Written by Matt | 14 July 2009

One of the major problems that has plagued sports journalism throughout history is the requirement of instant analysis following a sporting event. That leads to an overabundance of kneejerk reactions and crappy judgement. In an ideal world sportswriters would be given 24 hours to reflect on what they witness. Unfortunately, most sportswritiers don't live in an ideal world. Fortunately, I do.

After I walked out of the EJ Dome Saturday night (btw, Big Head wasn't joking during last week's podcast when he talked about what a dump that place is) I expected the next week to be full of pundits immediately dismissing the Tigers as frauds. But an early survey of Tigerboard, ESPN, the Post-Dispatch and other reputable and not so reputable sources would indicate that's not the case. Just about everything I've read from Mizzou fans and sportswriters (including Miklasz, Burwell and Forde) alike leads me to believe that just about everyone is keeping a level head about this thing.

Take the Mizzourah poll to your right for instance: 60% of our readers would give the Tigers a B for their performance on Saturday. Another 26% give them C's. That means the A's, D's and C's are outliers and for all intents and purposes can be thrown out (thank MU's statistics profess Dr. Larry Ries for that breakdown). For a fanbase notorious for overreacting I'd have to say this is pretty impressive. Everyone in Mizzourah Nation should give themselves a pat on the back for this one.

I'd have probably given Pinkel's boys a straight C. I'll go ahead and state the obvious and say the cornerbacks really let us down last night (paging Carl Gettis and Castine Bridges). But I've got a feeling this was more a product of an overagressive gameplan than our secondary sucking. Which leads me to my next point. Eberflus has got to find a better way to disguise Willy Mo's blitzes. You could tell when they were sending him from five miles away. Blitzes involving safeties (or any position for that matter) tend to be ineffective when the d-line can see the blitz coming.

But I'm completely confident that's going to get fixed before the start of the Big 12 play. There's no feasible reason for this defense to not be better than it was last year. Sure it lost Zo Williams, which is not an insignificant loss by any stretch of the imagination but at the same time I think everyone would agree that this is the kind of program that can replace a player like Zo. Should we be concerned? Absolutely. Just like we should've been concerened last year when our defense looked possibly even more awful in the weeks prior to conference play. But common sense and past experience indicates that a few adjustments to the defensive gameplan can be made (and practiced at gamespeed for the next few weeks) resulting in drastic improvements.

And however discouraging you may have found the defense's performance you have to at least admit that the offense was nearly as encouraging. Do you think we're going to survive without Tony Temple? You can't say you're not going to feel the effects of losing a player who ran for 1,000 yards in consecutive seasons after only one game but I will go out on a limb and say the ceiling is higher on Derrick Washington right now than it ever was on Tony Temple (at least before he got hurt in high school). And don't forget about Jimmy Jackson's 9 YPCs. Jackson might end up going down as one of the more underappreciated players in Mizzou history before it's all said and done.

Here's what you need to know about how impressed I was with the Tiger rushing attack in week 1. When Maclin went down and it looked like there was a good chance he'd be done for the season I kept wondering if there was any way we could compete for a national title without him. I decided that if that was going to be possible we would need one area of our football team to go above and beyond what anyone was expecting of it (like Willy Mo did for our secondary after Pig went down). Then I thought if any area of our team could step up in that manner it could be our rushing offense. Derrick Washington and Jimmy Jackson were the only encouraging things I could think of during the minutes that Cheat Code was being carted off the field.

And what an agonizing few minutes those were. I don't know if I've ever felt that sick at a sporting event I've been to in person. It just didn't seem fair to have all our dreams shattered
before the season really even got started. And not by a loss on the field but by another damn fluky injury. I honestly couldn't tell you for certain what happened in the minutes following Maclin limping off to the sideline. I remember everything as a blur. I couldn't take my eyes off the crowd of teammates gathered around him on the sideline, which bore an eerie resemblance to the crowd that surrounded Pig Brown after his injury against Iowa State. The next thing I remember was 'Spoon's pick6 and sighing a slight sigh of relief. But it just didn't feel right celebrating. There was still a knot in my stomach.

Then I received the glorious text message: "maclin: xrays neg."

Warm up the bus Illinois. And take your racist mascot and menthol cigarettes with you.

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