The Tailgate: No. 6 Missouri

Bostonians are notoriously territorial.

It's not really our fault that the majority of our definition stems from our town and city borders. Our region is built on blue collar roots capable of intensifying the lineage of children growing up where their parents were raised. We possess a stubborn pride in our hometowns, and it's usually linked to our rivalries that are based on the geographical differences within those towns.

It usually spills into public view whenever our sports teams are involved. Long and never-ending memories of Thanksgiving Day football games are baked into the fabric of these places, so it's hard to separate the sacred texts from the people who played in the games. The dense population probably doesn't help an area where the 16th-highest population is on the fifth-smallest amount of land in the country. Familiarity breeds contempt, after all.

Maybe we take a little too much pride in our sports teams, but nobody doubts the intensity of the region's "us-against-them" mentality. It's the one uniting factor that truly exists in our sports identity, and support for our local sides tends to throw a bubbling cauldron into a full-blown and overflowing inferno. We love our teams - and I mean really, really, really love them. Our stadiums are cathedrals and our allegiances are tattooed on many of our bodies.

Antagonizing that level of loyalty is a fun thread for comedians or shows, but angering Massachusetts natives is an incredibly harsh lesson even for those that accidentally and inadvertently take shots at teams from the Commonwealth.

Three years ago, bulletin board material fueled the BC fanbase and an overtime victory by the Eagles over the Tigers at Alumni Stadium was a validating moment for the BC and ACC faithful. This year's match-up is entirely different with both Boston College and Missouri in the top-25; the only such match-up between ranked foes on Saturday's slate.

Memories of the 2021 game offer a natural refresh for this week's matchup, but Mizzou truthfully isn't the same team from the 2021 season. Call it a learning curve or a process, but the Tigers are the No. 6 team in the nation and a legitimate national championship contender that owns a Cotton Bowl championship after last year's win over Ohio State. Playmakers on both sides of the ball are NFL-ready and professional-caliber, and Drinkwitz is the defending SEC Coach of the Year.

Missouri won't sleep on BC as the No. 24 team in the nation, and BC won't sneak up on a team seeking its first-ever run at an SEC championship. It's the lone top-25 clash of a Saturday littered with postseason implications and aspirations, none the least of which is an annual battle to steal flowers from an SEC program bound for greatness.

"We've already had a road trip, relative to crowd noise and relative to the routine of traveling on a Friday, getting there, having meetings and getting up [for a game]," said BC head coach Bill O'Brien. "It's an early game, which I think is good because we're a morning program and this is an 11:45 a.m. kickoff [local to the Central Time Zone]. It's a big challenge. It'll be a great atmosphere. Our guys are excited about it."

Here's what to watch for when the nationally-ranked Eagles head to Mizzou:

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Game Storylines (Creed Edition)

Rocky Balboa: One step at a time. One punch at a time. One round at a time.

The limited number of annual non-conference slots ensures that top-10 matchups don't come around unless they organically develop for rising programs like BC and Missouri. Neither team occupies a neutral site marquee like the Clemson-Georgia matchup that started the season in Atlanta, and the prescheduled nature of setting matchups years in advance requires teams to hit their stride at the exact right time.

"The SEC is definitely a brand," said O'Brien, who spent one year as Alabama's offensive coordinator. "I'm not going to argue that, but when you think about conferences like the SEC, the Big Ten, the ACC - those are three of the top conferences. We spent a lot of time at the ACC meetings talking about how we can market the ACC better, and I think we're doing that. I think the ACC is a really strong conference, I really do, but the SEC is a great conference and has been good for a very long time with a lot of great teams, top-to-bottom. This is going to be a great challenge for us."

Saturday is the highest-ranked non-conference matchup for a ranked BC team since the 1995 season opened with a neutral site matchup against No. 12 Ohio State. The No. 6 Tigers are the highest-seeded team since the No. 17 Eagles defeated top-ranked Notre Dame during the 1993 season, and from a hype standpoint, the Tigers might include the best matchup since Glenn Foley defeated ninth-ranked Penn State on the road before losing the Hall of Fame Bowl to No. 17 Tennessee during the 1992 season. On pure name value, No. 6 Missouri is akin to Doug Flutie's 1984 game against No. 9 Alabama that ended with a 38-31, nationally-televised win at Legion Field.

"We're only as good as our last practice and our next practice," O'Brien emphasized. "We've got to get this program to really strive for consistency and sustain [success] in every area. We have to really focus on getting better on every snap and every meeting. That's what we talk about. I think [being ranked] is great for BC, but this is really about really trying to get better, one day at a time."

Adonis Johnson: So how did you beat him?
Rocky Balboa: Time takes everyone out. Time's undefeated.

Missouri isn't invincible, but the Tiger playmakers on either side of the ball are harnessed within a scheme designed to play complementary football to its maximum successful degree. An offense with arguably the best receiving prospect in college football operates with an NFL-ready quarterback and a big, physical offensive line that didn't allow a sack in either of its first two games of the season while the defense nicknamed "Death Row" posted back-to-back shutouts for the best two-game point differential in program history.

"[Luther Burden] is a top NFL prospect," O'Brien said. "He's a guy that's like JaMarr Chase from the Cincinnati Bengals. I'm not saying he's as good as JaMarr Chase, but that type of skill set makes him a dynamic player. When the ball's in his hand, he's a tough guy to stop, so we have to do the best job that we can. The best thing we've got to do is to not let him get behind us [because] he's probably the best receiver in the country."

Burden didn't need many touches in the wins over Murray State and Buffalo, but his lasting image from last season torched Kansas State, Memphis, Vanderbilt, LSU and Florida for those 10-catch, 100-yard days that earned him Second-Team All-America honors for his overall performance while upgrading to a preseason First-Team All-America pick for the upcoming year. He's produced at least one catch in his last 24 games and last season made him the eighth player in program history to reach 1,000 yards, and he's quickly developed a reputation as an unstoppable player who feasts on opposing secondaries while opposing coordinators wait for his inevitable matriculation to the pro ranks.

Rocky Balboa: That's pretty good…the chickens are getting slower.

Missouri's historic quarterbacks are insanely underrated compared to the factories from the old Big 12 and current SEC, but current quarterback Brady Cook is every bit the part once played by Chase Daniel, Drew Lock and Blaine Gabbert, the latter two of which were first round draft picks. His lethal efficiency is second to Daniel, the lone Super Bowl champion from that group, and it's become a situation where Eli Drinkwitz diversified his offense around the personnel while intensely developing the style seen in the 2021 game against then-quarterback Connor Bazelak.

"There's no doubt that when you look at a well-coached team, you might see something that you think fits your team and fits what you do," O'Brien admitted. "That's what it's all about in coaching. It's all about research and really trying to drill down to find things. You think of your own things, obviously, but if you see something on film that you think is really good, you're going to do a lot of research on all the teams around the country. That's a big part of what we do."

There's plenty to learn about Mizzou based on the lineage from Bazelak to Cook. Both are bigger quarterbacks who threw for 2,500 yards as first-time starters, but Drinkwitz inherited Bazelak while developing Cook as a background starter. Bazelak led the team through that 2021 season before Cook took over for his third year in the system, and the steady growth is a prime example of a coach that built an offense by retaining players over a five-year span.

"We all want instant gratification," Drinkwitz said. "We all want explosive plays. You'd rather be on SportsCenter than [having] three yards in a cloud of dust or five-yard hitches, but the reality of what we're figuring out is that teams don't really want to give up explosive plays against our wide receiver core. So we have to be willing to make them defend in a different matter, and I think our offensive staff has done a really good job of figuring out what the defensive plan was…there's a little bit of impatience with the offense at times, but I think [offensive coordinator Kirby Moore] did a really good job of settling them down on the first drive of the second quarter [against Buffalo] and getting them into the end zone."

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Question Box

Can BC continue generating pressure against a very big, very good offensive line?

Houston transfer Cam'Ron Johnson is a monster at right guard, and right tackle Armand Membou's 325-pound frame improved his footwork and hand-eye coordination in the passing game in the first two games. The left side of the line, meanwhile, lost two players to the NFL, but senior Marcus Bryant is a six-foot, seven-inch, 317-pound tackle that plays next to the six-foot, five-inch, 320-pound interior guard body provided by Cayden Green.

"We have to play fast against bigger guys," said defensive tackle George Rooks. "You have to get low and use leverage, especially when you're executing your technique, and we have to do it at the highest level because they have an offensive line. We just have to keep playing our style of football and play fast by being confident, and at the end of the day [see if] we can go out there and get a win."

Can BC control the clock against a team averaging roughly 36 minutes per game?

Mizzou didn't miss a beat after running back Cody Schrader declared for the NFL Draft. Both Nate Noel and Marcus Carroll averaged more than five years per carry in their first two games, and while neither produced 100 yards individually against Murray State or Buffalo, both provide similar looks for an offense that can run to the outside behind its fast, physical blocking scheme.

"They run a lot of outside zone," said O'Brien. "They know how to run [those plays], and they've been running it that way for a long time. It's going to be difficult to stop, but I think we've got a decent plan. We just have to see how we execute, and we have to execute [the game plan] at a high level."

Does this road trip differ from the FSU trip?

Modern football players are especially conditioned to block out any and all noise. The social media era makes it easier than ever for fans to interact with their favorite - or least favorite - players, coaches and teams, but moving past the infancy era of that openness instead birthed a new era where it's easier to block out noise before it becomes a factor.

Missouri is exceptionally good at home, but playing at Faurot Field before a sold-out crowd isn't likely to impact a BC team that previously practiced in front of FSU's war chant for the entire week leading up to the game. I don't think chants or music or crowd noise is going to throw the Eagles off their collective game, and I really don't think the team is arriving in Columbia with an unprepared snap count or silent cadence to combat crowd noise. Like FSU, taking the crowd away from the game in the early stages negates anything having to do with a hostile environment.

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Meteorology 101

I'll be honest: I had no idea that a hurricane made landfall in Louisiana until I checked weather reports for this game. I didn't know there was even a hurricane churning through those warm waters, so I was pretty surprised when I checked Missouri weather and saw a northward path heading straight towards the St. Louis area.

Remnants from Hurricane Francine are heading straight through the Mississippi and Arkansas area on Friday night and should reach southern Missouri ahead of Saturday's kickoff. Columbia is located northwest of that region and is close to the geographical center of the state, so a consistent path likely keeps the rain away from the region during the buildup to the 11:45 a.m. local time start.

A more likely forecast has humid and warm temperatures creeping into the 80s as the game rolls forward, so conditions aren't looking like an issue for anything related to the game.

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BC-Missouri X Factor

Any artist out there that want to be an artist and stay a star, and don't have to worry about the executive producer trying to be all in the videos, all on the record, dancing… come to Death Row. -Suge Knight

My wife and I grew up during an era when rap music was embroiled in the East Coast-West Coast battle, so our debates carry an extra sense of appreciation for a Missouri defense nicknamed "Death Row." I actually remember exactly where I was when Kiss 108 FM announced Tupac Shakur's shooting during the night hours after Mike Tyson's knockout win over Bruce Seldon, and I especially remember sitting in the car alongside Memorial Drive when the same station announced his death six days later.

The nickname itself is earned by a relentless and ruthless pursuit of an opposing offense. Neither Murray State nor Buffalo gained 10 first downs in their respective shutout losses, and Missouri's lethal third down efficiency helped hold the Bulls to 189 total yards - 100 more than the Racers gained.

"We've gone against some good defenses," noted right tackle Ozzy Trapilo. "This defensive line's a good one and has a great reputation. We have a lot of respect for those players, and I think we can definitely take away, in general, that playing a defensive line of this caliber is going to make us all better. We're going to see high-quality, NFL-level moves, and it's good for the whole line, as a unit, to face such a good defensive line. We're excited for that challenge."

Mizzou employs a four-man front on its depth chart, but the size and skill across its positions allows defensive coordinators Corey Batoon and DJ Smith to deploy different coverages and disguises akin to what BC did in its first two games. Defensive ends Johnny Walker and Zion Young are each well-built, 250-pound ships with speed, and interior defensive linemen Chris McClellan and Kristian Williams clog running lanes to allow linebackers Chuck Hicks and Corey Flagg crush through the gaps in interchangeable formations. A five-man defensive backfield spearheaded by three safeties is equally damaging to opposing receivers.

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Dan's Non-Football Observation of the Week

Those of us who remember Boston during the 1990s unquestionably recall how the city looked completely different in the years before the Big Dig was completed. The Boston Garden stood next to the newly-constructed FleetCenter before the wrecking ball opened the vault's side wall to public consumption, and the elevated MBTA Green Line and Interstate 93 divided the North End from Downtown and Faneuil Hall. Nobody walked underneath the highway. It smelled funky. Traffic was everywhere.

Simply put, Boston wasn't fun, which is why it's wild to think that the Big Dig project littered with faults and missteps definitely and irrevocably changed the city for the better. The Rose Kennedy Greenway that exists is well-lit along the Boston waterfront, and walking from the Garden to the Faneuil Hall stretch doesn't include the combination of electrical water, exhaust fumes and road salt. I'm pretty sure one of the local microbreweries even built a beer garden where a boarded-up exit once made us think about driving off the bridge.

It's easy to forget how Boston once existed, but I caught wind of a podcast series produced by WGBH that dove into the topic at virtually every level. The Big Dig - a nine-part series - was phenomenal and explored the entire history of the highway system encompassing the Commonwealth. It stretched into how the highways are currently built and why everything is borderline half-baked, and it further examined the political implications that linger into the modern era.

The podcast itself generated conversations with my parents about spending hours in traffic. Pursuant to my point at the top, I grew up in the same Greater Boston area as my dad and my grandfather, and we had some fun retelling stories from the old days around Boston. I wished my grandfather would've still been alive to share some of his old, old stories, but being able to sit around a firepit over the summer and hear my dad boom his voice through his neighborhood as he complained about the old South Station Tunnel was worth its weight in the rock salt that sat underneath the old I-93.

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Pregame Quote and Prediction

The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people. -John Adams

Missouri's win over Buffalo tied a program record for consecutive non-conference wins in its home building, but this week marks the Tigers' first non-league game between two ranked teams since a St. Louis-style meetup against No. 20 Illinois at the start of the 2008 season. They've won 18 consecutive non-SEC games at Memorial Stadium and have arguably been better at home than when they last ascended to the top-10 during the seven-year streak that started in 2005 and ended when Syracuse upended them in November, 2012.

What's ironic throughout the past 18 games is that Missouri seemingly defeated every big name team and coach right before or after the apex of its success. A 2018 win over Mike Norvell's Memphis Tigers was one year before an American Athletic Conference championship and trip to the Cotton Bowl, and the next year's wins over West Virginia and Troy occurred after the Mountaineers' trek to the top-25 and the Trojans' win over Nebraska. Last year's win against Kansas State was right during the Wildcats' early season ascension to the top-25, but the full breakthrough didn't occur until they blew through Kansas at the end of the regular season.

That said, Missouri is a legitimate national championship contender. Its Cotton Bowl win marked the first bowl victory of any kind since Gary Pinkel's No. 16 Tigers defeated Minnesota in the 2014 Citrus Bowl and more importantly restored the program to the heights once experienced during the 2013 Cotton Bowl win over Oklahoma State. It called to mind the infamous 2007 season that ended with the No. 3 Tigers earning the No. 1 ranking in the nation after beating No. 2 Kansas before losing the Big 12 Championship during the so-called "Year of the Upset."

Like other leagues, the SEC ditched its two-division format after its offseason realignment, but the reconfigured league retained six teams in this week's top-10 and three of the top four teams in the nation. No. 1 Georgia and No. 7 Tennessee are former SEC East rivals of a Mizzou team that beat the Vols to gain traction for last year's New Year's Six appearance, and I don't know if there's a better explanation for the maelstrom facing BC's first visit to Faurot Field.

Scott Mutryn likes telling me that we learn about teams during the first game and the first half of the second game of their seasons. Omitting Duquesne for its outlier status, that means we're going to see exactly what's under BC's proverbial hood during this particular game. The No. 24 Eagles are back in the rankings. Whether or not they stay there is up to what happens on Saturday.

No. 24 Boston College heads to No. 6 Missouri for its third game of the season on Saturday, September 14, 2024 with kick-off slated for 12:30 p.m. National television coverage is available on the SEC Network, and online streaming available through the ESPN family of Internet and mobile device apps. SEC Network broadcaster and PGA radio voice Taylor Zarzour will handle play-by-play duties with College Football Hall of Fame member and former NFL first round draft pick Matt Stinchcomb and Out of Pocket host Alyssa Lang on sideline duties.

Players Mentioned

George Rooks

Ozzy Trapilo

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