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Missouri entered its first game of the season with one lingering, gaping unknown.
Over the offseason, Steve Wilks came in with a new defensive scheme in mind. It was designed to get more of the players with their eyes on the quarterback, with the primary intention of grabbing more picks, and scoring more points against the direction of play.
The mantra — “Score on D” — was repeated time after time. Excitement, understandably, grew at the prospect of a high-octane defense, but the coaches kept coy. How was it going in camp? Nobody would know until a ball was snapped for real, they all said.
In Central Michigan’s first drive of the season, it took the Chippewas five plays to match the Tigers’ early touchdown. Central Michigan averaged 15 yards a carry as it chucked and rushed, whatever worked, 75 yards up the field and home in 1 minute, 57 seconds.
“Sometimes things happen, and you miss tackles, or you get blocked,” linebacker Blaze Alldredge said. “Obviously, you don’t want them to, but it’s the nature of the game.”
The first snaps came and went, and the answer was clear. The new scheme had started at worst dismally, at best a work in progress. And though the second half brought plenty of reasons for coaches and fans to be optimistic, the next 27 minutes didn’t get much better.
It took a driven run from defensive lineman Trajan Jeffcoat to force the first CMU fourth down. He pressured Central Michigan quarterback Jacob Sirmon into a fumble, which he managed to recover, but it took the Chippewas out of field-goal range. It brought CMU up to punt — a first that took 16 plays to accomplish.
By the end of the first half, Central Michigan was 5 of 9 on third-down conversions as the Tigers struggled to contain their varied offense. The Chippewas had 292 yards total on offense in 42 plays. Seven different CMU players had a gain of more than 14 yards in the first 30 minutes.
While their eyes may have been on Sirmon, they were caught on their heels.
Central Michigan consistently found gaps, holes, space: Enough space to give head coach Eliah Drinkwitz and Wilks recurring nightmares ahead of Missouri’s Game 2 matchup against Kentucky.
But as the game wore on, the new scheme offered flashes of excitement, where anxiety had preceded it.
Missouri fans were given glimpses of a future in which they can unclench their jaws, relax their shoulders and perhaps even get up from behind the couch while watching the defense.
“It’s Week 1, it’s the first time we played this new defense live,” defensive back Martez Manuel said. “You saw that all over the country today and last week. Everyone. First game, we’re gonna get in the film room and get it cleaned up.”
Alldredge was colossal in the Game 1 clean up, notching 3.5 sacks and eight solo tackles, four of which were for loss.
“I settled down at halftime,” Alldredge said. “I had a good talk with the coaches, talking about what they were doing, what we were gonna do to adjust. I think that we came out in the second half and did some really great things as a defense as a whole.”
Missouri defense notched 9 sacks, a 15-year program best. Sixteen different players recorded unassisted tackles by the time the game clock hit triple zeros.
What hadn’t worked early, worked near flawlessly in the second half.
“When we’re clicking on all cylinders and playing how I know we can play, I know it’s going to be even better,” Manuel said.
New Tulsa transfers Allie Green IV and Akayleb Evans were the first players to make it click, and let Wilks breathe a sigh of relief. The duo played big roles in ending two straight CMU possessions. First, Evans hauled in his first pick as a Tiger to end Central Michigan’s first quarter. Then, in the Chippewas first action of the second quarter, Green made a vital run-stopping tackle up the middle, and Evans followed two snaps later with a pass breakup, preventing the opposition from mounting another threatening run beyond the halfway line.
Free safety Jaylon Carlies introduction at the beginning of the second half marked another pivotal moment. He served a half-game suspension in the first half, and how the Tigers missed him.
He notched a pick within five minutes of stepping onto the field. He flattened Sirmon in the red zone early in the fourth quarter during a threatening play, doing all he could in a drive that ended up pulling the Chippewas within one score again. He notched six unassisted tackles, which was second only to Alldredge.
The second half came, the holes tightened, the gaps closed and the space, by and large, disappeared.
Where Central Michigan mustered six straight drives with double-digit-yard gains to open the game, it only had two in its next six. The other four ended in negative total gains.
What Wilks has had in the works took some time, but it came together.
“I think the biggest thing about college football is that you just need to realize that you just gotta do your job and make the plays that come to you,” Alldredge said. … “Really the most important thing, I would say, is to not try to do anything extra to try and make up for it. Just keep doing your job and keep playing hard, and then the game will reward you for doing that.”
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