By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
(MIZ)—Brady Cook and Luther Burden III have played their last game at Faurot Field, a 28=21over Arkansas on a frigid, snowy day in Columbia. It’s the first time in recent memory that the Tigers have played in the snow. One report says there hasn’t been a regular-season snow game in the SEC since 1993. Cook and Burden scored the deciding last eight points in the game.
Yesterday, Burden announced he’s available in the NFL Draft.
The Tigers got ten points on their first two possessions but didn’t score on their next four. But the second half was different until late. Arkansas got a touchdown to go up 21-20 with 4:19 to go, leaving plenty of time for a Missouri com back, and Cook’s 30-yard bolt up the wide-open middle gave Missouri a 26-21 lead with 1:53 left.
With plenty of time for Arkansas to reach the end zone one last time and steal the win, the Tigers decided to go for two—-and Burden capped off his career catching a Cook pass for a two-point conversion.
(Cook and Burden are among eighty players named as pre-season candidates for the Maxwell Award that goes to the nation’s best offensive football player. Neither made the final three, announced a few days ago.)
Arkansas, needing a touchdown and conversion to tie, drove into Missouri territory as the clock wound down but a Hail Mary pass was knocked down with the clock hitting zero.
Missouri finishes 9-3 with a wining SEC record. Arkansas split its 12 games. Both are headed for post-season play.
(MIZBOWL)—Missouri will learn by next Sunday noon where it will play its final game of the season. Bowl selections will be announced starting at 11 a.m., our time. The top six bowls will be reserved for the twelve teams that make the playoffs.
Here’s how that works: The five highest-ranked conference champions will get automatic bids. The seven highest-ranked teams after that will join the field. The top four seeds will have first round byes.
The remaining four will play on the fields of the higher-ranked team in each matchup. The six major New Year’s Day bowls will host quarterfinal games—Fiesta, Peach, Rose, and Sugar. The semifinal games will be played a week later in the Orange and Cotton Bowls. The last college football game of the season will be January 20 in Atlanta.
(THE POLLS)—Missouri’s win over Arkansas put the Tigers more solidly into the top 25, but a 9-3 team beating a 6-6 team is not worth a significant jump. Missouri is 20th in the coaches poll and 22nd in the AP sportswriters poll.
Of passing interest is that UNLV is ranked 19th among coaches as well as sportswriters. UNLV’s head coach is Barry Odoms, the immediate predecessor of Eliah Drinkwitz. UNLV (10-2) plays Boise State for the Mountain West Conference championship next weekend. (ZOU)
(GOING FOR TEN)—A bowl win will give Missouri a chance to post double-digit wins in back-to-back years, something that has happened only once before. Missouri has had only five double-digit winning seasons in their 123-year history.
Missouri’s first 10-win season was 1960 when they went 10-1 although the only team to beat them that year, Kansas, later forfeited the game, for using illegal players, leaving Missouri with an 11-0 record (with an asterisk and a bowl win against Navy). Missouri went 12-2 in 2012 and 11-3 in 2014. Last year, of course, they were 12-2.
If Missouri wins its bowl game, Drinkwitz will move into a tie with Al Onofrio for most wins by an MU football coach. Onofrio was 38-41 in seven years. Drinkwitz is 37-24 in five years. He is only nine wins away from tying Warren Powers in fourth place. (ZOU)
(CHIEFS)—Are they the worst 11-1 team in NFL history or just in recent memory? Or are they the luckiest 11-1 team in NFL history or just in recent memory.
Whatever. It’s better to be lucky than good sometimes and the Chiefs’ win over the Raiders Friday was definitely that. Their propensity to give away leads and then to make a hairbreadth escape was on full display in that game. The Chiefs had one of the worst teams in the NFL this year down 16-3 in the third quarter only to see the Raiders take a 17-16 late lead. The Chiefs regained the lead on on substitute-substitute kicker Matthew Wright’s 31-yard field goal. He would kick the deciding fourth one in the fourth quarter; the chiefs got into the red zone five times against the lowly Raiders and had to settle for only one touchdown and four field goals.
Wright hit field goals of 25, 47, 35, and 32 yards while his counterpart for the Raiders, Daniel Castor missed from 56, 55, and 58 yards. A three-and-out by the Chiefs left the Raiders with time to get close enough for a wining kick with the clock running out but Castor never had a chance to finally hit a three-pointer when a premature center snap turned into a fumble by quarterback Aidan O’Conell that was recovered by the Chiefs’ Nick Bolton with the clock showing only zeroes.
Chiefs Quarterback Patrick Mahomes broke Len Dawson’s record for career touchdowns with his only TD pass of the game in the first half. But he was again hampered by miserable pass protection from his offensive line, most notably from left tackle where the Chiefs this year have tried three guys and yanked them all during a game. For the second game in a row, Mahomes was sacked five times. He also was pressured eleven times.
Mahomes let his frustration about the left tackle situation show in the postgame news conference although he was uncomfortable throwing anyone under the team bus. “I trust those guys to go out there and make it happen. I’ve seen those guys play, and they’ve played at high levels, and so, the coaches made a move, and I thought the guys went in there and did a good job. I’ve got to trust it—I think there was times I didn’t trust it there on that last drive, and if I can trust it and maybe make some of those throws, then we’re not in the situation we were in at the end of the game.”
Coach Andy Reid benched his latest disappointment at left tackle—Wanya Morris for the last two series of the game–and moved left guard Joe Thuney to that position and put Mike Caliendo in at left guard. He said after the game that Morris was “struggling a little bit” protecting Mahomes’ blind side. “It’s disruptive to any offense if their quarterback’s getting hit and not able to get the ball off…You’ve got to do better than what we did out there.”
Morris became the starting left tackle three games into the season after rookie Kingsley Suamataia struggled in the first two weeks of the season.
But the Chiefs, by hook or by crook, are 11-1, the first team to lock up a playoff spot, their tenth consecutive year in the playoffs. Only the New England Patriots, in the Tom Brady era, have more than that, 11.
(CHIEFS SCHEDULE)—Future Chiefs Hall of Fame Defensive Tackle has an axe to grind with the NFL schedulers and he’s going to grind it through the players association in the off-season.
He calls the schedule “awkward,” and argues teams should have a late-season bye week when schedules look like the Chiefs schedule this month:
Chiefs at Cleveland Sunday, December 15;
December 21, Texans in Kansas City;
Christmas Day, Chiefs at Pittsburgh.
After that they won’t play again until they finish the regular season on January 5 in Denver.
Jones prefers that teams facing that kind of a schedule have their bye week just before starting that kind of series of games.
(HIGH SCHOOLS)—High School Championship Weekend three days away with three games Friday and three more on Saturday at Faurot Field in Columbia. A seventh game will be played Saturday afternoon in St. Joseph on Craig Field at Missouri Western’s Spratt Memorial Stadium to decide the 8-man championship. North Shelby (9-4) plays Archie 13-0).
Here’s the schedule for the 11-man teams:
Friday: 11 a.m., Class 4—Festus (11-2) vs. St. Louis Lutheran North (12-1)
3 p.m., Class 2—Fair Grove (14-0) vs. Lamar (10-4)
7 p.m., Class 6—Nixa (13-0) vs. St. Louis DeSmet Jesuit (11-2)
Saturday: 11 a.m., Class 3—Seneca (13-0) vs. Wardsville Blair Oaks (12-1)
3 p.m.,—Class 1—Adrian (12-1) vs. Hamilton Penney (9-4)
7 p.m.—Class 5—Jefferson City Helias Catholic (12-1) vs. Platte County (13-0)
The Missouri State High School Activities Association televises the games on its website.
Racing toward the end—
(INDYCAR)—One of INDYCAR’s most popular drivers is getting another chance to show his skills in a Formula 1 car with one team and might have a chance with a new American team that will join the series in 2026.
McLaren, the team he drives for in Indycar, has listed him for the last couple of years as a member of its driver development team and as a reserve driver although the team already has two young guns in its cars—Lando Norris and Oliver Piastri. He’ll have another chance to run tests in the 2024 F1 car at the season’s wrap-up race in Abu Dahbi. Although his chances of moving into one of the present team cars for 2025, observers think he might be a candidate for the new Cadillac F1 team that starts competing in ’26.
O’Ward finished second in the 2022 Indianapolis 500 after fiercely contesting for the lead at the start of the last lap. A caution flag prohibited another charge for the lead on the final turns, leaving Marcus Ericcson in the lead at the checkered flag.
This year, he couldn’t hold off Josef Newgarden in the closing yards of the and lost by .34 of a second.
(NASCAR)—One of the next-gen drivers taking over in NASCAR says he’d like to follow Kyle Larson’s lead and run the Indianapolis 500 and the 600-mile NASCAR race on Memorial Day weekend, too. But there’s a hangup.
Christopher Bell drives for Joe Gibbs Racing, which uses Toyota powerplants. Toyota does not build engines for INDYCAR, although it once did. Toyota is reluctant to have one of its drivers in a car powered by competing companies. Chevrolet and Honda provide engines for the INDYCAR series.
Toyota fielded cars in the INDYCAR and the CART series while open wheel racing was split into two warring camps. But it pulled out in 2002 after seven seasons. It has been fielding Camrys in NASCAR Cup races since 2007.
(FORMULA 1)—F1’s year comes to an end this weekend at Abu Dhabi. Max Verstappen wrapped up his fourth championship a couple of weeks ago.
(Photo Credit: Brady Cook (12) and Luther Burden III (3) after beating Ohio State last year: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports / Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports)
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