COLUMBIA, Mo. — For a couple of weeks and for a couple of reasons, the Missouri football schedule is helpful as can be.
Overall, it was most frequently described as “favorable” during offseason breakdowns of the calendar. No stretch will be more useful than the fortnight the Tigers are about to enter, given a key player’s injury and the games that lie beyond.
Mizzou, for those who’ve been under a rock, is 4-0 with wins over Central Arkansas, Louisiana, Kansas and South Carolina. It has outscored those opponents 184-67 and climbed to No. 20 in the nation.
The Jayhawks are perhaps a slightly better team than they were thought to be over the summer, the Gamecocks perhaps slightly worse. But on the whole, the first four games went to plan, with Missouri making use of a smooth on-ramp to the season.
But now is the stretch where the schedule really becomes helpful.
Massachusetts visits at 6:30 p.m. Saturday. The Minutemen, whom the Tigers thumped at their place last season, are 0-3 and look hapless.
After them, the first bye week of the season.
In an abstract sense, that should help Mizzou continue to rise in the rankings. Getting past UMass should be a breeze — anything less would be concerning. The Tigers should be an undefeated 5-0 through the first six weeks, helping them push close to the top 15 or so teams in the nation out of the bye.
In a practical sense, that should help MU get and stay healthy.
The only significant injury on the books right now is starting left tackle Cayden Green, who suffered an undisclosed injury during practice last week. He underwent a procedure Friday morning and missed the weekend’s victory over South Carolina, instead watching from the sidelines with a walking boot on his right foot.
While that injury was serious enough for Green and the team to take medical action last week, it’s will not threaten Green’s season. Coach Eli Drinkwitz suggested he could miss as few as three weeks in an ideal situation, which, while not guaranteed, seems to be the program’s expectation.
The first week of that saw Jayven Richardson fill in admirably for Green, blocking well enough to beat the Gamecocks and protect the quarterback. So far, so good.
The second week of Green’s absence will be the UMass matchup. The Tigers should be able to beat the Minutemen comfortably with — hyperbolically speaking to embellish the point — just about anyone at left tackle.
And the third week will be the bye.
If ever there were a way for a team to lose its left tackle and minimize his absence, this could be it.
Playing UMass should be a short night for most of Mizzou’s starters, assuming they play up to their usual standard to rack up points early on. If they can get away with only two or three quarters of work on Saturday, they should be decently fresh before the bye week even officially begins.
“Fresh horses run fast races,” Drinkwitz quipped last week when talking about the benefits of his players having a lighter workload to start the season.
That goes for someone like tailback Ahmad Hardy, who hasn’t had to absorb a ton of contact yet this season — thanks in no small part to Jamal Roberts’ ability to handle a committee role — but still takes hits at his position. Players in the trenches can always use a bit of recovery.
And in this case, that bye week can be some perfectly timed preparation because the Tigers will need to run a fast race indeed through the rest of October.
After the bye come three season-defining games for Missouri:
The last of six home games to open the season brings No. 17 Alabama to town on Oct. 11. It’s still unclear where the 2-1 Crimson Tide fall in the spectrum between elite and very good — their upcoming matchup with No. 5 Georgia, played at the same time as MU-Massachusetts, should clear that up — but it won’t be an easy matchup for Missouri.
Mizzou then goes on the road for the first time this season Oct. 18 to a challenging environment at Auburn. Hugh Freeze’s Tigers are also tough to read — they lost at Oklahoma in a game subsequently clouded by a touchdown that should never have been — but have the receiving corps to torch MU’s leaky secondary.
A week after that, it’s No. 18 Vanderbilt in Nashville to round out back-to-back road games for Mizzou. The Tigers needed the Commodores to miss a kick in overtime of last year’s matchup, and Vanderbilt seems to have improved from just being an upset special last season.
There are important November games headed Missouri’s way too, of course, but it’s those three October matchups against teams currently situated around Mizzou in polls that seem so critical. Facing them back to back to back like that makes for a much less favorable stretch than the one the Tigers are presently in, but that’s precisely what makes these few weeks so helpful.
Now’s the time for rest and prep. The tough part is yet to come.
Tigers draw Sooners, Hogs, Aggies as annual opponents
Get ready to see a lot of the Sooners, Razorbacks and Aggies.
Missouri will reportedly face Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas A&M as its three annual football opponents during the new-look Southeastern Conference football schedule. On3 first reported the pairings Monday.
That OU and Arkansas would be among Mizzou’s three regular foes was the expectation, and the addition of the Aggies is a twist. Vanderbilt and South Carolina had seemed like more likely options.
The SEC is moving to a nine-game format starting next football season. Each team will play three games against its annual opponents — a system meant to preserve some core rivalries — and six against a rotating group of other teams from the conference.
They’ll alternate home games with the annual opponents and face the league’s other teams at least twice — once home, once away — every four years.
That full rotation is expected to be announced Tuesday during a televised special.
The Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas A&M pairings are for the next four seasons, around which time the SEC will reevaluate and potentially tweak them for the next scheduling cycle.
The Tigers play all three schools this November.
Since joining the SEC, Mizzou is 9-2 against Arkansas. MU is 0-2 against the Aggies as members of the SEC but 7-11 overall, dating back to when the schools were in the Big 12. The Tigers have a lengthy history against Oklahoma, dating back to 1902, and a 25-67-5 record against the Sooners.
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Eli Hoff | Post-Dispatch
Mizzou athletics beat writer
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