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Mizzou Football: Will Tigers Be Relevant in 2016

By Leigh Oleszczak

Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports
Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports /
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After a rough season in 2015, Mizzou football looks to get back on track in 2016. Can the Tigers get back to relevancy this season?

After two straight successful seasons in 2013 and 2014 in which the Missouri Tigers reached the SEC Championship game, the team had a huge setback in 2015. The Tigers failed to post a winning record and the future of the team doesn’t look the best.

Mizzou football should have a much better season in 2016. For one, it’s tough to have a worse season than they did in 2015, going 5-7 and looking horrible down the stretch.

Second, Drew Lock will be going into his second year as the Tigers’ starting quarterback and the kid showed potential at times last year. Hopefully 2016 will be when the former Lee’s Summit native figures it out on the field.

While I don’t think that Mizzou football will be anything special this year, they’re going to get back to where they were just a few seasons ago. The SEC is a tough conference and MU jumped in and made it their own within two years.

The Tigers will have their work cut out for them in the first week of the season, playing current Big 12 opponent West Virginia at their house. West Virginia isn’t necessarily a scary team, but they’ve improved a lot, especially since joining the Big 12, and will probably handle Mizzou with ease.

With the opponents in the SEC getting tougher, and with the Tigers having to travel to LSU this season, conference play might not be kind to Missouri. The team will really need to make sure it wins its non-conference games in order to be relevant near season’s end.

The Tigers’ non-conference games will be against Eastern Michigan (week two), Delaware State (week four), and Middle Tennessee (week eight). These should be three easy victories for the Tigers, but you never know.

It will take a lot of rebuilding this season for Mizzou football to climb back into relevancy in college football. Missouri has had a rough few years in general, but their sports really have suffered lately.

Their football team dropped off a lot last season after starting the season with a 4-1 record. They went on to lose six of their last seven games and looked awful in the process. Their most impressive victory came against BYU, which took place at Arrowhead Stadium.

Robby Kalland of CBS Sports didn’t have a whole lot of faith in Mizzou this season. He had this to say about the Tigers,

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"The schedule doesn’t set up all that well for the Tigers, who open the season at West Virginia in a very random out of conference matchup and also have trips to LSU, Florida and Tennessee — three extremely difficult road environments — on the schedule.If we take those four games, plus the home game against Georgia as losses, we’ve maxed out at 7 wins. Eastern Michigan, Delaware State and Middle Tennessee State should all be wins — the Blue Raiders can be spunky at home, but in Columbia that’s a Mizzou win — leaving four SEC games against other mediocre teams up in the air. I’ll say they split those four and post another 5-7 record this season."

While I don’t think that Mizzou football will be anything special this year, they’re going to get back to where they were just a few seasons ago. The SEC is a tough conference and MU jumped in and made it their own within two years. They won the SEC East in 2013 and 2014 and had really great teams those years.

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It’ll be interesting to see what direction Mizzou football goes in with new head coach Barry Odom calling the shots. It’ll also be interesting to see if Lock can put it together this season and if the defense can continue to stay electric.

What do you think, Tiger fans? Will Mizzou football be a relevant team in 2016 or is this going to be another tough year?

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