Mizzou came out of Saturday’s 34-20 loss to Texas with more than just a defeat on the scoreboard. The Tigers left Faurot Field with a long list of things to sort through, from special teams problems to coverage busts to a kicking situation that now looks very much up for grabs. But there were also a few individual performances that changed the conversation, for better and for worse.
The biggest winner in all of it was Austin Simmons.
Even in a game Mizzou lost, Simmons was the Tigers’ most effective offensive player against Texas. Pro Football Focus gave him a team-high 80.7 grade, his best mark since MU beat Florida on Homecoming.
The stat line didn’t fully capture what he was doing, either. Simmons kept showing the kind of touch and timing that can tilt a defense, especially when he was threading throws into tight windows and getting the ball out with anticipation.
The raw numbers were messy because Mizzou was charged with 8 drops, but Simmons still finished with a 71.8 adjusted completion percentage after posting 53.5% completions. That marked the second straight week he crossed the 70-percent threshold. Against a Texas defense that ranked fourth in the SEC after Saturday, he still found stretches where he looked comfortable.
His play is drawing NFL attention, too. Last week, it was announced that he signed an agreement to return to Mizzou in 2027, but it allows him to explore the option of going to the NFL.
With several NFL teams expected to need quarterbacks next season, the Cardinals and Vikings were among those in attendance at Faurot Field. Simmons could be a one-and-done in Columbia, which would be a disappointment for Mizzou fans, but his stock has clearly climbed this season.
Another name trending up is Sterling Webb.
With Eli Drinkwitz announcing earlier in the week that Langden Kitchen would miss the rest of the 2026 season because of a knee injury, Webb looks positioned for a bigger workload. He already stepped in after Kitchen went down, and against Texas he played 44 snaps at edge, the most he has ever logged at the position in his college career.
Webb also finished with 3 pressures, just one shy of his season high against Florida. Mizzou will need that kind of flexibility as it heads into Georgia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma.
The kicking battle, meanwhile, is no longer something Mizzou can treat as settled.
Blake Craig was a stock riser just a week ago after helping the Tigers put points on the board in the rain at Fayetteville. That didn’t last. He missed twice against Texas in a game where Mizzou was trying to tie things late in the fourth quarter, and now the program sounds ready to push the issue.
Drinkwitz said the staff still believes in Craig, but also made it clear the margin for error is shrinking.
“We have to create competition. I think that’s natural for every position,” Drinkwitz said. “you have to understand that there’s compeition, and there’s just not too many opportunities that you’re going to get to go out there and make the same mistake twice.”
That opens the door for Oliver Robbins, who filled in for Craig last season and went 3-for-5 on field goals in 2025.
The concerns don’t stop with the kicker. The specialist group as a whole took a hit after Texas, and Drinkwitz didn’t soften the message.
“To be transparent, it’s not the players on the field,” Drinkwitz said. “Our specialists have not performed as well as they are capable of performing.”
He pointed to inconsistency in operation times and kicking styles on punts and kickoffs, and he also singled out Brett Le Blanc on the blocked punt. Drinkwitz said the operation was slow and the snap wasn’t clean, adding, “That’s not a great recipe right there.”
Special teams may only be one slice of the game, but it can swing everything when it goes sideways. That was the case against Texas, and Drinkwitz made it clear the players involved are not exempt from being called out.
“They’re part of our team just like everybody else,” Drinkwitz said. “No different than when the quarterback is not playing the way he needs to, we got to call it out.
When the left tackle is not playing the way he needs to, we got to call it out. Same thing with those guys, and they know it.”
On defense, Sione Laulea’s stock took a hit after a rough stretch continued against the Longhorns. He was involved in the coverage breakdown on Texas’ game-tying touchdown after the controversial fumble call, and the assignment didn’t line up cleanly with what the rest of the defense was doing. While the team was in a cover-3 blitz look, Laulea appeared to be playing cover-2.
It’s been a difficult three weeks for him. His PFF defensive and coverage grades have both been below 60 in each of the last three games, and he has allowed 9 receptions over that span.
Mizzou’s run defense also came out of Saturday looking shaky. Texas was without Hollywood Smothers, who is out for the year with an injury, but backup Raleek Brown made the most of the opportunity. Brown ran for 85 yards and a score, using his shiftiness to find cutback lanes and slip through gaps in the Tigers’ defense.
For Mizzou, the Texas loss left a little bit of everything on the table: a quarterback whose draft stock keeps rising, a defense with some repair work to do, and a special teams unit that suddenly has a lot to answer for.
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