After five games played, and two byes, the Missouri Tigers football team is 2-3 and currently 3rd in the SEC East. Sure the record isn’t super impressive but the good news for Missouri is neither is the rest of the SEC East.

Florida looks to be the favorites last night after dispatching of the Georgia Bulldogs, who happen to be the Tiger next opponent. But Georgia looks beatable, while Tennessee has completely fallen apart. Missouri exerted dominance over Kentucky, South Carolina looks flawed, and Vanderbilt is struggling to even field a full squad.

Regardless of what happens next week against Georgia, there’s real opportunities down the stretch run here. With the rest of the league kind of flailing, Mizzou might be able to find a way to 5-6 wins. This is of course good news because heading into the season we were expecting a pretty big reset. There was an unknown quarterback situation and the offensive struggles from last year were likely to bleed over without a sturdy offensive line.

Then... we were surprised. After a few competitive wins against solid but flawed teams we started feeling a little better. The concern here is with the three losses, they’ve largely been non-competitive. Alabama moved the Tigers out of the way early and kept them at arms length for the rest of the game. Tennessee handled the Tigers with relative ease, and it looked like it was going to be a long season. And while the Florida game ended up being a blowout, Missouri was largely done in by their own mistakes.

Then after watching Florida put it on Georgia, there’s fair reason to believe Missouri can at least be competitive in that game, and if you’r competitive with Georgia you can win games down the stretch of the season.

• At South Carolina, who haven't looked good in back to back weeks.
• Vs Arkansas, admittedly a much tougher game than you thought it would be before the season
• At Mississippi State, Mike Leach has an offense which has been in a bit of disarray
• And Vs Vanderbilt, they’re winless.

It’s important for Mizzou to get back some key figures on their offensive line, and the offense to start clicking again. But their showing against Florida was better than the score would tell you, and the Gators have been playing well offensively against everyone it should make you think the Mizzou Defense can recover to have a strong performance down the stretch as well.

Reason for optimism abounds in all kinds of corners today.

Here are your SEC scores:

• Mississippi State 24, Vanderbilt 17
• Florida 44, Georgia 28
• Tennessee 24, Arkansas 13
• Texas A&M 48, South Carolina 3

Missouri, Alabama, LSU, Ole Miss, Kentucky, and Auburn were all off.

Now I’m going to go bury my head in SEC previews because we actually have a schedule!

GameDay Links:

• If you’re looking to sign up for ESPN+, Rock M Nation now has an affiliate link: click Here for ESPN+ Now!