The game felt like it was going to be a dud; a waste of a midseason week.
And then Luther Burden III took an end-around handoff 61 yards to the house.
And running back Marcus Carroll kept bruising through the B gap for efficient, chain-moving runs.
And Missouri football , albeit against a drastically overmatched opponent, ran a methodical, balanced offense a week after cluelessly clawing and frantically flapping for a whole-lotta-nothing at Texas A&M .
Somewhere in the middle of Mizzou's 45-3 win over a far overmatched UMass team on Saturday in Amherst, Massachusetts, the Tigers showed how they can right their wrongs in the back-half of the 2024 season.
The run-first, Burden-often, others-when-open trifecta worked well in New England.
Yes, the FBS-independent and now 1-6 Minutemen were never expected to give Missouri's offensive playmakers too much trouble. Sure, this is the same team that got hounded and wounded for a full afternoon in College Station, Texas , in its biggest test of the season to date.
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But the team that showed up in Amherst at least had a tangible plan. And it was one that showed promise it could work.
"I thought (offensive coordinator Kirby Moore) called a great game," Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz told reporters in Amherst postgame. "I thought he really called a great game and did exactly what we needed to do to stay ahead of the chains, get the easy conversions, play to our players' strengths (and) get the ball to Luther."
Now, can Mizzou make those good bones stick?
Let's start with the run game.
Missouri (5-1, 1-1 SEC) went down to Texas A&M and threw more hope-and-prayer passes than at any time in recent memory. The Tigers ran the ball 30 times against the Aggies, which was the fewest carries in a game since a loss to LSU last season, and got just 68 yards of rushing production, the least since 2020 — Drinkwitz's first season in Columbia.
Even without starting running back Nate Noel due to a tight back that developed on the flight to the northeast, the Tigers came in with a different plan: Trust Carroll, Jamal Roberts and the rest of the cast of tailbacks to move the chains.
Of Missouri's first 12 plays, nine were runs and three were passes and 103 of the Tigers' 135 yards of total offense to that point came on the ground. By the end of the first half — which was when the game essentially ended courtesy of Corey Flagg's end zone pick and 80-yard return to set up a field goal and 21-point halftime lead — Mizzou had run it 20 times and passed 11.
Carroll ran for three touchdowns among his 15 carries for 91 yards. As a team, the Tigers ran for 231 yards — one more than they passed for.
"Marcus Carroll did exactly what we needed him to do," Drinkwitz said. "And Jamal Roberts. … So proud of those guys for stepping up."
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Just look at what Burden created.
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The second play of the game in any other player's hands may very well have been a carry for loss. For Luther Burden?
He leveled a stiff-arm and danced and juked around a chunk of the white-and-maroon jerseys on the field to the left sideline, back inside the numbers, and into the end zone that was once nearly 70 yards away. The star receiver took a couple passes underneath UMass ' secondary and turned should-be short gains into first downs and change on more than one occasion.
Burden left the field seemingly with a left shoulder injury in the third quarter. If that's anything serious, the Tigers lose most of their bite. But Drinkwitz said on the ESPN2 broadcast between the third and fourth quarters that Burden "will be just fine."
Sure had been before the knock, compiling seven touches for 127 yards.
Third on Mizzou's list of offensive priorities: Everything and everyone else.
"We had run the ball really effectively," Drinkwitz said, "and I just told Kirby (in the third quarter), 'I want to see us throw the football.'"
Cook went 14-of-19 (73.6%) for 219 yards and two touchdowns before leaving the game at the end of the third quarter along with the rest of MU's starters. A good chunk of that came in the third quarter.
Over those 15 minutes, he dumped one off short to Joshua Manning, and the wide receiver carried it almost every inch of a 63-yard touchdown catch. Cook later threw a 36-yard dart up the seam to tight end Brett Norfleet that the Tigers followed with an 8-yard touchdown throw to the back-edge of the end zone to … Norfleet.
Those types of shots had been sparing to that point. The Tigers had been patient and built a lead. There was very little complexity to any of the deep shots, and for the first time this season MU looked like it had some know-how on that front.
All put together, does that mean Missouri learned a lesson?
Well, that's where Saturday's game didn't matter in the slightest, and where we really learned exceptionally little. A 42-point win over UMass isn't enough on its own to rectify earlier errors or reaffirm Mizzou as a playoff contender.
It only matters if Missouri can put this game plan into action against Auburn on Saturday.
At the very least, Missouri responded to a heinous outing with a concrete plan.
Now, the real test is if the Tigers can make that their norm.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Missouri football offense shows good bones at UMass. Will that carry over?
