It took Missouri 17 plays and 95 yards to take its first lead since the first quarter against Auburn on Saturday.
After coughing up a 17-6 4th quarter lead, Missouri‘s long march to the end zone was just the latest in the misadventures of an Auburn team who’s promising season gone sour.
Auburn Safety Jerrin Thompson kept it simple when how to move on from the game, and the drive.
“It was a long drive. The type of defense that we say we are, we should expect and embrace drives like that. It was, probably, our worst drive of the game,” Thompson said. It just wasn’t our night, you know? We weren’t urgent enough. We’ve got to be more urgent. We just didn’t have a lot of want-to on that drive, and we understand that. That kind of hurts us. It’s one of them you want back, but you know you can’t get it back. We’re just going to move forward and learn from that mistake again.”
Auburn had several missed tackles on that drive and a pass interference call that boosted the Missouri offensive momentum even further.
Freshman defensive lineman Malik Blockton took the blame, breaking down the moments he felt he could have improved in.
“It was just, we busted a lot. It was a lot of busts. Some of that was on me. Them last two plays, that was on me,” Blocton said. It bothered me, too. Like, I beat myself up about it, because I had a chance to make a tackle in the backfield the play before they scored, and I didn’t. And then the play where they scored, I spun out of my gap. And they hit my gap.”
During that drive, Missouri quarterback Brady Cook scrambled for nine and 14 yards to maintain possession. Despite suffering an ankle injury early in the game, Cook’s fourth quarter heroics put Missouri at 353 total yards.
Blocton is using the lessons he learned during that drive as fuel for him to keep him motivated during these final five games.
“Coach [Vontrell-King Willians knew]. He came up to me, talked to me after the game. He could see I was hurting. He was like, ‘I trust you. You my guy, I’ll put you back out there again,” Blocton said. You just can’t do that no more.’ And I told him I won’t, so that’s just what it is”.
“I was trying to make up for the play before. I was thinking, in my head, ‘I just missed this tackle. I’ve got to go make one.’ I was trying to do something spectacular. That was a freshman mistake. I can’t make that mistake no more.”
Now with their eyes set on Kentucky, Thompson wants to use this week of practice to begin finding the teams true identity with the odds stacked against them.
“Like, deep inside, we know who we are. We just haven’t put a lot of that on film. And I think that’s the biggest thing with this team,” Thompson said. “We’re in a tough spot, trying to win games. It’s just one thing about college football, you’ve got to get over that hump and keep going. Every week is the same mission, the same journey, same practice.”
Auburn’s matchup with Kentucky will be televised Saturday on the SEC Network at 6:45 p.m.
