Battle Line bullies: Mizzou runs wild to beat rival Arkansas yet again

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Missouri’s regular season concluded the same way it has the last four years. The Tigers earned a win over Arkansas and captured the Battle Line trophy. Cigars, once again, churned out smoke that drifted out of the locker room as players walked to the bus.

But the circumstances surrounding the cigars were a little different than the last couple of seasons. Saturday’s 31-17 victory brought Mizzou to a final record of 8-4 overall and 4-4 in Southeastern Conference play. The next step is a bowl game yet to be determined.

But that destination will be well short of the goal of making the College Football Playoff that the program set out for at the start of the 2025 season. To many, including the team itself, that’s a disappointment.

“I think it’s a good season,” coach Eli Drinkwitz said, “It’s not great. We had a chance to go to great. We didn’t get it done.”

The Tigers defeated all of the teams they were expected to beat, but failed to get past its four top-10 opponents: Alabama, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M and Oklahoma. While Missouri isn’t going to view this season as a complete failure, there’s an inescapable feeling that something was left on the table.

There’s still a hill Mizzou has to climb. It has an offseason to figure out how to accomplish that.

“As a team, as an organization, as everybody, we’ve got to find those inches,” Drinkwitz said. “It starts with me, and then it trickles down to everybody.”

With Drinkwitz signing his six-year contract extension on Thanksgiving, Missouri doesn’t have to worry about a coaching change anymore. It seems as if it was never really a question, despite the buzz surrounding the sixth-year coach’s future with the program. The Tigers won’t have to face a loss of stability.

A win over the Razorbacks isn’t changing the outlook on this entire season as a whole, but it isn’t hurting the hope that Mizzou has for the future. Instead of bowing down to an Arkansas team winless in the SEC, it rose to the occasion in the second half and left Fayetteville as happy as it could be. The seniors were sent out on the winning side.

Missouri’s path to the CFP was wiped out this season. But that doesn’t mean it’s gone forever.

“It’s going to take all of us, and that’s what’s going to make Mizzou really special moving forward, is that we’re all in this together,” Drinkwitz said. “We’re all trying to figure out how do we go achieve what we all dream we can do, and do it together.

“I’m very grateful and appreciative of the opportunity to be head coach here.”

The spotlight of the afternoon, not surprisingly, was running back Ahmad Hardy. At the 11:57 mark of the third quarter, Hardy demonstrated the ability he’s shown through the entirety of his sophomore campaign: rushing after contact. He broke through multiple tackle attempts from Razorbacks defenders and surged 53 yards down the field for a touchdown. That gave The Tigers a 20-17 lead, which it never surrendered.

It didn’t matter if Arkansas stacked the box; Hardy got his and exposed the defense. He finished the game with 157 rushing yards on 27 carries — good for an average of 5.8 yards. He deserved a cigar more than anyone, though he didn’t enjoy it in the locker room.

“I saved my cigar, so I smoke mine at home,” Hardy said.

Roberts also joined the club with 100 yards on 11 attempts and an even better average of 9.1. His big breakthrough came in the fourth quarter.

On a difficult third-and-14, Mizzou opted to stick with what was working and put the ball in the hands of its running back. The redshirt sophomore took the snap and sprinted for 38 yards, earning the first down by a wide margin. While the Tigers stalled out, kicker Oliver Robbins drilled a 41-yard field goal to bring the lead to 23-17 with 9:56 to go.

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“Really, the play of the game,” Drinkwitz said.

As for the passing game? Not much to see. Pribula thrived on the ground, notching 78 yards on 16 carries and a touchdown, but hardly could get anything going in the air.

Pribula threw just seven total passes and completed four. They amounted to 25 yards. It wasn’t always the fault of the signal-caller — his receivers had a mix of dropped passes and slips on the field — but one major error changed Mizzou’s offensive direction for the remainder of the game.

At the start of the second quarter, Hardy converted a fourth-and-1. But on the next play, Pribula took the snap and lost control of the football, which was captured by Razorbacks linebacker Bradley Shaw. The sophomore returned that fumble for a 32-yard touchdown, giving Arkansas a 14-7 lead.

“Once we had the fumble on the screen, we just said ‘Man, they haven’t stopped us yet running the ball,’ “ Drinkwitz said. “ ‘So, until they stop us, we don’t need to play left-handed.’ We needed to lean on our strength until they could take it away from us.”

On the next offensive drive, eight of the nine plays called were runs. It wasn’t until the eighth when Pribula threw a 2-yard pass to wide receiver Josh Manning, which he followed up with an 11-yard rushing touchdown up the middle.

Along with the fumble, another costly mistake arose in the first half, this time on special teams.

Reccurring struggles have crept up for the Tigers’ special teams unit this season, but high snaps were the theme of this day in particular. The snap flew over punter Connor Weselman, forcing him to chase the football down and jump on top of it. While the Mizzou defense was able to limit the Razorbacks to just a field goal, it did give Arkansas a 17-14 lead heading into halftime.

Again, a high snap came on an extra-point attempt following Hardy’s 53-yard touchdown. But Missouri’s defense held Arkansas to a field goal once more, helped in large part by a sack from defensive tackle Chris McClellan. On this attempt, Razorbacks kicker Scott Starzyk missed the mark.

But in the end, special teams was the unit that pushed the Tigers over the edge. After edge rusher Damon Wilson II put a huge 12-yard sack on Arkansas quarterback Taylen Green at the 9:04 mark of the fourth quarter, wide receiver Kevin Coleman Jr. lined up for the punt return.

Once the ball fell into Coleman’s hands, he was as good as gone. Saying goodbye to the Razorbacks punt coverage, Coleman headed to the end zone for a 67-yard touchdown to up the score to 31-17.

“That was the first one in my career,” Coleman said. “I got one on kick returns, but not punt returns.

All Missouri’s defense had to do was apply its typical pressure on one more drive. McClellan notched yet another sack on Green to push Arkansas back six yards, followed up by a broken-up pass by linebacker Nick Rodriguez. On third-and-16, linebacker Josiah Trotter sealed the deal with a 5-yard sack of his own.

“We came out there, everyone dominated their job,” Trotter said. “Like I said last week, I feel like we’re one of the best defenses in the country, and we were able to go out there and show that.”

While not the prettiest effort from Mizzou, all three phases managed to do enough to improve its win streak to four in the Battle Line Rivalry. Even through lots of adversity this year, which included a fair share of injuries, the Tigers stayed determined to come out of Fayetteville with a win.

“For our team to find a way to just stay in and stay in the fight, I’m really, really proud of them,” Drinkwitz said.

Perhaps, the cigars weren’t so much to celebrate this win. They might’ve just been the consolation prize for a grueling season, whether it be in the locker room or at home.