Mizzou Football: Schedule could make Tigers contenders in SEC East
By Cullen Jekel
November: BYE, at Georgia, vs Florida, vs Tennessee, at Arkansas
Thanks to the new SEC rule where every team has two bye weeks, Missouri gets to heal up before its big game on the road against the Bulldogs. Interestingly, Missouri is one of only two SEC teams that managed to get its two bye weeks evenly dispersed. Mizzou starts with four games, has a bye, has four games, then a bye, and then finishes with four games.
Georgia, on the other hand, begins November with The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party in Jacksonville as they square off against the Florida Gators. The Gators have made great strides under head coach Dan Mullen, now in year two in Gainesville. Particularly, Mullen seems to have “fixed” quarterback Feleipe Franks. That will give the Gators a fighting chance in this clash.
Regardless of who wins that game, Missouri has to hope that the Gators bang up the Bulldogs. If the Tigers can catch a limping Bulldogs team on November 9th, then they’ve got a chance at winning, and thus at winning the SEC East, fulfilling Finebaum’s Dark Horse Prophecy.
Unfortunately, don’t expect that to come to pass.
Kirby Smart is one of the game’s best coaches, and that means he’ll have the Bulldogs ready to host the Tigers one week after facing the Gators, no matter the outcome. And the Bulldogs have a superior squad to Mizzou’s. It will be a close game, but ultimately, I’m going with Georgia over Missouri.
That doesn’t spell the end of Missouri’s season, though. Odom will get the guys to rebound the following week against Florida before knocking off the Tennessee Volunteers in Mizzou’s last home game of the season.
After that, Mizzou heads to Arkansas to continue its new tradition of pummeling the Razorbacks on the day after Thanksgiving, just as the pilgrims no doubt intended.
Even after defeating the Tigers, the Bulldogs have some business to care of, too, and I don’t expect them to come out unscathed. They’ll win their November 16th game at Auburn and their season finale against Georgia Tech in Atlanta, but I’m picking them to lose the game in between those two, a November 23rd tilt against Texas A&M.
I’ve been impressed by what Jimbo Fisher’s done in such a short time with the Aggies, and I think they’ll get this upset here. It won’t cost Georgia the East, but will make it harder for them to make the College Football Playoff.