Badie closed out the game, but the Gamecocks gave the Tigers a scare with two touchdowns in the final seven minutes. But Missouri’s offense allowed the defensive unit a well-deserved sigh of relief by maintaining possession for the final 4:32 by burning the clock with Badie and redshirt freshman quarterback Brady Cook.
“We’re still an incomplete team, so to find a way to win these games is really big and put us in a position in these last few games to find a way into a bowl game,” Drinkwitz said.
With its second SEC win of the season, Missouri inches itself one step closer to earning bowl eligibility. The Tigers have two opportunities to secure a postseason bid with a home matchup against spiraling Florida on Nov. 20 and the Battle Line Rivalry contest against Arkansas on Black Friday.
“Our biggest thing is to get into a bowl game and just finish the season strong right now,” Badie said. “[Graduate offensive lineman] Michael Maietti is like 35 years old and never made it to a bowl game, so my biggest thing is to make it to a bowl game so we can enjoy the experience.”
Edited by Kyle Pinnell, kpinnell@themaneater.com