Tiger fans were given a not-so-friendly reminder on Saturday that Gary Pinkel is still the head coach of the Missouri Tiger football team.
Despite three backbreaking turnovers the Tigers had the ball inside the Texas A&M five-yard line in the fourth quarter and were looking to take back the lead and the momentum. Chase Daniel was conveying images of Tom Brady and John Elway, as it appeared that despite his team’s poor effort he was going to do whatever he had to in order to carry his team to victory.
Then Gary Pinkel took over. Pinkel inexplicably decided to take a delay of game penalty on fourth-and-goal from the Aggie four-yard line. Then he made the mind-blowing decision of having his team attempt a fake field goal and Brad Ekwerekwu was tackled well short of the end zone.
Now I could write a thesis about what’s wrong with this play calling, but I’ll try to just hit some of the major flaws. First off, if you’re going to go for it on fourth down, whether it is with your offense or a trick play, you obviously cannot take a delay of game penalty. That’s common sense and I hope that it was just some sort of miscommunication, which is still inexcusable when you have timeouts remaining.
The biggest problem I had with this decision was the fact that the ball was taken out of Chase Daniel’s hands for the biggest play of the game. If this had happened earlier in the game it would be one thing, but this was a fourth and goal during the fourth quarter with the all-important momentum obviously about to swing one way or the other. This is the point in the game where you call a play you’re comfortable running, give the ball to Chase Daniel, and hope for the best. Daniel had a record as a starter of 37-1 going back to his high school days for a reason. He knows how to make the plays that win ballgames.
This would be like Phil Jackson drawing up a play for Ron Harper while Michael Jordan watched from the bench. It simply defies logic.
The Tigers never sniffed the end zone after that and all hope was lost after Tony Temple was tackled short of a first down on an option play called on fourth-and-two (another questionable play call).
Coaches often say that you learn a lot more about a team after losses and we certainly learned a lot about the Tigers on Saturday. They have obvious weaknesses in stopping the run and turning the ball over. The fact that they have no ability to run the ball in between the tackles could also be considered a problem.
It’s now important to keep things in perspective. Despite Pinkel’s vintage performance he is still the favorite to win Big 12 Coach of the Year, and the Tigers are still capable of winning a conference championship, but next week’s Homecoming game against Kansas State could be a defining moment of this season for Missouri.
Either coming out and reasserting their dominance with a convincing victory or having another lackadaisical performance will set the stage for the rest of the season and ultimately determine whether or not the hype surrounding this team for the past few weeks was justified.
csg446@mizzou.edu
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