Missouri hosts No. 2 Georgia in SEC opener
Missouri will face its highest ranked opponent in four years as it hosts No. 2 Georgia on Saturday in its conference opener.
The Tigers lost the 2014 SEC championship 42-13 to No. 1 Alabama, and faced then fourth-ranked Georgia last season, losing 53-28 in Athens.
Missouri is 3-0 for the first time since 2015 but did not get there easily, narrowly defeating Purdue 40-37 last Saturday on a last-second field goal after leading the Boilermakers 27-10 midway through the second quarter.
Missouri coach Barry Odom commended the resilience of Purdue in its comeback efforts, but said a lot of what enabled the comeback was self-inflicted.
“We’ve got so many ways that we can grow and become a better football team,” Odom said Tuesday. “We showed resolve and grit the other night in a late game on finding a way to win a game when things didn’t go really our way, and we allowed that at times…I thought we showed signs of maturity.”
Georgia enters Saturday’s game with three blowout wins under its belt and its highest ranking in the fourth week of the season in a decade. The Bulldogs shut out Austin Peay 45-0 in their opener before beating then-24th-ranked South Carolina 41-17 on the road in their conference opener and then steamrolling Middle Tennessee State 49-7 last week.
“I think you can’t go into a discussion about the landscape of college football, and talk about the top teams in the country, one, two, three, without (Georgia) coming out of every conversation,” Odom said.
“They’re super talented, they’ve got a great coaching staff, and are very, very impressive really in every area.”
Georgia uses a barrage of ball-carriers to bolster its elite run-first offense, which has rushed on 64 percent of its offensive plays. The Bulldogs have utilized an astounding 13 ball carriers through three games, six of which have scored touchdowns. Running backs Elijah Holyfield, D’Andre Swift and James Cook have taken the bulk of the carries, accounting for 68 of the team’s 120 rushing attempts and amassing 424 of the Bulldogs’ 816 rushing yards this season.
“I think they’ve got as talented of a run-oriented system when they decide to go run the ball as we’ve seen,” Odom said. “If you’re out of your gap or out of your assignment just a little bit, it will get exposed really quickly.”
A former Missouri linebacker himself, Odom stressed the importance of the team’s linebackers in facing such an explosive and complex offensive system.
“We need to make sure that we play assignment-sound,” Odom said.
“When they do throw the ball, we’ve got to be good in our coverage zones, either in zone or man-to-man, we’ve got to have really great eye discipline, and we’ve got to be able to, once we encounter one of their big dudes up front, we’ve got to be able to do a great job on using our hands and playing through and off the blocks. There’s times, with the way that they play and get up to the next level of defenders … they can overwhelm you a little bit with the run game.”