Spring Ball Check-In with Mizzou’s 2024 Opponents (Part 1)

College football’s long haul of an offseason is turning the corner, as we are beginning to talk actual ball on these pages, and not just boardroom drama and roster construction. Missouri has a football schedule to play this fall, and we are going to check in with all 12 teams on it in the next two weeks. We will start with six this week and six next, going in alphabetical order instead of schedule order. What? I need more time to research Murray State and UMass. Alabama is easy. (To learn about it, not to play against.)

Two things jump off the page with the Tigers’ schedule: 1) holy crap, it is easy. Things couldn’t be more well-aligned for a deep run this fall. And 2.) man, that’s a lot of new coaches. Mizzou’s veteran program will get a lot of chances to line up against teams in the middle of a roster overhaul or installing a new identity. Let’s run down that slate, starting with these six teams.

Alabama – We will start with the team you probably know the most about, as this squad dominates headlines all year round. As you know, Nick Saban is gone, as are a host of talented Tide players, both to the NFL and the transfer portal: Dallas Turner, Chris Braswell, Kool-Aid McKinstry, Isaiah Bond, Caleb Downs, on and on. But Jalen Milroe is back, and he is as dynamic a runner at the quarterback position that we have seen in a few years. The running back room is absolutely loaded, and could be the best in the country, non-Buckeye division.

This might be the most vulnerable ‘Bama team since….since Chase Daniel was a Tiger. And yet, it’s still Bama in Bryant-Denny. Kalen DeBoer is a heck of an offensive coach, and he hired two respected Group of Five head coaches to co-coordinate his defense. There’s a sense of “if you’re gonna get ‘em, this might be the year” – and yet, the Tide opened as 8.5-point favorites over our Tigers in early action.

Arkansas – Oh, Arkansas, I could write a whole article about your 2024 outlook. (Maybe I will.) Sam Pittman is looking to extinguish his hot seat, so he hired Bobby Petrino, the man who literally and figuratively ran this program into a ditch. The venerable KJ Jefferson - Rocket Sanders backfield duo has split town, with Jefferson off to UCF and Sanders appearing earlier on Mizzou’s schedule as a Gamecock. They will be replaced by a new dynamic duo in the backfield that you might be familiar with if you stay up for late night college football action: quarterback Taylen Green from Boise State and running back Ja’Quinden Jackson from Utah. Both are dynamic players who had injury-riddled 2023 campaigns; Green in particular could be a nightmare in a Petrino offense. Of course, the defense was a tire fire last season, and will need to show marked improvements in Travis Williams’ second year coordinating this group in order to avoid a Pittman ouster. The vibes are not good right now, and it is a distinct possibility that Petrino, not Pittman, leads the Hogs onto the field at Faurot.

Auburn – College football analyst Bud Elliott of CBS Sports believes Hugh Freeze’s Auburn program is gearing up for a 2025 run and laying low this season. ‘25 is an odd year, meaning they get Georgia and Alabama at home in the decidedly unfriendly confines of Jordan-Hare. Hugh Freeze’s staff has been killing it in high school recruiting; he is slowly rebuilding after Bryan Harsin cratered the talent level of this proud program. But quarterback Payton Thorne is back after leading a mediocre passing attack in 2023. Will it be more of the ho-hum same or is Thorne ready to take a step forward? He will certainly have better wide receivers with Penn State transfer KeAndre Lambert-Smith and blue chip, five-star freshman Cam Coleman.

Boston College – The Eagles make the trip to Columbia on the return leg for the nightmare 2021 game, when we got our first extended look at how bad that defense was going to be. The Bill O’Brien era begins with two of his first three games on the road at defending New Year’s Six teams (they open at Florida State on Labor Day Monday night). The Eagles will likely be quarterbacked by Thomas Castelleanos, an undersized scat-back quarterback with a knack for extending plays.

They did bring in some interesting transfers from the Power Four, familiar names like running back Treshaun Ward from Kansas State and receiver Jayden McGowan from Vanderbilt. The coordinator hires are, um, interesting: offensive coordinator is Will Lawing, who has been O’Brien’s shadow at every stop for the past decade. And defensive coordinator is Tim Lewis, who has spent the past ten years either out of football or coaching in spring professional minor leagues.

Buffalo – The Bulls are one of five teams who will be playing Missouri with a new head coach, as former head man Mo Linquist heads to Tuscaloosa to co-coordinate Kalen DeBoer’s defense. Ace special teams coach Pete Lembo takes over the program; he was last seen tormenting SEC staffs with his tricks and fakes on Shane Beamer’s South Carolina staff. Lembo was the provider of arguably the only good on-field traits of Beamer’s program (they are mostly good at skits and TikToks).

This could be a long year for the Bulls. Buffalo is a notoriously hard place to win, unless you are about to be hired by the Jayhawks. They only won three games last year, even losing to Fordham from the FCS, and rank 130th in SP+ projections for the season. This might be the worst quarterback situation in the country – CJ Ogbanna is the favorite to start, but he was used almost exclusively last year as a “change of pace” running QB.

Mississippi State – The Bulldogs are in a transition year, as Zach Arnett’s run of quality defenses in Starkville comes to a screeching halt. A lot of the top-end defensive talent that has been present in this progam in recent years – Chiefs fans need no reminder – is seemingly gone. Quarterback Blake Shapen arrives after washing out at Baylor; he will run new head coach Jeff Lebby’s version of the Briles veer-and-shoot. (I often hesitate to use that name sometimes when describing that offense, as many people – like Josh Heupel, Old Dominion’s Kevin Decker, etc – call it without ever having set foot in the building in Waco, but Lebby is married into the Briles family and has made it clear he doesn’t think his father-in-law did anything wrong. Okay, I digress). The Bulldogs will run the offense that gave Mizzou fits with top-end pass game talent in 2022 (Tennessee 66, Missouri 22) but that the Tigers handled when it was operated with mediocre throwers and catchers, like in 2023 (Mizzou 36, Tennessee 7). Prognosticators believe this Mississippi State team is more like the latter.