SEC Football: Predicting the 2023 SEC standings and final rankings
By Kevin Miller
2023 SEC Football Standings No. 11 (and 5th in the SEC East):
Missouri Tigers
The Eli Drinkwitz era in CoMo has been a strange one. The 2022 season might have been the best example of the oddness that has been seen in the Tiger football program.
Mizzou lost games to Kentucky, Florida, Wake Forest, and a bad Auburn squad. They were blown out by Tennessee and Kansas State by a combined 70 points. They should have lost to Vanderbilt who was playing with a backup quarterback.
They also beat South Carolina in Williams-Brice Stadium, bested a talented Arkansas group, and had an opportunity to defeat eventual National Champion Georgia.
Brady Cook returns as the starting quarterback for Missouri, and he has been a solid player for the black and gold, but former Miami Hurricane Jake Garcia and redshirt freshman Sam Horn are both more talented passers. Cook has also missed a good portion of the offseason with an injury to his throwing shoulder.
Where Mizzou fans believe they will be at their best this season is on defense as a good unit from 2022 returns 8 starters.
If the offense improves, Missouri could move up a spot or two in the SEC East, but with their concerns at quarterback and the fact that they scored more than 24 points in just one of eight SEC contests a year ago, that doesn’t appear likely. In the Drinkwitz tenure, the Tigers have never finished better than 61st nationally in scoring offense.
Missouri won’t be a great team in 2023 or a terrible one. Where they maneuver in the middle class of the SEC remains to be seen, but fans should expect Missouri to hover around the same 5 or 6 victories that the program has seen for the previous four seasons.
PREDICTION
Overall: 5-7, SEC Football: 2-6
South Dakota (W), Middle Tennessee State (W), Kansas State (L), Memphis (W), @Vanderbilt (L), LSU (L), @Kentucky (L), South Carolina (W), @Georgia (L), Tennessee (L), Florida (W), @Arkansas (L)