Road Woes: Why can’t this team get off to a good road start?

The Tigers have been outscored 58-6 in the first half in road conference games so far this season, why?

The everlasting story of unimpressive starts to conference road games continued for the Missouri Tigers on Saturday, as they fell down 21-6 heading into the locker room in a crucial game against South Carolina. The tough start was just enough to bring the Tigers down as they eventually lost 34-30 in a heartbreaker at Williams-Brice Stadium.

Akin to the Texas A&M game, the Tigers got off to a promising start with an explosive 23-yard pass to Theo Wease. Unlike that game and the Alabama game, the Tigers managed to get some points on the board with two straight 10-play, 57 yard field goal drives.

Defensively however, the Gamecocks helped themselves to three touchdown drives, powered by a suddenly characteristic display of efficiency from LaNorris Sellers.

At the surface, you can look at the 21-6 score and think “man the Missouri Tigers must have been dominated the entire first half” but the reality of it is the team just had a diabolically bad second quarter. In fact, the Tigers outgained the Gamecocks 114-90 in the first quarter with more first downs and just a 0.6 disadvantage in yards per play.

On the complete contrary, the second quarter is where Mizzou’s previous woes came back to burn them. South Carolina outgained the Tigers 177-49 in the second quarter, picking up 14 points to the Tigers zero. Even worse, the Gamecocks accumulated eight yards per play to Mizzou’s 2.7 in the quarter, marking it as total domination. So let’s take a look at what changed from the first quarter going into the second quarter, and why it happened?

It really just seems like a classic case of bad play-calling mixed with a tired defense. Missouri’s average drive in the second quarter featured around four plays gaining six yards, spanning about one minute and 27 seconds. The fact of the matter is, when an offense is that inept at not only gaining yards but taking time off the clock, it leads to defensive fatigue.

The first drive was plagued by two straight false starts turning a third and seven into a third and seventeen, the next drive was granted the gift of good field position after a Dreyden Norwood interception but Norwood’s heroics were nullifed by a third down sack taken by Brady Cook that resulted in a Blake Craig missed field goal. After a quick Gamecock touchdown drive, the Tigers took just 24 seconds off the clock before giving the ball right back to the Gamecocks. The drive featured a run out of bounds, followed by run and pass play short of the sticks met with two Gamecock timeouts. The final drive of the quarter saw the Tigers squander field goal range thanks to an unnecessary roughness penalty from Cam’Ron Johnson followed by a crucial drop from Mekhi Miller.

The theme with all these drives was untimely mistakes, and it shows how mistakes can shift the game so heavily in another team’s favor. Running out of bounds, taking third down sacks, untimely penalties and drops are just what a well-oiled machine like South Carolina need to take over a football game. Mistakes like these can be attributed to three things: A hostile environment, lack of execution, and most importantly coaching.

The defensive fatigue was evident as the only two South Carolina drives that started and ended in the second half were a combined 11 plays for 145 yards in three minutes and 28 seconds. Defenses deal with inept offenses all across the country, but the reality is South Carolina has a mobile quarterback and a running back that will take a toll on just about any defense in the country with his size.

The former resulted in multiple plays where players in both Mizzou’s second and third levels were caught with their eyes on Sellers as opposed to receivers.

This play is a great example, a 38-yard wide receiver screen for a touchdown but it was characterized by six Mizzou players keeping their eyes locked on LaNorris Sellers and only one player reading the screen and that being Chuck Hicks. However, with three blockers for the screen Hicks had virtually no chance to make the play.

This play is another example, where one of the best tight ends in the country Joshua Simon finds himself wide open for the touchdown because both Mizzou’s first and second level were drawn in by Sellers and Sanders. It happened regularly on Saturday, and it burned the Tigers. Using Sellers’ mobility to create openings in the passing game was on tape though, and the fact the Tigers weren’t ready for it on multiple explosive plays was the kicker not only in the second quarter but in the game overall.

As a whole, the defense just wasn’t clued in to what the Gamecocks were doing for the majority of that game and whether that’s credit to the Gamecock offense or a gripe against the Mizzou defense will maintain a mystery, but the fact is is that it killed the Tigers and their playoff hopes for good.