This hadn’t happened to the Missouri Tigers in 147 games. And it had never happened to sophomore quarterback Maty Mauk before.
For the first time in his football career, Mauk did not score. He and the Tigers were shut out.
“Never,” Mauk said.
No. 23 Missouri fell to the No. 13 Georgia Bulldogs 34-0 Saturday at Memorial Stadium, and zero was the biggest number of the day. It underscored the offensive struggles that have plagued the Tigers for weeks — a sometimes porous offensive line and Mauk’s inconsistency — that, on Saturday, all came to the forefront.
“We should never play that bad, ever,” senior wide receiver Bud Sasser said. “It showed on the scoreboard.”
The Missouri offense mustered a measly 147 total yards on 43 plays. Georgia more than doubled those numbers, tallying 379 yards off of 87 plays.
Mauk was a paltry nine for 21 passing for 97 yards. But yardage understates his poor performance. Mauk fumbled once and threw four interceptions, accounting for all of the team’s five turnovers.
“The game is already over,” Mauk said. “There’s nothing we can do about it. That’s how you have to look at it.”
Unfortunately for Mauk, his defensive counterparts weren’t able to recover the two fumbles they forced and score a takeaway of their own. The overwhelming turnover margin made a Tigers’ comeback attempt all but impossible.
“I’m very disappointed with how we played. We made a lot of mistakes,” Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said. “We struggled on offense moving the football and when you combine that with five turnovers, it’s very difficult to beat anybody, let alone a very good football team.”
Mauk admitted that it was one of his worst performances of his career.
“They can blame it on me all they want,” Mauk said. “I don’t care what people say. I know what I need to work on.”
Sasser, who had season lows in receptions (2) and receiving yards (14) in today’s game, said it’s time for the team to move on and refocus on the road ahead.
“We have to keep guys motivated and not let this game affect the rest of the season,” he said. “It was a bad game, but we also have to learn from our mistakes, and see what we did wrong to prevent those things from going wrong for the rest of the year.”