First off, it’s great that Mizzou is 4-0. Awesome. Especially considering most “experts” were saying the Tigers would finish their non-cons with a 3-1 record at best. I’ll come clean, at the beginning of the year I was predicting the Tigers would drop Friday night’s game against the Wolf Pack. So bottom line, Friday night was a good win for the Tigers. Props.

But I think if they play like that against a good team they’re getting beat by at least two scores. And I’ll go ahead and include Nebraska in that category. Some might argue that Nevada was a desperate team playing for its season. And I would have no idea how you’d come to that conclusion after watching the Pack stumble through four quarters.

When I first heard about the Wolf Pack’s fans plans to boycott this game to protest coach Chris Ault I thought it was ridiculous. Ault’s made that program a perennial bowl team, what more do you want from him? But this looked like a horribly coached football team. They repeatedly shot themselves in the foot by doing things like using three timeouts on one possession, which probably would’ve even made Bill Callahan cringe.

So no I don’t think this was a desperate team playing to salvage its season. This was a desperate team trying to avoid a total collapse. But ya know what? 4-0 is 4-0 and through the non-conference part of their season the Tigers have exceeded just about everyone’s expectations. With a young team like this you have to enjoy every victory. Sure we can nitpick because we’re sports fans and that’s what we do but ultimately when they finish with a victory you’ve got to be happy about it no matter how it looked.

• That extended lede was fairly negative so I’ll balance it out with this: That 11-play 97-yard drive in the fourth quarter to essentially put the game on ice might have been as impressive as any scoring drive the Tigers put together during the Daniel-Maclin-Coffman era. Seriously, it was that good. And through his first four games as QB1, Blaine Gabbert appears to be an ice-cold closer.

• But it still looks like Blaine gets a little rattled when defenses can get a decent pass rush going against him although he really started settling in after the first quarter in this one. He reminds me a lot of Peyton Manning early in his career in how as soon as a defender gets near him he kind of freaks out and starts rapidly shuffling his feet. And yes, that was a very rare negative comparison to Peyton Manning.

• Gotta be concerned by Derrick Washington’s inability to get rolling once again. He finished with a respectable 75-yards on 16 carries but those numbers were kind of inflated by his 42-yard gain on that long fourth quarter drive. For the majority of the game he was a non-factor. I don’t know how to explain his struggles. I’m completely perplexed. Not sure if it’s an issue with his ability to find the holes or the O-line’s ability to create them (that’s what she said). I’ll give it another game before I really start to get concerned but we’re really gonna need him to come around quickly.

• Judging by D-Wash’s Twitter and Facebook updates over the weekend he’s heard some criticism from the Tiger faithful and it sounds like his confidence might be a little shaken. He mentioned some Tiger fans complaining that he should no longer be the starter. First to those fans: Shut up. Yeah Kendial Lawrence has had some eye-opening runs and yes De’Vion Moore has supposedly looked good in practice. But D-Wash is the starter and there’s no debate. The guy has proven himself. You don’t bench a back of his caliber after a couple shaky performances this early in the season. Secondly, to D-Wash: Get over it. You’re a division I athlete so you’re always going to be able to find something negative about yourself on the message boards and blogs. If you’re letting that get to you then that’s probably a major part of your problem. Just do your thing.

• We might be witnessing Danario Alexander making The Leap. He’s only 13 yards away from matching his career high for receiving yards in a season and only one TD away from matching his high in that category as well. There’s not a more enjoyable experience for a sports fan than watching a player with tremendous talent finally put it all together. That might be what we’re seeing here. Jared Perry was very solid once again also. That Danario-Perry-Kemp trio of receivers is starting to look very nice.

• Defensively it was hard to really assess how the Tigers played. One drive they looked great and the next they would get completely pushed around. Will Ebner is one guy who was all over the place. Spoon and Aldon Smith were everywhere as well. But that defensive line is going to have to get better against the run by the time the Nubs come to town.

• Shakespeare’s Pizza Playa of the Game: Super Danario, grab a slice. Danario was absolutely unstoppable. He finished with nine receptions and a career-high 170 yards and two TDs. Honorable mention goes to Blaine Gabbert who as mentioned was a cold-blooded killer in the second half.

• Now we get an off week to conjure up as much hate as humanly possible before the Huskers come to CoMo a week from Thursday. My early thought is that this is going to be the ultimate 50-50 game. Despite their loss to Va. Tech I’ve still kind of been impressed by Nebraska thus far. But with the Thursday Night Lights on at Faurot you can bet the Zou is going to be fired up. It should be a good one.