After absorbing an ugly 41-10 loss at Texas A&M last Saturday, No. 21 Missouri will try to rebound against host Massachusetts on Saturday afternoon in Amherst.
The Tigers (4-1, 1-1 Southeastern Conference) will face the independent Minutemen (1-5) after being outgained 512-254 in the rout by the then-No. 25 Aggies.
Missouri averaged just 2.3 yards per carry rushing while allowing Texas A&M to average 6.6.
Texas A&M quarterback Conner Weigman came off the injured list and completed 18 of 22 passes for 276 yards.
“At the end of the day, it falls on my shoulders to make sure it’s better, and our focus is leading up to UMass,” Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “We make no excuses about it. Shouldn’t have mattered who was playing the quarterback position. We should have been better, and we need to focus this week on stopping this quarterback and figuring out our scheme so that we can execute at a higher level.”
Hosting Missouri is a huge deal for Massachusetts, which will join the Mid-American Conference next season.
“SEC, it gets no bigger than that. Our guys are going to have an opportunity to make history,” Massachusetts coach Don Brown said. “All they have to do is go out and compete, play at a high level, and good things will happen. Some of the opponents we have played recently helped us prepare for this game.”
The Minutemen went into overtime at Miami (Ohio) on Sept. 28 before losing 23-20, then were tied 13-13 at Northern Illinois going into the fourth quarter of their 34-20 loss last Saturday.
Dual-threat quarterback Taisun Phommachanh has completed 104 of 181 passes for 1,280 yards and seven touchdowns with three interceptions for the Minutemen this season. He is the team’s leading rusher with 253 yards and a TD.
Jalen John (210 yards, one touchdown) and C.J. Hester (208 yards, two TDs) have split the workload at running back.
Brown said he expects Missouri to test his defense with a ground game led by Nate Noel (471 yards, two touchdowns) and Marcus Carroll (190 yards, two TDs). Quarterback Brady Cook has run for 108 yards and four touchdowns.
“The biggest challenge is they are going to do what they do,” Brown said. “They have a style of run that they run. They run the slash play, which is kind of an off-tackle, speed, outside zone play. It is their No. 1 run play.
“They also throw the ball pretty darn well. They have a good group of receivers, so that will certainly challenge us. The run game and the play-action pass game, I think, will be the determinate on how we perform on Saturday.”
Missouri, however, didn’t establish an effective running game to set up play-action passing against the Aggies.
“There needs to be a more considered, a concerted effort to find an offensive rhythm,” Drinkwitz said. “Whether or not that is creating or designing runs, we need to play with better rhythm. And looking back, whether it’s tempo runs, which I think we’ve been effective in, or design quarterback runs, it comes back to us finding our offensive identity.”
Missouri’s Cook completed just 13 of 31 passes for 186 yards and a touchdown while suffering six sacks against the Aggies.
“There were a lot of things that went bad,” Drinkwitz said. “Our inability to get into an offensive rhythm because of our lack of execution on third downs. We were predominantly in third-and-long, which allows them to get into a heavy blitz package, contributed to the issues there.”
Cook has completed 105 of 165 passes for 1,132 yards and five touchdowns this season. Preseason All-American Luther Burden III has 26 catches for 339 yards and four touchdowns.
