Soon, we have to revisit the 2019 coaching cycle: 7 thoughts on Missouri's win over Arkansas

Missouri football has done it.

Pull out all the receipts, talk the smack and have fun, MU has won 10 games this season after literally every prediction had the Tigers hanging around with Vanderbilt.

Here are seven thoughts on Missouri's season-final rout of the Hogs, which was a game between two programs going in two different directions.

Friday was a thorough beat down, maybe the best rout in Drinkwitz's tenure

The final stats do not do Friday's beat-down justice.

On paper, Missouri outgained Arkansas 370-234 and outscored Arkansas 48-14. But consider that, at the end of the third quarter, Missouri was leading 41-0 and was outgaining Arkansas 342-59.

Arkansas just could not do a thing against Missouri's first-stringers. Obviously, things went from bad to worse when KJ Jefferson went out with an injury and didn't return. At that point, the game was pretty much over.

Missouri went up 10-0 after Jefferson left, and 17-0 shortly after in the second quarter. Even if MU didn't score from that point on, the defense was just playing at such a high level against such a dismal offense I'm convinced the defense would have eventually outscored the offense.

In the Drinkwitz era, maybe the 41-0 win over Vanderbilt was a more thorough beatdown. If it weren't for garbage time, there's a chance it would've been 48-0 on Friday. Drinkwitz has this team clicking.

It's not perfect, but it's consistent. Missouri put up 10 in the first and 10 in the second before the Mike Tyson-eqse knock-out punch with a 21-point third quarter. MU did that to plenty of teams this year like Kentucky, Tennessee and South Carolina.

That's the maturity Drinkwitz has learned on display. It's why I believe he's got to be the SEC Coach of the Year.

The two different ways Missouri and Arkansas are traveling

In 2021, Arkansas just beat Missouri 34-17. It wasn't a whuppin' by any means, but it was a sound victory over a Tigers' team that wasn't a great team but found a way to rebound in the second half of the season.

That year, Arkansas won nine games and beat Penn State in the Outback Bowl.

The Hogs went from 3-7 to 9-4. With an entire career of KJ Jefferson in front of them, the arrow seemed to be trending up for Arkansas. Even a 7-6 season last year didn't diminish what experts expected out of Arkansas this year.

Now, it seems like the two program's trends have been reversed.

Missouri, thanks to player development and its successful recruiting, shook off two 6-7 seasons to break through at 10-2.

I don't cover Arkansas, so I don't have the same insight into that program like I do Missouri, but consider this: Sam Pittman hasn't had a recruiting class rank in the top half of the SEC during his tenure.

Taking a look at this season, Luther Burden, Armand Membou and Brett Norfleet are just three of the young players who made an impact. Mix the young players who developed with plenty of experience, like JC Carlies, Ennis Rakestraw and Kris Abrams-Draine, and it makes sense how Missouri broke through this season.

The development plan, which was doing right by plenty of the players in the 2020 and 2021 classes while landing difference-making players like Burden in 2022 and Williams Nwaneri for 2024, worked.

Sam Pittman seemingly has one more year to get back to that same 9-4 magic he had in 2021.

A pessimist's view on Missouri's season

It's the end of the 2023 regular season. It's time to take a look back.

The knee-jerk reaction to a 10-2 season is it's a resounding success. This is true, and I'm sure no one is arguing with that.

But, to play devil's advocate, it could have been better.

Look at the current rankings for the College Football Playoff. No two-loss team will make the top four, which has always been the case since the playoff's inception in 2014.

But, one-loss teams still have a chance. Missouri had two chances to be a one-loss team against Georiga and LSU.

With sustained offensive drives either against the Bulldogs or Tigers, it would've given MU a lead in the fourth quarter. Win either one of those games and Missouri is still in the playoff race.

Had MU beat Georgia, it would be in the SEC Championship Game against an Alabama team that hasn't been the same as the dynasty type of team that we've come to know.

Watching the New Year's Six Bowl Missouri plays in will be enthralling. Missouri's defense should give it a chance to win, no matter who the opponent is.

But, it was one or two plays away from being magical.

The optimist's view on Missouri's season

Now that the glass-half-empty view is out of the way, here's the right way to view this Missouri football season.

Missouri was a handful of plays away from having a winning year in 2022. Drinkwitz put it correctly when he said this team was in hell. They were. They couldn't catch any breaks whatsoever.

This year, the Tigers didn't catch breaks. They made their own.

Wins over Tennessee, Kansas State, Florida, Kentucky and South Carolina were all wins that would be memorable in individual seasons. They all happened this fall.

There may not be a year as exhilarating as this one. It was the first good year under Drinkwitz, and he followed through on his promises.

It's okay to wonder what could have been with the Georgia and LSU games. But, don't let that distract from the fact Missouri will be one of six teams playing in the few most coveted bowl games of the year.

Soon, we have to revisit the 2019 coaching cycle

One of the most interesting stories to revisit in my opinion has to be the 2019 coaching carousel in college football.

That's the year Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi State and Ole Miss all hired new coaches.

Drinkwitz came to Missouri; Sam Pittman went to Arkansas; Lane Kiffin went to Ole Miss; Mike Leach went to Mississippi State.

This single cycle formulated the teams that make up a tier of SEC teams that sit behind Georgia and Alabama.

Obviously, it's the cycle that brought Drinkwitz to Missouri. It was the decision by Jim Sterk that laid the foundation for the 10-win season that's happening today.

It also brought Kiffin to Ole Miss, who has brought plenty of success to Oxford by way of two 10-win seasons. The late Mike Leach brought the Bulldogs to an eight-win season before he suddenly passed away in December.

Pittman is on the hot seat after a difficult 4-7 year.

These decisions had plenty of influences, including when the jobs came open and who interviewed for which. It started Thanksgiving weekend in 2019, however.

The 2019 Egg Bowl ignited that cycle

I used to live in Oxford, Mississippi. It's a cute town with plenty of great food. If you ever make a trip there, stop at St. Leo's.

It wasn't for a long time, but I got to cover an Egg Bowl.

It was great. One-hundred and fifty-seven players were assessed unsportsmanlike fouls because of a giant scrum at the end of the third quarter in a game that was basically over. Then-Ole Miss coach Matt Luke really had no answers.

The very next year, Elijah Moore scored a potential game-tying touchdown in Starkville. He then pretended to urinate like a dog - something DK Metcalf did two years prior when Metcalf starred at Ole Miss - which resulted in a 15-yard unsportsmanlike flag that drove the extra point back. Ole Miss missed the extra point and lost.

What you need to understand is the Egg Bowl determines job security in Mississippi. A colleague told me a story once that a former Ole Miss head coach was stopped while out getting food, and the bystander doubled down: You have to beat State. It wasn't a question of "If," it was a statement.

Luke lost two in a row to MSU, he was fired. Joe Moorehead, MSU's coach, survived for a few more weeks before he was fired after MSU's bowl game. That set in motion the 2019 coaching cycle.

Had Moore not pretended to urinate like a dog, a sentence that still puts me in disbelief in 2023, and had Ole Miss gone on to win the Egg Bowl in overtime, Luke may have survived that season. Moorhead wouldn't have; he was fired a few weeks later anyway, there's no way he would have survived losing that Egg Bowl.

If Ole Miss were to win that game, where does Lane Kiffin go? Where does Drinkwitz go? Drinkwitz reportedly interviewed with Arkansas before Missouri hired him. Does Mike Leach end up in Columbia?

It's impossible to know. It's really fun to think about, though.

What bowl game? That depends on championship week

Don't pay attention to the chatter on social media. Missouri will play in a New Year's Six Bowl game.

It doesn't matter what Oklahoma has done or what Ole Miss has done. The arguments are moot because the College Football Playoff committee has thought highly of Missouri from the start.

The Tigers opened at No. 12 in the first CFP ranking of the season and have since risen to No. 9, which was already ahead of then-one loss Louisville, Ole Miss and Oklahoma. Missouri hasn't done anything to merit dropping in the rankings and the committee takes head-to-head results into account more so than anything.

Missouri lost two competitive games to two teams in the top 20. It'll be either the Cotton Bowl or Fiesta Bowl for MU, assuming Alabama loses to Georgia in the SEC title game.

There's still plenty to watch for. If Texas loses to Oklahoma State in the Big 12 Championship game and the loser of the Pac-12 Championship game between Oregon and Washington loses by multiple scores, Missouri could still rise in the CFP rankings.

It's just another reason to keep watching college football.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: 7 thoughts on Missouri football's win over Arkansas