Yesterday was a boring day of football for the Missouri Tigers.

It was needed.

Winning 45-3 over a fairly hapless UMass team doesn't wash away the week before, but now for five of the six weeks of football the Tigers have played they've gotten the results they needed. Maybe the best part about yesterday was that it was boring.

I watched the game from my couch and chuckled on the second play when Luther Burden took a jet sweep 61 yards for a touchdown. I yawned after a 13 play 80 yard drive to score the Tigers second TD on the day. As they were going up 21-0 I was sipping coffee, Maybe there were angry comments at every slight error, and some general weirdness in the game thread yesterday, but the Tigers were up 24-3 at halftime and barely broke a sweat the rest of the way.

Mizzou got caught on a fake punt, and definitely had some coverage issues, but UMass had 11 drives and gained just 237 yards. Quick math says that's 21.5 yards per drive. Meanwhile the offense scored on 6 of their first 7 drives and 7 of their first 9 before turning things over the backups. And only one of those was with a short field, ironically enough that's when they kicked the field goal. That's an efficient day of football.

With the previous week's performance hanging over the program, one could foresee a road trip to a place like Amherst to play a team like UMass as a trap. Weird things happen when you travel to play against a team where you're favored by 30 points. Hell, before the game if you asked me to place a bet, I might've taken UMass with the spread. Like many of you, I figured the Tigers would show up looking hung over and win convincingly but only by like 21 points or something.

But they didn't, they won by 42 points, and that was with a full quarter of the backups failing to score on three drives.

Being boring when you need to be is a good thing. Mizzou was really boring in the first two games. Less so in the next two games, but at least Vanderbilt has proven to be a good win. I do understand the feelings of resentment for the way things went down at Texas A&M. But as I said last week, if there's a year you can afford a mulligan it's this one.

Eli Drinkwitz isn't a perfect coach with a perfect football program. He's a good coach with a good program. But even the best coaches and best teams have weeks where things get away from you. One of the things I really like about Drink is the 1-0 mentality. All you can do is control how you play one play at time, one series at a time, one game at a time. You can't control what's behind you, you can't control what's in front of you. You can only control what's right here in this moment.

I have no idea where this is headed. I've watched enough football this year to know it's nearly impossible to say. Nobody seems to be all that great, well maybe except Texas. The Longhorns have yet to be challenged. Ohio State and Oregon played a tight close game, so they're probably good. But you don't have to worry about anyone who isn't in the SEC until the regular season is over. And the three highest ranked teams after Texas all struggled at home against unranked opponents.

If anything that should be a lesson to Mizzou, and its fans. For the Tigers themselves, anyone can be beaten by anyone and anywhere. Playing at home doesn't save you. The only thing you can do is go 1-0.

Not everything is ever as bad as it seems. Mizzou is 5-1 with Auburn coming to down for homecoming. It doesn't matter how you beat them, just beat them. Go 1-0, and then worry about the rest later.