When Missouri football faced Texas A&M on Saturday, it hearkened back to a time of hopefulness for the Tigers.
Both programs jumped from the Big 12 Conference to the SEC in 2012 and quickly found success. Led by then-head coach Gary Pinkel, the Tigers earned their SEC stripes with two critical wins against the Aggies en route to back-to-back SEC Championship Game appearances in 2013 and 2014.
Pinkel returned to Faurot Field to open the proceedings with Big MO for the Tigers’ first matchup against the Aggies since he called the shots. But Texas A&M sucked all the hope out of the venue — and the Tigers’ season — in just over 12 minutes to jumpstart a 35-14 rout.
“Before we can win a championship, we’ve got to keep from beating ourselves,” Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “We weren’t able to do that today.”
Texas A&M snatched momentum from Missouri from the get-go when redshirt sophomore quarterback Connor Bazelak overshot redshirt junior wide receiver Tauskie Dove on a curl route: right into the waiting arms of sophomore defensive back Jaylon Jones.
Four plays later, redshirt sophomore quarterback Zach Calzada linked up with junior wide receiver Ainias Smith for a 2-yard touchdown to commence the first quarter onslaught.
Calzada, who played the game of his life last Saturday, October 9, in an upset win against No. 1 Alabama, handed the playmaking baton off to the running back tandem of junior Isaiah Spiller and sophomore Devon Achane. The two backs rushed for a meager 80 yards combined against the Crimson Tide, but got back on track by surpassing 80 rushing yards only five rushes into Saturday’s contest.
Spiller and Achane had a field day on the ground, rushing for 168 and 124 yards respectively. A bulk of those yards came in the first quarter as Missouri couldn’t stop whichever back received the carry. Spiller took a handoff 48 yards to the endzone and only needed to slip one tackle from sophomore defensive back Jaylon Carlies before he reached the painted end of the field.
“I messed up on just tackling, so I put that on me,” Carlies said. “I just tried to come down and came down a little wobbly, a little loose.”
The running backs took advantage of gaping holes in Missouri’s defense by bursting through the offensive line or cutting off the tackle for big gains. The Tigers’ defense missed some tackles on some of Spiller and Achane’s big runs, but most of the lapses came when Texas A&M’s offensive line manhandled the Missouri defensive front.
Achane added a rushing touchdown of his own before the end of the first quarter to give the Aggies a 21-0 lead with just under three minutes remaining in the first quarter.
Missouri senior running back Tyler Badie couldn’t come close to matching Spiller and Achane’s output. He surpassed 100 yards from scrimmage for the fifth time in seven games this season, but his ability to get the ground game going against top competition remains to be seen. Badie’s one shining moment came on a 32-yard touchdown run to put Missouri on the board with 10:43 remaining in the second quarter — but that run constituted almost half his yardage.
With 68 yards on 22 carries today, Badie’s season average comes out to 3.2 yards per carry in four games against Power Five opponents. Badie’s longest rush aside from the touchdown was 11 yards, and 16 of his 22 carries went for two yards or less.
“The [Aggies] didn’t do anything too special,” Badie said. “A lot of times they just bring the zero [blitz], they come from the backside and hit you from behind. But they wouldn’t do anything special. It wasn’t like they’re like a great run defense.”
Down 28-7 near the end of the second quarter, Missouri had an opportunity to make it a two-score game before halftime after Carlies picked off a Calzada pass a couple yards short of the end zone and set up the Tigers at their own 18 with 1:28 remaining. Instead, Drinkwitz ran a conservative gameplan, working the ball to the 40-yard line before letting the clock run out with over half a minute remaining.
Drinkwitz wanted to give his defense an opportunity to get a stop and give the ball back to the offense to start out the second half — which happened — but the Tigers never got closer than 14 points.
“I was trying to make sure that they didn’t get the ball back, because they had all three of their timeouts and they got the ball to start the second half,” Drinkwitz said. “If we were to do something and give them the ball back and then get a chance to score, then they would start with the second half [and] the game would be over.”
The possession after freshman wide receiver Dominic Lovett capped off a 97-yard drive with an end around touchdown, Achane plowed into the endzone from 1 yard out to push the margin back to three scores, where it remained until the final whistle.
With the loss, Missouri’s road to six wins and bowl eligibility becomes increasingly slim. The Tigers play two manageable SEC opponents, Vanderbilt and South Carolina, over their final five contests, but the other three teams entered Saturday ranked in the AP Top 25, including No. 1 Georgia.
In the postgame press conference, Drinkwitz discussed the long-term future of Missouri football and how he wants to use the upcoming bye week to recruit and build for long-term success. If Luther Burden, the No. 6 recruit in the nation according to the 247Sports Composite, commits to Missouri next Wednesday, it won’t pay dividends until at least next fall. Hope might be lost for the 2021 team after Saturday, but with him and the rest Drinkwitz’s top 20 recruiting class, hope is still alive that the halcyon days of 2013 and 2014 will return soon.
“This is part of the building process,” Drinkwitz said. “I realize maybe last year we probably over-achieved and so everybody assumed that those expectations would be met this year, and it hasn’t gone that way. I’ve said this before — I wish success was always linear [but] it’s not.”
Edited by Kyle Pinnell | kpinnell@themaneater.com
