Five (Not-So) Bold Predictions for the 2014 Missouri Tigers
By DAVID MORRISON
Friday, April 25, 2014 at 8:00 am
We here at the blog are wrapping up our spring football recap week by peering into our crystal ball and trying to come up with five predictions for Missouri this fall based upon what we were able to see this spring.
Why five? Why not? It seems to be a pretty standard number people cling to when they endeavor to undertake things like this.
As the title implicates, none of these will blow your minds. And all are pretty much guaranteed to be wrong.
But it's fun to try anyway:
1) Markus Golden and Mitch Morse will be captains: As two representatives of what, in all likelihood, will be two of Missouri's strongest position groups next season, it just makes sense. Morse, at left tackle, is now playing the most important spot on the offensive line as the quarterback's blind-spot protector. Not only that, but he's a senior holdover from last year's record-setting line, presents a good public face for the program and seems to have his finger on the pulse of the offense. You can say the exact same things for Golden. He's outgoing, very engaging with his teammates and the media and does not seem uncomfortable in the least with being a team spokesman. Even last year, he was one of the few to emerge from the locker room to meet the press after the South Carolina loss. That boded well. Now, if Missouri opts for four captains as it did last year, who are the other two? Another offensive captain could come from the receiving corps, either Bud Sasser, Darius White or Jimmie Hunt. I'd give the leg up to Sasser at this point, as he's been in the program longer than White, has more starting experience than Hunt and has really kind of stepped forward as the go-to quote in the receiving corps since Dorial Green-Beckham's dismissal. The defensive line has a couple of other candidates as well, in Matt Hoch and Lucas Vincent. Hoch has more experience than Vincent, but Vincent appears to be a little more outgoing than Hoch. Braylon Webb's also a three-year starter on the back end, even though he's not as vocal as some of his teammates. Still, to get a diversity of position, let's say he's got an upper hand as well. So let's go with Morse, Sasser, Golden and Webb.
2) Jimmie Hunt will lead the team in catches: Now this is one where I have a chance to look downright foolish if he ends up catching, like, 10 passes this season. But hear me out. Take a look through Maty Mauk's targets from last season and you'll find something kind of intriguing: he seemed to favor the slot guys. Washington, Green-Beckham and White -- the team's top three outside receivers -- made up 54 of Mauk's 133 targets. Hunt, Sasser and Marcus Lucas -- the top three inside guys -- also made up 54 targets. So they're even, right? Well, James Franklin targeted the top three outside options 154 times and the top three inside options 120 times. So Mauk likes using the slot. Lucas was his most targeted receiver last year, receiving 23 percent of his looks. Hunt was his most targeted slot receiver through the spring scrimmages. See what I'm getting at here? Even if Mauk ends up targeting White or Sasser more often, Hunt could still end up with more catches. Missouri completed 56.8 percent of its passes to outside receivers last year and 60.5 percent of its passes to inside receivers. The completion percentage to Hunt (62.9) was the highest of any of Missouri's top five options. All of which lead me to believe he'll catch the most passes for the Tigers this year.
3) Marcus Murphy will account for more than 1,000 yards of offense: That doesn't necessarily mean he'll gain 1,000 rushing yards. Say he gets the same number of carries per game Russell Hansbrough did as Henry Josey's backup last season. That puts him at 98 carries for a 12-game season and 106 for 13 games. Say he meets his career average in yards per carry (6.46). That puts him in the 630-690 rush yards range. So he's still got some work to do to hit the goal. Now let's circle back to receiver targets. Murphy, despite seeing about half the snaps of Josey, had just as many passes thrown his way last season (13), the team's seventh option in terms of targets. Over three spring scrimmages, he was the first-team offense's fifth option. The first offense skewed heavily toward running backs in the pass game (13 targets) over tight ends (one) in the scrimmages, and Murphy is the best of the backs at receiving. Missouri's fifth option received 8 percent of its targets last year. Factoring in a couple percentage points off for freshmen coming in -- and current players stepping up -- let's say Murphy is on the receiving end of 6 percent of 400 targets this year. That puts him at 24 targets. Running back passes are generally pretty high-percentage, so let's say he catches 20 of those. Then he'd need to average about 16 yards a catch to get up around 1,000 total. Not impossible...
4) A half-dozen 2014 signees will play this season: Last year, three of the 19 signees that reached campus ended up playing -- Josh Augusta, Aarion Penton and junior-college transfer Duron Singleton. That was on a team that returned 14 starters and had a bunch of upperclassmen at the top of the depth chart. This year's class of 28 comes into a situation where Missouri returns only eight starters -- plus two part-time starters -- and has only 28 scholarship upperclassmen returning. So some young ones are going to have to play. Kenya Dennis is an obvious candidate. Like Singleton, he's a junior-college transfer so he has that extra head start, plus he went through spring ball with the Tigers. Missouri could also need at least one more secondary player to help fill in depth in a group that lost three starters. Logan Cheadle helped himself at corner this spring, Raymond Wingo could be an instant special-teams contributor -- at least -- and Tavon Ross and Greg Taylor look like they could be college-ready physically at safety. So that's at least two spots. Missouri also might need a couple of its receivers to play right away with their thinning depth at that position. Nate Brown looks to be the most advanced of the signees, and DeSean Blair has the tall, lanky build and long strides the Tigers like in their outside receivers. If they're looking for depth inside, Thomas Richard could be an option as well. There's two more spots. Brandon Lee could find his way onto the field after going through spring ball -- either on special teams or in a thin linebacking corps -- and Missouri could look to either running-back signee -- Trevon Walters or Ish Witter -- to bolster that position. There's your six. Rocel McWilliams or Spencer Williams also could get a look at end if Missouri decides it needs more than four there and doesn't want to move Rickey Hatley and Harold Brantley around. Offensive line's not usually a spot where true freshmen play -- sit down, Evan Boehm -- but Mike Fairchild did go through spring ball and Andy Bauer and Kevin Pendleton are big enough, at least, to survive at the college level. Still may be a long shot, though. I've just listed 16 players for six spots. That, friends, is called "hedging your bets."
5. Maty Mauk will put up a top-5 season in Missouri history in total offense: The 3,797 yards Blaine Gabbert put up 2009 currently sit at No. 5 on Missouri's all-time list. Here's why Mauk will beat that. Last year, Mauk recorded a stat -- either a pass or a carry -- on about 55 percent of the snaps in which he played and he wasn't just kneeling on the ball. Taking Missouri's plays per game last year and the plays per game teams ran against its 2014 opponents last year, we can expect Missouri to run around 860 plays in a 12-game season and 930 in a 13-game season. That means Mauk is recording a stat on between 470 and 515 plays. Last year, about three-quarters of his actions came from pass attempts. Following that trend with the numbers listed above would put him at around 375 pass attempts and 120 rushes. If he duplicates his per-attempt and per-rush averages from last season, that means around 3000 passing yards and 670 rushing yards, or just on the south end of Gabbert's numbers. But Mauk will, in all likelihood, record an action on more than 55 percent of his snaps this year -- Franklin did on 63 percent of his snaps last year -- so he'll get more chances to get those extra 128 yards. This is assuming a lot of "ifs" as facts, the biggest of which is the "if" Mauk manages to make it through the entire season without missing any significant time due to injury. But "if" he does, he'll be able to put up one of the top five offensive seasons in Missouri history by the end of 2014.