Previewing the Missouri Tigers with advanced stats

Welcome back to Fun With Numbers. We’re in Week 6 now, and the Aggies are 4-1 with a ton to play for in the second half of the season. We’ll be following the numbers the whole way, and hopefully in a month’s time the Aggies are still playing meaningful football. But first, Missouri.

What Do We Know?

The Missouri Tigers travel back to College Station for the first time in 10 years, bringing a Top 10 ranking and an unblemished record following their first bye week of the season. The Tigers are still riding high from last season, in fact it’s been since November 4th of 2023 since they’ve lost a game (a 30-21 defeat against Georgia), and they certainly have big expectations as they prepare to enter the second half of the season. The Aggies are a 2 point favorite in Vegas, with the SP+ predicting a 5.2 point win for the Tigers while the FEI actually likes the Aggies by exactly 2 points. Let’s take a closer look

Aggie Offense vs Tiger Defense

With Marcel Reed continuing to get snaps for the Aggies, the offense continues to trend in the wrong direction by most metrics. Now, it’s doing a lot of things really well, and Reed is responsible for a lot of that. Despite opposing defenses stacking the box, the Ags are running the ball pretty well, and while Reed was not perfect against Arkansas, he was able to hit a couple of chunk plays through the air, and he’s being well protected by this OL, while also taking care of the ball.

This will be their toughest test since the opener against Notre Dame, an experienced Missouri Defense that pitched two shutouts to start the season before giving up 21 to Boston College in Week 3 and 27 (20 in regulation) to Vanderbilt a couple of weeks ago. They have a lot of strengths, but their ability to get teams off schedule and forcing them into passing downs 36% of the time (24th in the country), along with the talent and experience they have at the edge makes them a big time test for the A&M front. That said, they’re not perfect and had to replace some key pieces in the secondary this offseason, and so far have been prone to giving up some big passing plays.

Aggie Defense vs Tiger Offense

The Aggies continue to show a lot of promise on the other side of the ball, even looking absolutely dominant at times against Arkansas late in the game. That said, they still are nagged by a couple of busted plays a game that make a huge impact on their ceiling, as does their 53 missed tackles on the season (almost double what Missouri has at 28). That said, the pass rush continues to improve each game, and teams aren’t often finding big holes to run through against this Aggie Front 7.

Even with its issues, it’s still the best defense this Tigers squad has seen all year and many would say the Missouri offense has been off to a pretty slow start, considering their returning production numbers. They’ve been really efficient in both the passing and running game, but considering they have Brady Cook entering his 5th year in college and a dynamic receiver like Luther Burden III, they haven’t been all that explosive when throwing the ball. That said, who needs big plays when your QB is averaging nearly a 70% completion rate and you’ve got Nate Noel averaging 6+ yards/carry?

So What’s the Verdict?

That’s a LOT of yellow in those charts, and even after watching them struggle against Boston College and Vanderbilt (Two teams that might end up having good seasons but are currently outside the Top 50 in the SP+), it’s not hard to envision a scenario where the Tigers are able to hit some big plays and the Aggie offense just isn’t able to keep up.

I think that’s what it will come down to, whether the Aggies can limit the explosiveness of guys like Burden III and Theo Wease or whether this talented Missouri offense has finally put it together over their bye week. Can the Aggies generate some push up front and create some havoc like Vandy did (5 TFLs, 6 Pressures, 3 sacks) and cut down on the amount of time the Aggie secondary has to stay in coverage? Can they hold the Tigers to a 31% Success Rate in the Red Zone like the Commodores did?

And what about the offensive side of the ball? Can whoever is taking snaps for the Aggies (Probably Reed still, but who knows?) this week connect a few passes early and make this offense a little more two dimensional? And can they take care of the ball against a secondary that has given up some big plays, but also 4 picks and 4 PBUs on the year?

My Prediction: Like I said, there is a lot to be concerned about. Missouri just seems to have brought back so much from last year, it seems odd that they seemed so sluggish against BC and Vanderbilt, but many great teams don’t hit their stride until the midway point. I think the Aggies still have some work to do, and drop their second game of the season 27-24 this weekend.

Final Notes

As always, thanks for reading along. We’ll take some time off next week before coming back to breakdown the Mississippi State matchup.

• Bcftoys.com for Brian Fremeau’s FEI data and other fun projects from him.
• ESPN.com is the home for all of Bill Connelly’s SP+ info, including the Returning Production data. You’ll need to subscribe to ESPN+ for most of his stuff these days.
• CollegeFootballData.com is a great site for data and charts that you can download and play with on your own time, in case Fun With Numbers isn’t filling that statistical void in your life. Most of my data comes from here.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? You know where to leave ‘em.