By 
AUSTIN – The question was harmless enough.
With three road games left in the last four weeks after only one true-road game all season, what's it going to take to get the job done?
"It's gonna take a lot, definitely," Texas linebacker Rasheem Biles said Monday. "We got some good teams coming up, on the road as well. But what better places? Where else would you want to play out on the road than LSU and Texas A&M. Obviously, we got one this week, but hey that's why you come to Texas."
Oh right, they do play another team, one that deserves its full attention.
The Longhorns have one this week, and it's not LSU or Texas A&M. Those are down the line.
This week it's Missouri, which like Texas is a middle-of-the-SEC pack team scrambling for College Football Playoff relevance. Both teams are 6-2 overall and 3-2 in league play, but not all records are created equal.
The Tigers lost to two teams that the Longhorns have beaten in Ole Miss and Mississippi State, but Texas had the luxury of playing both at home. Missouri fell to both on the road, but faced a full-strength MSU squad with a healthy Kamario Taylor whereas the Bulldogs had to come to Austin with their second- and third-string quarterbacks.
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Certainly Biles didn't mean to suggest this week's Texas game at 11 a.m. in Columbia is an after-thought. Anything but. The Longhorns had better think of the Tigers night and day and any hours in between.
No one is saying the Tigers are a bunch of average Joes. They're just not one of the biggest name brands in the sport. Not a blueblood. Probably not even a light blueblood.
Remember, Missouri was the first Big 12 team to put its hand up and tell the Big Ten, "Take me, take me." The Big Ten replied no thanks.
The SEC, however saw value in Missouri and gratefully accepted the Tigers and the Aggies into the fold. Missouri even won the SEC East in two of its three years in that league. A&M's still waiting to win something.
Missouri's not Georgia, not Alabama, not a lot of teams.
What the Tigers are, however, is a damn good football team. Really good. A team on the cusp.
It's a complete team, more complete than Texas. It has an explosive quarterback and a powerhouse running attack that Steve Sarkisian called "fantastic" and excellent receivers. It's a team still in the hunt for the school's first SEC championship and, in fact, its first conference championship of any kind since – hold on, I'm checking – 1969. Been a minute.
And that was just a Big Eight co-championship. Its last outright came in 1960 when it claimed a national championship. Missouri never won the Big 12. Not once. The school claims just 12 conference titles, 10 of them coming in 1945 or prior.
It has had its share of very successful head coaches like legit Hall of Famers Dan Devine and Gary Pinkel, and Eli Drinkwitz could ultimately belong in that company as well. Like Sarkisian, Drinkwitz likes to call his own plays and played football as an all-state linebacker in high school at Alma, Ark., as Sark played quarterback at BYU.
Drinkwitz is one of the very few coaches who takes his job seriously but not himself. He brings a light-hearted fashion to the job.
He often channels his inner Mike Leach. He loves taking jabs at other schools and trolling victims as he did Saturday when he praised Arkansas for its new light bulbs at the stadium. While the Razorbacks might measure progress in 250 new LED lights, the Tiges are looking for more.
In any light, Drinkwitz is a winner and would be a terrific hire for Florida State, which is probably a better job if only because the Seminoles compete in an inferior ACC league.
This year's Tigers team is more than capable of beating anybody.
Sure, two of Missouri's six wins came against Group of 6 opponents in Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Troy, but two of Texas' were blowout victories against non-Power 4 opponents Texas State and UTSA. Yeah, Troy just knocked off G6 contender James Madison, but Texas State came within a whisker of upsetting G6 frontrunner Boise State and UTSA is 7-1 and leads the American Conference.
While their records are identical, Texas and Missouri, they couldn't be any more different in a lot of categories.
No team – and especially no two-loss team – gets more attention than the Longhorns with their ubiquitous A-list celebrity, Arch Manning, and stir-the-pot head coach. Texas will dominate any national conversation, be the Longhorns 6-2 or 2-6.
For real, the Longhorns are the Taylor Swifts of college football. The constant center of attention. The highest of profiles and guilty of overexposure. One's married to a marquee athlete, the other's wedded to controversy, whether it's an interview brushoff with Holly Rowe or a urination celebration on the field or a linebacker coach's DUI. Swift has one hit after another. Tenth-ranked Texas, college football's No. 1 team for four weeks, is basically a show-stopper as well while Missouri's the warmup act, albeit an accomplished one.
No quarterback garners more attention than Manning. But Missouri's Austin Simmons has the better numbers with 16 touchdowns and two interceptions to Arch's line of 15 scores and seven picks.
Texas can't run the ball. Ran for 60 yards against Mississippi State. Missouri runs the ball for a living. Jamal Roberts, who started the season as Ahmad Hardy's backup, has already gone over 1,000 yards with back-to-back games of 200-plus yards. And now Hardy's back after missing seven games following his May incident in which he got shot at a concert.
And while Missouri is getting Hardy back into action, Texas has lost left tackle Trevor Goosby for the season, anxiously holds its breath until sack leader Colin Simmons returns from a high ankle sprain and is sweating the availability of four other starters who left the last game with injuries.
Texas can't consistently protect its quarterback. The Tigers have allowed eight sacks. Heck, the Longhorn offensive line gave up six in one game to Tennessee and another five to Ole Miss. That's why when Manning was asked if he was more bruised Saturday than any other game this year, he said, "Probably."
The SEC's leading punt returner plays for Missouri, not Texas. Ryan Niblett's great, but was denied a second runback for a touchdown by one of the Longhorns' dumb penalties. Missouri's DaMarion Fowlkes tops all SEC punt returners with an average of 17 yards.
Missouri also has two of the league's top eight receivers in leader Cayden Lee, who averages 97 yards a game, and Donovan Olugbode. No Longhorn ranks in the top 10.
Turnovers?
The Tigers have committed just five in eight games and sit a plus-eight. Texas ranks 99th nationally at a minus-three.
In fact, Texas probably has an edge only on defense, and that's not even a huge separator. As strong as the Longhorns are against the run, the Tigers are even better numerically, allowing only 104 yards on the ground to Texas' 107.
But defense is where the Longhorns must flex their muscles. They might even need to score on that side of the ball, especially with the way Missouri protects the ball.
"They're really good, and they're going to be rolling at home," Manning said. " We're excited to be road warriors for the week and get it done."
And prepare for LSU and A&M later on.
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This article originally published at It's hard to tell because of all the Texas hype, but Missouri is a more complete team than Longhorns.
https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/hard-tell-because-texas-hype-002457943.html
