MU will make a nice move in the polls this week. AP had us at 21. Ranked teams that lost:

24. Oregon State
23. Air Force (Lost to San Diego St.)
22. Florida
19. Nevada
12. Arkansas
10. South Carolina
5. Nebraska
1. Ohio State


Obviously, we aren't going to jump all of those teams that were ranked ahead of us, but we will jump Nevada, Arkansas, and South Carolina for sure. I'm curious as to how far Nebraska falls. It's not like they have racked up a bunch of wins against strong teams.

I could see Mizzou around 17 in the AP and 14 or 15 in the coaches where we could leapfrog Florida State.

The play calling was vastly improved today with a couple of glaring exceptions. If you take away that 4th down call, there isn't too much to bitch about. I said very early on that I was glad that we weren't throwing to Moe on every play. When we stretched the field, it opened up the underneath passes.

I'm really starting to think (instead of just hope) that Yost has been holding back a lot in anticipation of this stretch of games. There were holes for our backs. These guys are pretty inexperienced. There is a lot of room to improve. It sounds simple to put in a goal line package or two, but it takes a lot of practice time for plays that might get used less than 5 times per game. Numbers wise, we're not bad in short-yardage. It just looks ugly.

Some side notes:

All of the backs are averaging 5 YPC or more, and the true running game (read: Not Gabbert) was pretty effective yesterday. That said, I agree that a more downhill approach would be beneficial. I don't know if I'd want to go to that as much as 30 percent of the time, but even adopting a pistol set and narrowing the splits a little more would create some new opportunities in the running game.

For some reason, Gabbert doesn't take the short-yardage sack. It seems like all of his sacks are of the 10-plus yards variety.

We saw a lot more than bubble screens yesterday. Missouri was working the middle of the field much more often with slants and curls and posts than it previously had been. We're deep enough in the season now that they can start running a lot of misdirection off of the bubble screen (which creates really favorable matchups to the opposite side). Nice to see that progression in playcalling. Especially getting the ball to Jackson, who probably is the most explosive WR.

I've been tracking the Missouri run defense, and it's amazing how much the two Hillman runs vs. SDSU have skewed the whole thing. Those two runs:

1) Take Missouri's average yards yielded per carry up around 4.5 (subtracting sacks). Without them, the average is around 3.7.
2) Are right at 20 percent of the total rushing yardage surrendered by the Tigers this season
3) Apparently were a turning point for the run defense. Since the SDSU game, Missouri has held every opponent at least .5 yards under its season average per rushing attempt (subtracting sacks from equation). The Tigers held the strong run game of Colorado almost a full yard under its average per carry, and limited aTm to .75 less than its average.

These were my thoughts as well after yesterday's game. Hopefully I'm not giving Yost too much credit though.

Our offense was night and day yesterday compared to the CU game. Gabbert was incredible.

I've been thinking that as well. Hopefully that is the case.

Rumor is that Mizzou will be top 10 in the BCS...we'll see this evening!

Anything is possible, but that would be a monster jump. I see us around 15ish.

6th in Sagarin

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt10.htm

EDIT: They're 9th in the Sagarin rating (ELO_Chess) the BCS uses.

#11 in the BCS poll. Half of the Big XII is in the top 22.

What is the "RB" poll? MU is ranked 5th, 5th, 2nd, 9th, and 6th in the other polls, but they are unranked in the RB poll? WTF is that about?

SOS really helps with the BCS.