Missouri is walking back into the kind of place where the noise never really lets up and the margin for error disappears fast.
Sanford Stadium has been a problem spot for plenty of teams, and Eli Drinkwitz made it clear he knows exactly what his Tigers are stepping into on Saturday. Georgia isn’t just the No. 1 team in the country; it’s the standard everyone else in the SEC is trying to catch.
“They’re the benchmark for the league right now,” Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz said of Georgia. “It’s what everybody in our conference is chasing, and he does it the right way and always has done it the right way.”
That’s the backdrop for Missouri’s latest shot at the Bulldogs, a rematch that carries plenty of old frustration for the Tigers. Georgia has been to five College Football Playoff fields and won two national championships since Kirby Smart arrived in Athens in December of 2015, and its 2022 title run looked a lot like the old Alabama machine Smart came from. The Bulldogs blew through almost everybody, with Ohio State the lone exception in a 42-41 CFP semifinal and TCU getting blasted 65-7 in the title game.
Missouri was the other outlier.
In the teams’ early October meeting that season, the Tigers had Georgia on the ropes for stretches. MU led by double digits at halftime, stayed ahead into the fourth quarter and still had the ball with less than 10 minutes left while up 22-19 and crossing midfield.
Brady Cook then hit Barrett Banister on what looked like a key third-down conversion in Georgia territory, a play that would have pushed Missouri closer to field goal range and helped burn more clock. But a personal foul on Mitchell Walters wiped it out, and the Tigers eventually had to punt.
Stetson Bennett got the ball back with seven minutes left, and Georgia finished the job with the game-winning touchdown.
That game left Missouri painfully close to its first win over a top-ranked team since 2010. It also served as an early sign of what was coming a year later in Columbia, when the Tigers put together a Cotton Bowl-winning season. Then came another gut punch the next season in Athens.
Brett Norfleet, one of the few players still around from that 2023 team, said he doesn’t remember much from that day. What stuck with him was the atmosphere.
“It was very loud when we went there.”
Missouri again gave itself a chance late in that one. The Tigers’ lead had turned into a 27-21 deficit when Cook and the offense got the ball back with just under nine minutes remaining.
A 13-yard run by Cody Schrader helped MU push back to midfield, but the next play changed everything. Nazir Stackhouse intercepted Cook, and Georgia used that turnover to set up the field goal that sealed the win.
Now the Tigers get another crack at the Bulldogs, and Drinkwitz knows the size of the task. Sanford Stadium is a nearly 93,000-seat venue and one of the hardest road environments in college football.
“That is a great environment, one of the best in the SEC,” Drinkwitz said, “I think not only is there a great venue and it’s got the history, but the fans, the student section, it’s the loudest I ever heard on that interception … in the fourth quarter with us driving.”
The challenge only gets bigger when you layer in Missouri’s recent issues. The Tigers came up short in a 34-20 loss to Texas, a game that included controversial calls but also featured missed field goals and other mistakes. They were shut out 14-0 in the fourth quarter, and that closing stretch has been a recurring problem in tight games this season.
“We are not victims, and I refuse to give in to being a victim mentality. I refuse to give our players, our fans, our coaches an excuse for not getting the job done,” Drinkwitz said, “It’s my job as a head coach to get it done, and we had opportunities to do that.”
So Saturday becomes a chance for Missouri to rewrite a familiar ending. It’s a chance to answer for the fourth-quarter slips that have haunted the Tigers in both of their recent games against Georgia. It’s also a chance to keep a season alive that now feels like it’s hanging by a thread.
The numbers don’t favor MU. ESPN’s matchup predictor gives the Tigers just an 11.2% chance, and Georgia is a two-touchdown favorite. But after the way the last two meetings played out, and with the kind of chaos that has touched everyone this season, even the Bulldogs included, Missouri at least gets the chance to make this one interesting before kickoff.
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Georgias edge has shown up in the details, from its turnover margin to the way it has limited opponents defensively, even while working through some injuries. Gunner Stockton has helped steady the offense, and linebacker Chris Cole gives the Bulldogs another impact presence on defense, leaving Missouri with a major challenge and plenty to solve if it wants to keep this one competitive. [Read more 🡒]
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Now comes the first real chance to see how that start holds up at home. UT Martin and Lindenwood are next on the schedule, and both bring enough recent form and stylistic quirks to make these games more than routine tuneups, especially for a Missouri team trying to keep building rhythm while protecting its unbeaten record. [Read more 🡒]