Beyond the Box Score: Boring is Good

Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide teams of the late aughts/early teens were some of the most unbeatable juggernaut college football teams of the modern era. And they weren’t particularly fun to watch. Their defense was an amoeba that just absorbed ball carriers for no gain while the offense plodded along for 3-5 yards at a time with an occasional big play here and there.

Not exciting. Lots of championships.

Kirby Smart was a long-time lieutenant to Saban and crafted his Georgia Bulldogs in a similar manner: defenses that knew exactly what you wanted to do and eliminated it with a few havoc plays here and there. And their offense that could throw it around, sure, but it mostly relied on YAC for big plays, knowing that that they were reliably churning out 6-8 yards even if the YAC wasn’t there.

Not exciting. Lots of championships.

And while I don’t hear a ton of complaining right now, the general sentiment seems to be that Mizzou is missing a lot of “flash” that they perceived the 2023 team to have. In this case, flash would equal big pass plays, breakaway runs, and tons of sacks and interceptions.

But perception is a personal experience and many times we as fans will fall into the trap when we remember successful teams of yore, and think fondly to all the wins and mentally fill in how they won with what we think a successful team does.

Last year’s offense was explosive, for sure! But most of the plays happened after the K-State game...which was the third game of the year.

Last year’s defense was havoc-y, absolutely! But they managed some of the worst havoc rates of the Blake Baker era in the first two games of the year before ratcheting it up in conference season.

Two games in, Mizzou is one of the highest scoring offenses, most accurate passing teams, and one of the most efficient offenses in the country. They don’t have the 20+ yard plays (currently 96th) but they’re just fine in the 10+ yard plays (43rd).

And, oh yeah, the defense hasn’t allowed a point and has let opponents accrue 254 yards TOTAL over two games.

Exciting defenses force turnovers and blow up plays in the backfield. But when they’re not doing that they still need to be sound tacklers and be smart in how they move to the ball.

Exciting offenses connect on deep bombs and put up 60 points or whatever. But if you can’t do that you still need to run the ball for 3.33 yards per carry and be accurate on quick hitches and slants that get you 6 yards a pop.

Missouri isn’t always doing those exciting things but is one of the best at the boring things.

Exciting is being in a dog fight against Middle Tennessee! We didn’t like that! Boring is taking care of business, rotating in 28 plays per side, and competently winning the game with very little stress.

Boring football isn’t fun football but it is effective football. And effective, efficient football wins championships.

Let’s take a look at the advanced box score:

This was another “pick a metric, Mizzou was better” game except for three areas:

• Yards/Completion: Mizzou - 7.8, Buffalo - 9.3
• Turnovers: Mizzou - 1, Buffalo - 1
• Net Yards /Kickoff - Mizzou - 63.6, Buffalo 65.0

Given the fact that Buffalo had 56 total passing yards, also turned the ball over once, and only kicked off once, I feel pretty confident that the advantages they had were not meaningful.

Two things can be true: 1.) Buffalo was a step up in difficulty from Murray State, and 2.) Buffalo is still a terrible team, and currently the 3rd-worst offense in FBS.

When Missouri Has the Ball

This tweet was sent out on Monday morning...

...showing the disparity between team’s success rates against their opponents. On the very, very, very far right you can see Mizzou and Buffalo.

It looked bad on Saturday and the advanced stats backed it up. Mizzou had an all-time high in rushing success rate under Eli Drinkwitz with a 77.5% success rate on the ground and a impressive 52% success through the air. I mentioned in my preview that Buffalo’s defenders were a little light in the ass in order to be faster to the ball and...well, that speed doesn’t really matter when you’re getting flattened by Mizzou’s gigantic o-line and tight ends.

Run the dang ball

So...funny story...my goal for Mizzou was to hit a 46% rushing success rate because, and I quote:

I’m not dumb enough to think Mizzou can flirt with a 60% success rate on the ground this week

Missouri finished with a 77.5% rushing success rate.

Lol. Lmao even.

Winner: Missouri

Generate some big dang plays

I set the bar at ten explosive plays, minimum defined as any rushing play that goes for more than 12 yards or a passing play that goes for more than 16 yards. Missouri generated...

• Q1 - Nate Noel run for 12 yards
• Q2 - Brady Cook to Theo Wease, Jr. for 39 yards
• Q2 - Luther Burden III run for 18 yards
• Q2 - Brady Cook scramble for 31 yards and a touchdown
• Q3 - Brady Cook to Theo Wease, Jr. for 27 yards
• Q3 - Marcus Carroll run for 16 yards
• Q3 - Brady Cook to Joshua Manning for 18 yards
• Q3 - Brady Cook run for 18
• Q3 - Nate Noel run for 12 yards
• Q4 - Drew Pyne to Marquis Johnson for 20 yards

...exactly ten explosive plays. Neat!

Winner: Missouri

Finish your dang drives

The bar was set at 7 scoring opportunities and 5.5 points per opportunity in order to hit at least 35 points. Instead, Missouri generated 8 scoring opportunities at 4.8 points per opportunity but did crest 35 points on the day. And if Drink scooted Blake Craig up a little closer they would have had a perfect day, going 8-8 and 5.5 per trip. The letter of the law wasn’t satisfied but the spirit certainly was!

Winner: Buffalo

When Buffalo Has the Ball

(in my best open mic voice)

Buffalo’s offense was SO bad...

/points mic to crowd

“HOW BAD WAS IT?”

It was so bad that they had three players targeted more than one time that ended the day with zero catches!

And while that’s not a great bit for a standup routine, it is what happened on Saturday which, as you can probably guess, is not a frequent occurrence.

Buffalo’s offense sucks. They entered the day as the 126th-ranked offense and finished the day ranked 131st (out of 133 teams!).

Part of that is their quarterback was not even close to FBS caliber. He was inaccurate in the deep and middle passing game and a showed a confusing aversion to scrambling out of the pocket. And I don’t think he was coached to do that to preserve his health since they drew up six designed runs for him. Whatever the reason, he couldn’t do much against Mizzou and the entire offense suffered for it.

Anyway, Buffalo had a 31% success rate running the ball and a 13% success rate passing the ball. Yes, you read that correctly. Thirteen percent. The best an Eli Drinkwitz defense has done against either the run or pass.

Corey Batoon palindrome’d their asses. Awesome.

Create some dang HAVOC!

I set the havoc goal at in at least the 25% range and the defense finished with...24.7%. Is that within the 25% range? Um...let’s round up so I can say yes!

Winner: Missouri

Get some dang turnovers!

I would have liked to have seen at least two turnovers by Missouri’s defense and they ended up with the lone interception. But, also, the defense was so much better than Buffalo’s offense that they didn’t even need them. Marvin Burks getting his first collegiate interception was just icing on the cake.

Winner: Buffalo

The Little Things

Again, Missouri had total domination of almost every facet of the game you could think of, including “The Little Things”. Congratulations on winning net kickoff yards, Buffalo. What did it get you? Nothing. NOTHING.

But let’s talk about the penalties for a minute. No, it wasn’t great. Yes, if Mizzou gets called for another 11 penalties for 80 yards in a close game they’ll probably lose. This was a super stingy officiating crew, however. If they were SEC I’d suggest Drinkwitz and friends bring the crew chief in to be extra clear on how they’re going to call stuff and act accordingly. If it was a MAC crew, I’d probably just take notes from the game and file that for potential run ins with that group.

The formation penalties were extremely ticky-tack and they accounted for 3 whistles and 15 yards. The holding penalties were...varied. Nothing you can to about your 6th lineman throwing a blatant facemask or your starting center getting his customary false start out of the way early. Let’s see how the line fares going forward; Saturday was not a good penalty day but if it improves (or stuff doesn’t get called like that again) then we’ll all forget about it by December.

Also...does anyone else find it odd that the Missouri defense has not had a single penalty called against them over these past two games? Part of that might be the lack of passing done by its opponents but its...surprising, to say the least.

Extra Points

• I referenced the success rate discrepancy tweet above and...here’s what it looked like by quarter. And, in case you were wondering, Missouri’s success rate for the game was 64.63% while Buffalo’s was 23.08%. This was worse than the Murray State game! C’mon, Buffalo! Don’t be worse than Murray State!

• Against Murray State the Tigers managed to achieve 40% of their total yards on 1st Down, 38% of their yards on 2nd Down, and roughly 22% of their total yards on 3rd Down. Against Buffalo, Mizzou achieved 51% of their total yards on 1st Down, 34% of their total yards on 2nd down, and 14% of their total yards on 3rd Down. Which...hey, if you can get all the yards you need on 1st down and just stay in 1st the entire way down the field, that’s a pretty nice way to play offense!

• After two games we’re in a tight race between the top two running backs and the title of “most 1st Downs gained.” Marcus Carroll had a big night, having a Mike Alstott-esque assignment of grinding out the short yardage needed for conversions, on top of a few lengthy runs. And, of course, Theo Wease The Younger added 4 1st Downs to his tally thanks to his explosion of usage against the Bulls. Who this teams looks to in conference play to rack up 10 yards will be an interesting thing to track as we get through the year.
• After allowing Murray State to snap the ball for one play across the 50-yard line, Mizzou was gracious enough to allow Buffalo to snap the ball on 14 plays across the 50-yard line, two of which were successful, none of which led to anything substantial.
• Missouri’s passing defense has allowed net pass yardage of 14 yards (Murray State) and 46 yards (Buffalo). That pairs with record low passing success rates of 17.6% (Murray State) and 13.0% (Buffalo). Now, both quarterbacks they’ve faced are not great passers so I don’t think we can close the book on, “Is Missouri’s secondary a potential liability?” just yet. But Thomas Castellanos ain’t a great passer, either, nor is Diego Pavia, so as long as the Tigers don’t get surprise-torched for a 300-yard passing game in the next two weeks then Toriano Pride et al should feel good knowing they’ve done exactly what they should be doing.
• Buffalo was 1-12 in 3rd Down conversions. So far this season Mizzou’s defense has allowed 5 3rd-Down conversions on 27 attempts. Boston College will be an excellent stress test on this stat.

Conclusion

Missouri has done exactly what it should have done in these first two games and more. The offense is, so far, a little different than it was last year but not by much, and the defense has been a pleasant surprise. The first actual test against a team with a pulse comes this Saturday. This team should be ready to avenge one of the sillier losses of the Drinkwitz era against a surprisingly game, ranked ACC foe.