The Missouri Tigers think they can make some noise in 2024, and why not?
They went 11-2 last season with a win in the Cotton Bowl over Ohio State. Quarterback Brady Cook threw for 3,317 yards and 21 touchdowns with six interceptions, and that included 128 yards and a touchdown in the impressive bowl win against the Buckeyes. He also ran for 319 yards and eight touchdowns on the season.
Yes, the Tigers are losing star running back Cody Schrader, who rushed for 1,627 yards and 14 touchdowns last season, but they are returning junior wideout Luther Burden III, who caught 86 passes for 1,212 yards and nine touchdowns in 2023.
And then, of course, there’s Cook, who recently said at The Manning Passing Academy (h/t On3) that there is a ton of legitimate hype around Mizzou heading into 2024.
“I think everybody in this area is excited. “I think the standard and the expectation is higher than ever. And that’s what we want,” he said. “You know, that’s why we worked so hard. You want that standard to be high so you can go meet it, you can go exceed it. We’re excited to go do it.”
The expectation for Missouri should be the College Football Playoffs, especially now that the field has been opened to 12 teams. In fact, ESPN’s Greg McElroy can see the Tigers being a Top 10 team in 2024.
“There’s a lot of buzz about this team … beating Ohio State in that Cotton Bowl,. Currently, if you were to ask a bunch of people that are going to prognosticate on what the preseason rankings will look like, I think a lot of people have Missouri, probably within striking distance of the top 10. Maybe in some cases, they have them in the top seven or eight. Understandable,” McElroy recently said on “Always College Football.”
The main question for Mizzou is how the Tigers will replace the production of Schraeder, but they did form a “stable” of sorts thanks to the transfer portal. Marcus Carroll transferred to Mizzou after rushing for 1,350 yards last season for Georgia State. He was joined by Appalachian State transfer Nate Noel, who rushed for 834 yards on 173 carries last season.
If those two combined can equal or at least approach Schraeder’s production last season, there’s certainly a world in which Mizzou can make a huge run through the expanded CFP.
