Mizzou Is 5-2. Have They Met Expectations?

At 5-2 heading into its bye week, Mizzou is exactly where I (and many others) predicted the Tigers would be when I mapped out the 2026 season prior to the season kickoff. While the midseason record is right where I expected it to be, the path to 5-2 has had several unexpected twists and turns.

My preseason projection had Mizzou beating Mississippi State and Florida, losing to Texas A&M and Ole Miss, and taking care of business in the other games. The Tigers still have two losses, and they still have five wins, but the teams responsible for those results, and the part Mizzou has played in achieving them, have, in some ways, flipped the script on my expectations.

I’m not complaining about the record. In fact, after watching the first seven games, I’m feeling considerably better about Mizzou’s ceiling than I did before the season. The Tigers have shown they can beat good teams, even if the losses have exposed a continued failure to come up big on the road in the SEC.

The biggest negative surprise so far came in Starkville, where I expected Mizzou to leave with a win. Mississippi State has turned out to be a much better team than I gave the Bulldogs credit for in the preseason. When Kamario Taylor and Fluff Bothwell are healthy, Mississippi State has the offensive firepower to give teams problems, and its improvement under Jeff Lebby is no fluke.

That doesn’t make the loss any less frustrating. It was a game Mizzou probably should have won, and the Tigers had opportunities to do so. But it’s also clear that I underestimated the Bulldogs, who have established themselves as a legitimate threat rather than the continually rebuilding team I expected to see.

The Florida game was similar in that, while I picked Mizzou to win preseason, I certainly didn’t expect the Gators to be of the caliber a team they have shown thus far. Florida has since proven that it’s capable of competing with the best teams in the country, with top-10 victories over Ole Miss and Texas. Despite the Gators’ rapid improvement under John Sumrall, Mizzou didn’t simply survive a close game…. they dominated from start to finish.That performance was the first real indication that this team might be capable of more than the 7-5 finish I projected preseason.

Then came Texas A&M, a game I, and many other Tiger fans, had circled as a loss. Mike Elko and Texas A&M have had Eli Drinkwitz’s number in recent years and I didn’t think it would be any different this time around.

Instead, Texas A&M’s offense has been much more putrid than I anticipated while the Tigers’ defense has exceeded just about every expectation I had for a unit that lost so much experience after last season. The Tigers’ 27-6 win was emphatic and Eli Drinkwitz finally got a victory over Mike Elko. That was a significant monkey off Drinkwitz’s back, and it was another reminder that this Mizzou team might be better than I thought.

Unfortunately, the trip to Oxford brought everyone back down to earth. I had picked Ole Miss to win, but I didn’t expect Mizzou to get blown out 31-3. The Rebels were clearly the better team, and the Tigers never found an answer on either side of the ball. The offense struggled to sustain drives, the defense couldn’t get enough stops, and Ole Miss took advantage of the mistakes. It was a sobering reminder that Mizzou still has work to do before it can consistently compete with the SEC’s elite, especially away from home.

Still, I don’t think one ugly loss should erase what the Tigers accomplished in the two weeks before it. The Florida and Texas A&M games weren’t flukes. The bigger question now is what Mizzou can do with the five games left on its schedule.

Before the season, I picked the Tigers to finish 7-5. That projection reflected the uncertainty surrounding a team with so many defensive departures, a new starting quarterback and a challenging nine-game SEC slate. I thought Mizzou would have enough talent to reach a bowl for the seventh straight season, but I wasn’t convinced it could consistently beat the better teams in the conference.

Now that it’s a bye week in the middle-ish of the season, I think it’s time to revisit and adjust not just the prediction for this season, but the expectations as well.

First up is Arkansas, and I like Mizzou’s chances to get back on track. The Razorbacks are quite bad and this is a game the Tigers should win despite it being on the road.. After that comes Texas in Columbia. The Longhorns haven’t looked nearly as formidable as anyone expected preseason, and Florida’s win over them only reinforces my belief that Mizzou can win that matchup at home.

Georgia is the one game where I’m still comfortable picking against the Tigers. Going into Athens and beating the Bulldogs is a different challenge altogether, and despite the questions that have emerged around other contenders, Georgia remains a difficult opponent to overcome on its home field. That said, Auburn (a decidedly worse team than Mizzou) just went in and did the thing in Athens, so I suppose nothing is impossible. Still, I’m chalking that one down as a loss.

After that, Mizzou gets Kentucky and Oklahoma at home. Kentucky looks formidable, but the game is in Columbia. If it was in Lexington, my pick would be a different story, but the Tigers have played excellent football at Faurot Field in recent years and they should pull that one out.

Oklahoma’s perennial offensive struggles continue, and while I expected the Sooners to be a tough matchup when I made my preseason picks, the way their season has unfolded has changed my view of that game. I believe Mizzou is the more complete teams and I expect the Tigers to take care of business.

That puts us at 9-3. The Tigers need to avoid another performance like the one in Oxford, and there are no guarantees in the SEC, but after seeing this defense exceed expectations and watching the offense find its stride at times against good SEC defenses, I think the ceiling is higher than I originally anticipated.

That’s the strange thing about preseason predictions. Sometimes the record is right even when the reasoning behind it is wrong. My expectations were that this would be a 7-5 team fighting its way through a difficult schedule. Now, I see a team capable of winning nine games, with home-field advantage in three of its remaining four games and a road matchup against an Arkansas team it should be able to beat.

The Tigers haven’t been perfect, and Ole Miss exposed some real limitations, but Mizzou has also shown it can be much better than I expected. With five games left, I’m betting on the Tigers to finish strong.