Mizzou Football Opponents Previews for 2024: A Recap

Read the previews of previous opponents for 2024!

Murray stands

Buffalo

Boston College

Vanderbilt

Texas A&M

Massachusetts

Chestnut brown

Alabama

Oklahoma

south carolina

State of Mississippi

Arkansas

Thirteen weeks ago, I began my previews of every regular-season opponent on Missouri’s 2023 schedule , and as of last week, I’m done! I hope you learned something interesting about the dirty dozen the Tigers will face this year, and that you have a better idea of ​​what’s in store for Mizzou in Eli Drinkwitz’s fifth year at the helm.

Now that the team-specific previews are complete, let's take a step back and look at the collection of teams as a sample of 12 units and rank them based on a variety of factors. Say… Bill Connelly's factors that go into the preseason rankings, what do you think?

Let's start with the factors Bill C. uses when evaluating American football teams at the beginning of the season.

Missouri's 2024 Opponents Ranked Based on 5-Year Recruiting Rankings

In the 13-team sample of 2024 opponents (plus Missouri), you can break down the recruiting rankings from the past 5 years into four tiers: Tier 1 has Alabama as the best recruiting team by far, followed by a huge gap, followed by Tier 2 of Texas A&M/Oklahoma/Auburn. Tier 3 is South Carolina/Mississippi State/Arkansas/Missouri with Tier 4 featuring Vanderbilt/Boston College and the awful ones they try! Tier 5 is Buffalo and Massachusetts. I threw in Murray State's recruiting rankings but… uh… yeah, it's FCS and they aren't great so I'm not really putting them in a tier.

Of that list, Alabama, A&M, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Arkansas, BC, and Buffalo all saw their recruiting efforts decline from 2023 to 2024, which, given the context of what those teams are going through, only Oklahoma’s drop is the big surprise. On the other hand, Auburn, Missouri, and Vanderbilt saw recruiting improvements of at least an 8-spot improvement, with Missouri jumping 14 spots from 23 to 24.

It’s also worth noting that Missouri plays four teams with Blue Chip ratios above 50%. As a reminder, the Blue Chip ratio looks at all of the recruits a team has acquired and divides the number of players on the roster with a 4- or 5-star prospect rating by the total number of players currently on the team (minus walk-ons). Missouri’s current BCR is 31%, while this year they play Auburn (53%), Oklahoma (73%), Texas A&M (79%), and Alabama (88%). All of the other teams the Tigers play have BCRs below 50%. As a final note, Mizzou played three teams with BCRs above 50% in the regular season last year, and a total of four BCR teams if you include the bowl game State of Ohio.

Missouri's Opponents Ranked Based on Returning Production

At this point last year I looked at the recurring production numbers and decided that both Missouri and LSU should see a huge improvement in SP+ and therefore wins, while Florida and Arkansas fans should expect some regression due to their lower return production.

That was a correct view on all four points.

For the second year in a row, Missouri has a Top 17 returning production in the country and owns the best returning production number on their roster. In fact, only Kentucky has a higher returning production number in the SEC than Mizzou, and that's only the difference between the Wildcats 72% and the Tigers 71%.

Last year, the Mizzou team had some unknown and underwhelming starters returning on offense and some proven players returning on defense. general improved because the offense finally clicked (and the defense basically stayed the same). This year, the opposite is true and we have to hope that the defense clicks this year (with a new coordinator, to boot!) like the offense did last year.

Only four of Missouri’s opponents in 2024 have returned more than 50% of their production from last year, and only two offenses and two defenses rank in the Top 25 in returning production. This means Mizzou will be up against a group of guys who likely didn’t see action on their respective teams last year.

Also…it might be wise to be careful with Boston College and Texas A&M. Be prepared, at least.

Missouri Opponents Ranked by 5-Year SP+ Ratings

College football teams are more likely to look at their quality over a 5-year period than they did the year before, so this is a good reference to check some hot commodities. While you as an individual may be critical of Auburn being ranked above Missouri, I think this ranking makes a lot of sense and feels right.

And in case you were wondering…

• Missouri's 5-year record vs. teams above them in 5-year SP+ average: 0-3
• Missouri's 5-year record against teams below them in 5-year SP+ average: 13-4

Missouri Opponents Ranked by Preseason SP+ Ratings

All of the above numbers are combined into a single metric, the SP+ ranking system, to determine the projected quality of the team entering a given season. Missouri enters the 2024 season ranked 11th in the nation (in both SP+ and media) and the second-best team in this sample of 13 teams, projected to be about 23 points better than the average 2024 college football team. Alabama, of course, is projected to be nearly 30 points better than the average college football team, with Texas A&M (19.8) and Oklahoma (19.3) also projected to score at least two more touchdowns than the average team of 24. For comparison, last year the team played six teams projected to score two touchdowns better than the average team, while this year’s team plays three teams projected to score that much.

Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas A&M are all within 10 points of each other – along with Missouri – which makes sense considering these are widely considered the Tigers' toughest games this season. Of those games, only Oklahoma is at home.

2024 Projected Opposing Starting Quarterbacks in Scheduling Order

The quarterback position lends itself to starting guys who are either a.) incredibly talented or b.) mega-experienced. Last year, the Tigers fielded eight quarterbacks with at least four years of playing experience, and this year, they have one less. Age and experience don’t necessarily mean better, but experience is certainly nice. Here’s how it breaks down:

• 6th year QB's: 4
• 5th year QB's: 1
• 4th year QBs: 2
• 3rd year QB's: 3
• 2nd year QB's: 2

Keep in mind that these are the projected starters: who knows if a freshman, transfer, JUCO, or walk-on will somehow win the starting position for either of these schools come fall camp. But, for what it’s worth, there are zero projected starting quarterbacks Missouri will face in 2024 that they played in 2023. Part of that phenomenon is conference divisional splitting, and part is due to portal losses and graduations. It’s a fun little quirk that I won’t bother to explore, but I feel safe saying it’s a case that doesn’t happen all that often, and certainly not in the pre-portal/NIL era.

Now that we have all the numbers, let's take another look at the 2024 schedule:

Every four years, Labor Day falls in a way that allows the season to start a week earlier than normal, meaning there are two bye weeks built into the schedule. The last time this happened was in 2019 and, like then, Missouri’s bye weeks split the season into three four-game segments.

The first group of four should provide mostly stress-free victories. The next four include three road tips and an early morning Homecoming. The final stretch includes two tough road games and the rivalry games against Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Last year’s team played just four real away games, with a fifth away game in St. Louis on a neutral site. Given how hard it is to win away, introducing a fifth real away game is a micro-dose of reality for this year’s group, but still a lot better than six.

Now, about the easy schedule claims: One of the things I haven't seen discussed all that much is the insane amount of first-year coaches that Mizzou is up against. And while being in your first year on the job doesn't necessarily mean the coach or the team is bad, it does indicate that there's a lot of newness and uncertainty as this staff navigates the season with these players for the first time.

Jody Wright (Murray State), Pete Lembo (Buffalo), Bill O'Brien (Boston College), Mike Elko (Texas A&M), Kalen DeBoer (Alabama) and Jeff Lebby (Mississippi State) are all still figuring out how to set up direct deposit on their new jobs, and Mizzou will face three of them in its first four games (and four in its first five). Additionally, Don Brown (UMass), Hugh Freeze (Auburn) and Brent Venables have been at their current jobs for less than three years and are expected to either show proof of concept or proof of future release.

In fact, if Mizzou only won games against first-year coaches and lost everyone else, they'd be 6-6. Again, I'm not going to research how often this happens, but six seems like an insane number of first-year coaches to play against.

But getting back to the actual schedule portion of the discussion: this is an easy schedule, there's no doubt about it. It's still an SEC schedule, meaning you can't completely avoid playing elite-level blue bloods, but given the SEC roster that Mizzou faces – let alone the non-conference – this is a schedule that is tailor-made for building confidence and winning.

Here's where Missouri's SEC opponents rank in the preseason SP+ rankings:

In 2024, Missouri will play five of the six worst teams in the league — including the four worst teams — plus the Nos. 11 and 8 teams at home, and Nos. 7 and 3 away.

Here's Oklahoma's schedule, widely considered one of the toughest:

The Sooners enter their first SEC campaign projected as Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, plus Nos. 9, 11 and 13, with five of their SEC games taking place outside Norman.

But then look again at Kentucky's schedule, which is seen as a mid-table challenge:

#1, #2, #4, #9, #10, #11, #12, #16. And three of those four heaviest are on the road. Ouch.

No doubt about it, the Mizzou's schedule is easy, but… so what? They still have to beat all these teams and if they do, they'll make the Playoff, and that's fine. And if they get beat in the Playoff because they're cheaters or something… who cares? That's still a Playoff spot and they'll still have a great season in the SEC.

But that is for a later discussion. For now, this is the starting point for the big undertaking that will begin in August.