Mizzou Football: 3 keys to beating Kentucky
By Josh Fann
The Missouri football team struggled with third downs last week. That can’t happen again.
The Missouri Tigers were 1/11 on third downs on offense against CMU last week. That has to change.
For whatever reason the offense was not clicking for 90% of the game and that issue spilled over into the Defense as it kept them constantly on the field and eventually gassed which is when CMU made their run in the 2nd quarter.
Missouri failed to keep drives going and a lot of that falls on the play-calling of head coach Eli Drinkwitz.
We all want to love Drinkwitz and so far he has given us no indication to not trust him, but there’s no way around the fact that the play-calling was a little head-scratching last Saturday.
Missouri seemed to play in the backfield too much which costed them yards and they constantly went for intermediate-to-difficult passes on early downs that wouldn’t be completed which set up way too many 3rd and long situations.
Missouri will have to look to get more chunk plays and be more logical on early downs to increase the efficiency of the offense.
In order to do so, Missouri will need to get their best playmakers such as running back Tyler Badie and wide receiver Mookie Cooper in space with sufficient blocking and throw more quick slants or outs to their bigger receivers like Keke Chism or Chance Luper to keep the chains moving.