Vahe Gregorian: How Missouri’s loss to Alabama could be a springboard to College Football Playoff
Missouri walked out of a 27-24 heartbreaker against Alabama with more than a bruise to its record. The Tigers showed they can run stride for stride with a national power, and if they channel the right lessons, that setback could sharpen them for a push toward the expanded College Football Playoff.
Eli Drinkwitz’s weekly session with reporters captured the mood: lively, occasionally cheeky, but ultimately focused. Strip away the banter and the message was clear—don’t dwell, develop. Missouri (5-1, No. 16) heads to Auburn this week for its first true road test of the season, aiming to convert painful details into progress.
The margins that mattered
Missouri didn’t lose because it lacked players; it lost because of moments. The bookends tell the story. Early on, an unsportsmanlike penalty on Zion Young turned a third-and-15 deep in Alabama territory into a lifeline for the Crimson Tide, derailing a chance to stack momentum while Mizzou already led 7-0. Late, with 37 seconds left and the game there to steal, quarterback Beau Pribula fired high over Donovan Olugbode for his second interception of the fourth quarter. It’s the sort of sequence that separates very good teams from dangerous ones in November.
Drinkwitz shouldered the heat, but the substance was unmistakable: discipline and detail have to tighten. Young’s penalty is teachable. So is the endgame execution at quarterback.
Pribula’s crash course
Context matters. This was Pribula’s first true high-wire finish as a college starter after three seasons as a reserve and situational quarterback at Penn State. The good was genuinely encouraging: he ripped a 25-yard dart to Olugbode on fourth-and-6 in the final drive and, minutes earlier, conducted a no-flinch, 75-yard touchdown march in just 1:36 to slice the deficit to three with 1:39 remaining. The defense even handed him one last shot 28 seconds later.
The rough edges are just as real. Pribula went 16-for-28 for 162 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions, and he was 2-for-7 on the final possession. On the decisive turnover, Missouri had the right idea pre-snap but didn’t adapt to the post-snap picture, leading to the overthrow. If the Tigers are going anywhere in December, the quarterback has to turn that experience into muscle memory—faster decisions, calmer feet, cleaner ball placement under duress.
The staff’s confidence in his development is unwavering. Missouri started 5-0 with him, and his poise in hurry-up shows a ceiling worth betting on. It’s also worth remembering: the previous starter, Brady Cook, once faced similar doubts before late-game mastery became part of his identity over his final two seasons. Growth curves aren’t linear, but they are predictable when the work is honest.
A path that’s still open
Alabama is up to No. 6, and yet the gap on Saturday looked narrow. That’s significant for a team staring at three more ranked opponents, including No. 4 Texas A&M. In a 12-team CFP world, résumé traction can come quickly—especially if a marquee loss becomes a launchpad. Missouri proved it can trade punches with blue-blood talent. Remove the self-inflicted wounds, and the margins tilt.
Now comes the hard part: the road
Missouri’s next exam is about environment as much as opponent. Auburn (3-3) is unranked but battle-tested, dropping three straight to top-11 teams by a combined 23 points. Jordan-Hare is a cauldron—more than 88,000 packed the place for a 20-10 loss to No. 9 Georgia last week—and the Tigers haven’t historically thrived away from Columbia under Drinkwitz. The program’s home run ended at 15 straight last weekend; the ledger still reads 32-8 at Faurot Field, but only 8-15 in true road games.
That disparity is the pivot point of Missouri’s season. The operational stuff that’s second nature at home—sub packages, communication, cadence, patience—has to travel. Avoiding the one-lapse penalty. Banking the free yards. Making the routine plays feel routine amid noise. These are the thin edges that turn road splits into road streaks.
What needs to change—fast
- Discipline: Eliminate after-the-whistle errors and taunts that flip field position and juice opponents’ crowds.
- Situational poise: Third-and-long on defense, two-minute offense, red-zone decision-making—these swing tight games.
- Quarterback refinement: Trust the pre-snap plan, adapt post-snap without panic, and value the ball, especially late.
- Explosive restraint: Take the shot when it’s there; otherwise keep the chains moving and the clock tight.
Missouri’s head coach joked this week about the “free will” chaos of football—22 players capable of freelancing at any moment—and he wasn’t wrong. When one assignment goes sideways, the result can look like slapstick. But this roster has already shown it can author clean, high-level stretches against elite competition. Harness that for four quarters, and the script flips.
It’s the classic fork for a contender after a near-miss: let the loss linger, or turn it into fuel. If Pribula uses Saturday’s sting as an accelerator and the Tigers scrub the avoidable mistakes, Alabama can be remembered not as a detour but as the launchpad. The runway to the CFP is still there. It just runs through Auburn—and through the details.
