In two years of the Drinkwitz offense we’ve seen the occasional big play but, for the most part, Drink’s style is very methodical and reliant on stringing together 11-14 plays using the ground game to stay ahead of the chains. The issue, of course, is the two items listed below this one. Missouri ran 50 of their 79 plays in standard downs situations, good for 63%. My goal was for Missouri to keep more than 60% of their plays in standard down situations and avoid the passing down defense that Arkansas used to rout their opponents. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, if your top five targets combine for 20 targets, 8 catches, and 53 yards then you’re having a bad passing day. You know who could have use an extra six yards to their name? Anyone in the receiving corps.
That didn’t stop him from breaking Devin West’s single-season rushing record, it just takes his incredible day from 41 carries to 40 and 213 yards instead of 219. Tyler Badie was, indeed, credited with an extra carry for six yards that occurred on a holding penalty. Alas: connecting on big plays and scoring touchdowns is, apparently, pretty important to winning football games!Īs is tradition, let’s revisit my keys to the game: When Missouri Has the Ball Missouri’s Offense vs. I talk about finishing your drives every week and this was killer: if both teams played to their season averages in PPO and kept the same number of opportunities this game would have been Mizzou 21 - Arkansas 28. Missouri ran 25 more plays on the same 13 possessions as Arkansas but was more than doubled up in yards per play and outscored by 2.3 points per opportunity. Here’s the advanced box score: Advanced Box Score