College Football: Are the Missouri Tigers a threat to win the SEC?

The Missouri Tigers are never the favorite in the SEC. The SEC pundits always pick the classic SEC teams at the beginning of the season, like Georgia or South Carolina this year, to win the SEC East division. The Tigers are fine with this, hanging on the outskirts of the SEC’s territory in Missouri but always tough to play against when they venture into Georgia or South Carolina or Mississippi. Eventually, those pundits will start taking notice of the SEC’s new dominant Tigers — not the ones from LSU but the black and gold Tigers of Missouri.

Missouri joined the SEC in 2012, and many thought that the boys from the Big 12 wouldn’t be able to compete with bigger, faster opponents from down south. The SEC is a tough conference, but Missouri has risen to the challenge. Last year, James Franklin and Maty Mauk led the Tigers to a SEC East division championship and a bowl win over Oklahoma State in the Cotton Bowl.

The Tigers lost a lot of talent from last year’s team, namely defensive ends Michael Sam and Kony Ealy and wide out Dorial Green-Beckham. But a new crop of talents emerged in their place. These aren’t five star, blue chip fellows out of the deep south but tough Midwestern boys who have been carefully trained and prepared by Missouri’s coaching staff. Shane Ray, from Kansas City, Missouri, is one example. Ray has been a beast at defensive end and is shooting up NFL Draft big boards.

Ray learned from Ealy and Sam last year and has risen to the challenge of replacing their production this season. He currently leads the nation in sacks and could propel himself up to a first round grade before next year’s NFL draft.

Bud Sasser was never the talent that Green-Beckham was, but he runs clean routes and offers senior leadership to the Tigers. He has already eclipsed the number of yards, receptions and touchdowns that he got last season and is averaging over 15 yards per catch.

The quarterback for Mizzou, Maty Mauk, has also played well. Mauk was shoved into a starting role last season when James Franklin went out with an injury, and Mauk has used that experience to his advantage so far in 2014. He has already thrown for 1100 yards, 14 touchdowns and just four interceptions through five games. He didn’t play particularly well against USC, completing 12 of 34 passes for 132 yards, but he led Mizzou down the field on the final drive and showed great pocket presence throughout the game. He also made news by hitting Coach Spurrier…

All told, Missouri has survived the losses from last season and put together a pretty good football team for the 2014 season. The Tigers started off with a 3-0 record, easily taking care of South Dakota State, Toledo and UCF. But Missouri flopped a week later against Indiana, falling by a final score of 31-27 to an inferior Indiana team. The team didn’t dwell on the loss, and a week later the narrative changed with a big win against South Carolina on the road. Missouri won the game 21-20 and propelled themselves back into the national rankings and back into the conversation for the SEC East title.

The question now is whether the Tigers can pull off the huge shocker again and get back to the SEC championship game. Missouri has a pretty manageable schedule left, with only two games against a ranked opponent left on the 2014 slate. The two games are Georgia coming to town on October 11th, after Missouri’s bye, and Texas A&M hosting the Tigers on Saturday, November 15th. The other teams on the schedule, like Florida, Arkansas and Tennessee are nothing to laugh at. But in a tough SEC conference, Missouri was blessed with a pretty easy schedule.

Also, the nature of the division, which is so tough and even, allows a one or even two loss team to win the division. South Carolina has a 2-2 record so far in the SEC, and Missouri already holds the tiebreaker against them. A win against Georgia on the 11th would go a long way towards locking up the division, assuming that the Tigers avoid another let down game in SEC play like the one that happened against Indiana.

This is Gary Pinkel’s 13th year with the Tigers. He has been around to see a lot of football teams throughout his years. He coached for 10 seasons at Toledo and has managed a 106-64 record with the Tigers. He is the all-time winningest coach at both Toledo and Missouri and has led the Tigers to nine bowl games. While he doesn’t get the same due that Nick Saban or Les Miles or Steve Spurrier does, Pinkel is still an excellent football coach that can take the Tigers far again this season. With continued strong play from Maty Mauk and the Tiger’s defensive line, Mizzou is just as much a threat to win the SEC East as any team from down south.

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