Trajen Greco’s rough start to the season could have lingered. Instead, the Missouri safety answered with one of his best performances of the year, and the Tigers rode a defense sharpened by Corey Batoon to a 27-6 win over Texas A&M on Saturday.
Greco’s early-season issues were laid bare in Week 3 against Troy, when he was part of the breakdowns on two touchdowns. He took a bad pursuit angle on a 76-yard touchdown catch-and-run to open the game, then was late rotating on a 55-yard touchdown reception just before halftime.
After that game, Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz did not soften the critique.
“We had man-to-man coverage, we played outside leverage. They threw basically routes on air.
Our free safety had a terrible angle,” Drinkwitz said of the first touchdown following the win over Troy. “He’s supposed to be there to tackle it or to get it down, and didn't.
And I mean, it's awful. Bottom line, that's awful defense.
And then at the end of half, they threw a vertical, and again, we had no free safety help, and we weren't able to get our eyes around, and we never didn't play through the hands to get the ball down.”
That blunt message was followed by a reset. Greco responded Saturday with an interception, three tackles and a tipped ball that set up another pick for safety Elijah Dotson. Drinkwitz said the junior had moved past worrying about what the outside world thought and started playing loose again.
“I think he came to grips with that he could cut it loose, and that nobody was going to judge him inside our building about performance. We love Trajen Greco, who Trajen Greco is,” Drinkwitz said.
“And sometimes, as a player, you get tied into your performance, meaning that's how people view you as a person. And he came to grips with the fact that we love him, regardless, and we just needed him to play a little better.
And he had his best week of practice... there was just a different level of confidence in who he was as a person and who he was as a player (against Texas A&M)."
Greco’s turnaround was part of a broader defensive effort that Drinkwitz credited heavily to third-year coordinator Corey Batoon. Missouri had just come off a game against Florida in which the Tigers held Jadan Baugh, who had 600 rushing yards through four games, to 13 yards on the ground. Backing that up against Texas A&M, even in a game where the Aggies were the less explosive rushing team, still required a clean, disciplined night.
“He's understated, and that's just because he walks with a humility that most people don't understand,” Drinkwitz said of Batoon. “And he's a very special coach.
He's a very special defensive coordinator. Y'all would be shocked the way he gets in that defense's ass.
It's impressive, and everybody just thinks he just kind of walks the way he does. That dude, I mean, he brings it, and he brings it to the staff, and he brings it to those players, and those guys love him because they know that he's always trying to put them in the best position, and he can call a game now.
Like that dude can call a game. Does a great job of showing multiple books.
Does a great job knowing when to dial up pressure.”
Missouri’s defense backed that up with numbers that jumped off the page: Texas A&M finished with 216 yards, went 5 of 18 on third down, averaged 1.3 yards per carry and completed 19 of 39 passes. The Aggies’ six points marked only the second time since the start of the 2020 season that they were held to six or fewer in a conference game.
The Tigers have now allowed the third-fewest rushing yards in the SEC this season at 470, along with the fourth-fewest yards per play at 4.6. That young defense, with Batoon steering it, has become the backbone of Missouri’s early-season run.
Now comes another major test. Missouri, 5-1 overall and 2-1 in SEC play, heads to Oxford, Mississippi, to face Ole Miss at 2:30 p.m. next Saturday.
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