Tire Store Report Missouri

Well said, Commissioner, well said. 

Offense:  The offensive execution was not as smooth this week.  We are attributing most of that to a QB playing with a worrisome injury and just the grind of the season.  Still, the statistics were even more dominant than the final score.  We are also mindful that the incompetent officiating crew took points off the board twice on what could best be described as “borderline” calls.  We were encouraged by run blocking, particularly on the left side.  We don’t do as well running between the tackles and we sort of wonder why we try.  The fourth down failure was discouraging.  We don’t know quite what happened, but it looked like the tight end leading the play had cleared a path to the right nearly to the end zone, but Harris broke inside where a not very tenacious block was thrown.  However, at this point we are quibbling over a four touchdown conference victory where we clearly put the horses in the barn sometime early in the second half.

Defense:  A great bounce back effort by the defense.  Missouri was missing their best receiver, which was fair, because we were missing our best pass defender.  However, make no mistake that Drew Lock is the real deal and will likely be a very wealthy young man come February when he is selected as one of the first quarterbacks in the NFL draft.   Missouri’s running game has been respectable.  The defense did a good job of holding them down.  Holding any conference opponent to 10 or fewer deserves the A+ and should win every time.

Punting:  Oh, dear.  We can only assume that our punting game looks much, much better in practice each week than it does in the games.  Unfortunately, our suspicion is that the issue with our punter is not between his leg and foot, but between his ears, which is a lot harder to work on.  Whatever.  This team probably does not need the punting game to be the weapon that it has been over the past few seasons.  However, it does need a certain minimal level of competence that is not met by a game with a 12-yard average.  To make things a bit worse, the depth chart lists Mack Wilson as the backup punter, and he has a broken foot.  There are over 200 high school football teams spread across Alabama’s 67 counties.  They all have punters on them.  Maybe  a fellow who has used up his high school eligibility and is now enrolled at the Capstone carries a high enough GPA to qualify to suit up next Saturday.

Place Kicking:  Bulovas still causes us to hold our breath, but seems to be figuring it out.  His kickoffs have been consistently pretty good.  Lest we forget, he was not the first team FG and PAT man at the beginning of the season.  We did not fault him for the missed field goal on Saturday -- a missed 52-yarder is the fault of the offense for not getting him closer to the goal post.

Coaching:  We are foursquare behind you on the play calling around the goal line and generally on short yardage.  Even in a game under control, we still get a little twitchy when we flash back to Texas A&M.  Both Harris’s appeared to be open on outlet passes near the goal line, though that invites the question of why we were calling difficult corner/fade/crossing plays in those situations to begin with.  However, Coach Locksley has done an excellent job of calling plays so far this year, so we will give him a pass on a slightly off night.  Probably the head coach will have some things to mention about it in the meetings this week.  Probably including phrases the students are discouraged from adding to Dixieland Delight.

Officiating:  There is not much that we can add about the officiating that would not be gilding the lily you have already offered.  The “holding” call on Williams was pathetic.  The defender fell of his own accord and it cost us 10 yards.  The spot on the scramble that removed Tagovailoa from the game was probably off by two or three yards. Regular readers know that we whine like a worn out fan belt about the sorry state of SEC officiating.  Even the players have started to speak up, with one defensive player saying he felt like he was held “on every play”.

We don’t see this crew very often -- like we can’t remember the last time.  It’s the one with the referee who looks like a cross between Basil Rathbone and the guys from Deliverance.  Every time he turns on his mike we expect to hear a riff of Dueling Banjos from the great Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith.  I would call officiating around the conference a “joke” but there’s nothing funny about it.  Florida / Vanderbilt nearly got out of hand, and not surprisingly given the game and the sobering events of last week.  (We did read where the player frighteningly injured there last week has finally been able to discontinue oxygen support and continues to improve).  We are surprised things didn’t get uglier in Lee County.  The only thing that is clear is that the SEC Office doesn’t care and doesn’t intend to do anything about how bad the officiating has gotten.  As such, they need to prepare themselves for how to handle it when the players on the field decide to take matters into their own hands.

 

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