ZouDave Presents... The 2006 Sun Bowl

Late 4th Quarter- Mizzou up by a touchdown. We have the ball. We are running down the clock with ease. Tony Temple has just set the record for rushing yards in the Sun Bowl, going over 200 for the day. We only need one more first down for the clock to run down to where we can just take a knee.

First down- the Tigers line up in the shotgun with one back, five wides. Oregon State is in the nickel. We set our wideout split off left tackle into motion. As he crosses the field, the OSU corner stays put. Clearly, they are playing zone. On that side of the field, they have 3 defenders unblocked and looking into the backfield. Yet, the play we had called was designed to run directly at those players. Had the defense been playing man, the play might have left that whole side of the field empty. Instead, we ran into a brick wall. Temple, through no fault of his own, is stopped for a big loss. He even loses the yardage record, and the Tigers are in a big hole. We don’t get out of it. We even throw some incompletions to stop the clock. Fourth down, we punt, and the rest is history.

Given the play call and the obvious impossibility of success against the way the defense was lined up, I can never understand why we couldn’t have audibled out of that play. We had been having great success with our regular diet of draws and off tackle runs into the center of the field, and we just got too cute.

If you can’t tell, I’m still bitter about this one. Thankfully, Christiansen learned from this mistake. Now I hope that Yost can do the same, after the Navy debacle.