COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri’s preseason camp started in a way that’s the inverse of most drives in a football game: The Tigers began in the red zone.
With schematic work on the docket for the next few weeks of practices, Mizzou held its first practice of the preseason Monday in its indoor facility, setting the stage for the part of the field that will become the first priority of the season.
“We will be very smart in how we start,†coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “We always start in the red zone to try to get our players acclimated to fall camp and try to keep them as safe and as healthy as possible as we build up and prepare for Week 1 versus Murray State.â€
There’s a conditioning element to starting in the shortest part of the field. But it’s about performance, too. When the MU coaches went back over the Tigers’ 2023 season, the red zone stood out. Offensive coordinator Kirby Moore conducted a comprehensive study of what tended to happen in that situation — snapping the ball in the 20 yards closest to the opponent’s goal line.
He sees it as a math problem.
Mizzou was called for a penalty on 15 of its offensive drives that reached the red zone, Moore told the Post-Dispatch. On 11 of those penalty-afflicted possessions, the Tigers wound up settling for a field goal.
“When you look at that, a lot of that is self-inflicted,†Moore said. “We got to, first, get that fixed from the penalty perspective.â€
Drinkwitz sees another spot of red-zone trouble, too.
“The biggest area of growth for us has got to be third-and-goal calls,†he said. “That was where we struggled the most in the red zone was third and goal.â€
According to SEC StatCat, an unofficial play-tracking service, Missouri ran 16 plays in third-and-goal situations last year, scoring touchdowns on five. The resulting 31.3% conversion rate was lower than the 42.4% clip with which the Tigers converted third downs across all parts of the field.
Seven of those third-and-goal looks were pass attempts: six handled by quarterback Brady Cook, one by backup Sam Horn in the half of the season opener that he played. Horn’s lone third-and-goal pass led to a touchdown. In Cook’s six tries, the Tigers only completed a pass twice and scored once.
Of MU’s nine third-and-goal rushing plays, eight stayed in Cook’s hands while one went to running back Nathaniel Peat. Three of those looks produced touchdowns, all from Cook runs — though he finished with negative rushing yards in those situations.
Looking back at that performance, Moore pointed to some general challenges that offenses face on third and goal.
“The field is shorter. We’re playing against really good defenses longer,†he said.
Even with the coaches’ third-and-goal gripe, Mizzou was one of the nation’s best programs when it came to getting points from trips to the red zone.
The Tigers came away with points on 96.6% of their red-zone possessions, according to CFB Stats, a mark that was third-best in the Football Bowl Subdivision and trailed only Oregon State and Colorado. The next most efficient Southeastern Conference team was Alabama at 92.3%.
That metric weighs touchdowns and field goals the same, though, when the difference between six points and three points is actually quite stark.
When it came to scoring touchdowns in the red zone, Missouri managed to do so on 36 of the 58 drives that made it that far, a 62.1% rate. That sat just 61st in the country and 11th in the SEC. As a result, the Tigers had the eighth-highest rate of field goals in the red zone at 34.5%.
Perhaps part of the problem, as MU’s coaches see it, was too rigid a plan for those possessions.
Drinkwitz said that Moore will be moving away from scripts for those sequences to instead do more reading of what might work at a given moment. The first stages of rolling out that strategy were slated to start Monday when the Tigers lined up for a first-and-goal situation from the 10-yard line.
“Play it out — no scripts,†he said. “Both sides of the ball just have to call (plays) and react to those calls.â€
Moore’s offseason study wasn’t just of Mizzou’s offense and what the Tigers did. He sifted through film from other college programs and NFL teams to explore how other teams approached red zone and third-and-goal opportunities. That gave him some ideas for MU’s schematic install that will take place during camp.
“You’re just evaluating what’s been successful for other people,†Moore said. “Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest through the trees during the season, and the stuff that you’re doing, you’re staying with it. It was looking at all those different concepts, NFL, college — going to try and implement some of those things and see if it fits our personnel.â€
Mizzou football coach Eli Drinkwitz speaks at SEC media days in Dallas on Tuesday, July 16, 2024. (Video courtesy Southeastern Conference)
