Mizzou's loss to Alabama won't define its season. Its response will.

Around this time last year, Mizzou had a performance worthy of any synonym for “awful.” Against Texas A&M, the Tigers failed miserably in their first major SEC road test, losing 41-10.

At his weekly press conference the following Tuesday, coach Eli Drinkwitz had a clear message.

“One bad day doesn’t define our team or our season,” Drinkwitz said. “Our response will.”

This time around, after a 27-24 loss to Alabama in which Mizzou let numerous chances slip away, the message is similar.

“In a fight, you’re going to get punched in the mouth eventually,” defensive tackle Chris McClellan said, “so it’s going to be how you respond and how you turn things around.”

Since 2023, Mizzou hasn’t let setbacks snowball into losing streaks. The Tigers haven’t lost consecutive games since 2022, and they responded to last year’s calamity in College Station with a 45-3 win the following week.

But that game was against UMass, one of the doormats of the FBS. This year’s response will have to happen at Auburn, which, with all due respect to McGuirk Alumni Stadium, is a historically more difficult atmosphere.

This Saturday will present a tougher test than MU ever passed in 2024, as each of its three losses came on the road. At the same time, MU has been a lot stronger amid adversity than Auburn, which has shown a resilience resembling a house of cards in recent seasons.

Under coach Hugh Freeze the last three seasons, Auburn is 2-8 in one-possession games, while Mizzou is 10-2 in those games over the same span. That doesn’t include Auburn’s loss to Georgia last week, when a contentious call caused Auburn to capsize. Was any part of the ball across the goal line on Jackson Arnold’s quarterback sneak before he fumbled? Probably. And it would have put Auburn up 17-0 late in the first half. But the officials disagreed, and the score remained 10-0.

Interestingly enough, Freeze had commented about handling adversity earlier in the week.

“Here’s the one thing I believe in,” Freeze told reporters that Monday, “and I firmly believe that when the stage is set with adversity, the opportunity for greatness is there.

“Adversity reveals exactly what your character is and what you’re made of and how much you truly care about this place, the people that have given you this opportunity, your brothers in that locker room that you’ve committed to ... . Adversity reveals that.”

What was revealed wasn’t much different than the recent past. After the fumble, Auburn’s and Georgia’s offenses diverged radically: UGA found a rhythm, while AU completely lost it, gaining just 50 yards in the second half.

In the team’s press release, the headline read, “Fumble costs Auburn in 20-10 loss to No. 10 Georgia.” That’s true, but Auburn’s failure to recover after the fumble was, arguably, the bigger reason it fell to 0-3 in SEC play.

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While AU is free-falling, Mizzou is not only in a better position than those other Tigers but in better shape than its 2024 version after the Texas A&M game. Its contest against Alabama this past Saturday was not only close, but it featured a heap of game-swinging plays that could have caused MU to crater, which it never did.

Players and coaches have repeatedly mentioned in-game resilience as a strength, and they also stressed the need to move on from Saturday.

“I can’t wallow in self-pity,” Drinkwitz said. “No one’s coming to save us. Nobody feels sorry for us. Auburn sure don’t give a damn about us losing the game. They would prefer we sat here and answer questions about it.”

Besides, enduring defeat can have its benefits. Just ask those who didn’t lose until they couldn’t. In 2007, the New England Patriots went undefeated in the regular season but lost to the New York Giants in Super Bowl 42. Six years later, former players told ESPN that the weight of perfection had become too great and that some players wished they had lost before the Super Bowl. Wide receiver Donté Stallworth said that he wished New England had lost its last regular-season game to the Giants, which the Patriots won on a late touchdown catch by Randy Moss.

In college football, perfection is rare, too. In the CFP era, only 20 FBS teams exited the conference championship weekend without a loss. Getting gut-checked in the regular season is almost guaranteed. How teams handle it separates bad from good ... and good from great.

“A warrior knows there’s always more battles to fight,” Drinkwitz said.

Appearances in the SEC championship game and the College Football Playoff are still very much possible for Mizzou. The margin for error is slightly less than if it had defeated Alabama.

At the same time, its margin for error would increase with a little help from its friends. Margins at the top of college football are closer than in most years: According to Bill Connelly’s SP+ rating, the difference between the No. 1 team (Ohio State) and the No. 16 team (Utah) is one possession. Through six weeks in 2019, the gap between No. 1 (Alabama) and No. 16 (also Utah) was 14.5 points.

A similar theme is playing out in the SEC. After six weeks in 2019, the difference between the No. 1 SEC team (Alabama) and the No. 9 SEC team (Mizzou) was 22.1 points. This year, the difference between No. 1 (Texas A&M) and No. 9 (Vanderbilt) is just 4.8 points.

With a 12-team CFP and heightened parity in the SEC (and college football), Mizzou along with many others appear to be in a mix they may not have been when powers like Alabama and Georgia were in another stratosphere.

“We lost, but all is not lost,” Drinkwitz said after the Alabama game. “That’s the reality of college football.”

Mizzou has a chance to control its postseason destiny, and that starts Saturday, when MU can prove it truly is different than last year’s team. Offensive tackle Cayden Green said the Tigers were was surprised by the atmosphere at Kyle Field last season.

With a season’s worth of road failures and a preseason trip to Lindenwood under their belt, Drinkwitz & Co. believe Mizzou is better equipped to handle what awaits them Saturday.

“It’ll be a test,” Green said. “We’ll really see what this team is made of.”