Tigers Haunted By Lack Of Complementary Football In Gasparilla Bowl Loss
With their 27-17 loss to the Wake Forest Demon Deacons in the Gasparilla Bowl, the Missouri Tigers' bowl win drought continued on, as they have not won a bowl game since 2014.
As the Tigers now enter the offseason and look forward to the 2023 season they do so with reasons to be optimistic, but still must improve in a number of areas if they hope to compete for in the SEC next season.
Perhaps most notably, they must find a capability of playing complementary football and not one side of the ball playing well while the other plays poorly as was seen against Wake Forest.
Against Wake Forest, the Tigers' offense showed up and played well. Yes, they could have scored more, but they still managed to score 17 points on 344 yards of total offense despite going 1-for-4 on fourth downs.
However, the defense still allowed 27 points on 386 yards of the total, which surpassed their season average of holding opponents to 25 points on 337.1 yards of offense per game.
Simply put, it is not common for teams to win a lot of games with only one side of the ball playing well. There is reason for Tigers' fans to be optimistic moving forward, as the offense and defense have both shown flashes this season of being winning units.
If they cannot manage to do both in the same game consistently, though, the Tigers will continue to be a middling SEC team that can't quite get over the hump.
You can find Connor Zimmerlee on Twitter @Connorjz98
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