COLUMBIA, Mo. -- It's time to see whether the Missouri secondary has improved.
How the back end of the Tigers defense can hold up will once again be tested at 11 a.m. Saturday, when No. 14 Mizzou (5-0, 1-0 Southeastern Conference) hosts No. 8 Alabama (4-1, 2-0) and its dynamic passing attack.
MU is well aware of the issues it has had with allowing explosive pass plays this season -- as are those who have watched this defense in action. The secondary was a flaw, just not a fatal one, in wins over Kansas and South Carolina.
What the Crimson Tide are bringing to Columbia is another level, though.
Alabama's most famous offensive player, perhaps, is second-year wide receiver Ryan Williams, who emerged as a premier young talent last season. The shine has dulled a little bit for him so far in 2025, but he still has 21 catches for 336 receiving yards and three touchdowns -- plus all the agility that has made him so difficult to corral.
Though he's well-known, he's not even the best receiver on the Alabama roster. That distinction goes to fourth-year wideout Germie Bernard, who followed Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer from Washington to Tuscaloosa. Bernard is fifth in the SEC with 392 receiving yards this season and has scored six total touchdowns.
"Obviously, the receivers are electric," Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz said, "with their ability to utilize space, winning man to man and vertically down the field."
Both Williams and Bernard are prone to burning opposing cornerbacks when they're covered one on one. It's probably a reason why the Crimson Tide have seen man coverage on about 15% fewer of their plays than the national average, according to SIS Football analytics.
Then comes the Heisman contender wrinkle: Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson, who has settled in as, arguably, the SEC's best quarterback.
Simpson leads the conference in passing yards, with 1,478. He has completed 70.3% of his passes, throwing for 13 touchdowns and only one interception, which came last week against Vanderbilt.
"Their quarterback is as good, if not better, than what other head coaches have been speaking about him," Drinkwitz said. "His ability to make off-schedule plays, maneuver in the pocket, be accurate with the football. There's zero doubt he knows how to attack Cover 2."
That's a rather niche observation from Drinkwitz, who is usually more general when previewing opponents with the media. Simpson's success against Cover 2 -- that being defensive schemes that keep two safeties deep to keep the lid on plays -- has evidently weighed on the MU coaching staff.
The issue Mizzou has had with its secondary is high safeties biting on play-action and shorter routes, abandoning or betraying their assignments and thereby opening up deep looks. Fixing that was on the Tigers' to-do list during their first bye week of the season, and Drinkwitz has been clear in identifying it as a problem the coaching staff needs to fix.
Where it becomes even more complicated against Simpson is that he has been dangerous even against sound Cover 2 looks. It doesn't take a coverage breakdown for him to find receivers.
"The biggest issue is you've got to pick your poison," Drinkwitz said. "Do you want to get beat in the pass game, or do you want to be light in the box and defended from explosive passes? Vandy was playing a lot of Cover 2 -- which, Cover 2 is going to leave you short in the run game, unless you're trapping it. And then they were able to pick apart the Cover 2 in second-and-long situations. Ty was making some throws that were pretty incredible."
To translate the football jargon a bit: One part of the dilemma, as Drinkwitz sees it, is over how many players to keep in "the box" -- the area between the offensive tackles and close to the line of scrimmage, so more or less the defensive line and linebackers. A "heavier" box with more players is better at stopping the run and setting up blitzes. A "lighter" box with fewer players sacrifices those things in the name of pass coverage.
Cover 2 tends to come with lighter boxes, as both safeties will stay high and therefore out of the box. That’s the usual defensive strategy against Alabama: The Tide see light boxes 20% more often than the average FBS team and heavy boxes about 22% less than average, per SIS Football.
When Vanderbilt deployed Cover 2 last Saturday, Simpson seemed content to complete passes into the shorter area underneath those safeties. When he wanted to look deeper downfield, he targeted the sidelines. There’s often a soft spot along the perimeter just past the cornerback but below the safety, and Simpson is adept at finding that spot.
It’s a spot South Carolina quarterback LaNorris Sellers exploited for a touchdown against Missouri a few weeks ago, so there’s precedent for this particular kind of throw hurting the Tigers.
If Mizzou wants to forego its efforts in buttoning up the secondary, it could go the opposite route of playing conservative, deep-lying zone defense and instead aggressively blitz Simpson.
And while MU’s defensive front is an asset and it has weapons like Josiah Trotter, Khalil Jacobs and Daylan Carnell who can blitz from inside the box, there’s no guarantee that trading coverage for pressure actually thwarts Simpson. He’s still been effective against blitzes.
"We play zone, he's going to pick us apart," Drinkwitz said. "If we blitz, he's going to stand in there and identify the one-on-one matchup and take it. That's what they've been really good at."
In some ways, Simpson becomes even more lethal against the blitz. His average time to throw drops from 3.12 seconds to 2.89 -- he gets the ball out a beat quicker, basically -- yet his average depth of target actually rises from 7.5 yards downfield to 9.
Put simply: Faced with a blitz, Simpson is decisive in targeting wideouts like Bernard and Williams, who work themselves open against the man coverage that often accompanies blitzes.
So what will Mizzou need to do against Simpson and the Tide? Clean up the zone coverage to avoid giving him more than he'll already take, then try to find ways to rattle him from there.
"The quarterback makes very good decisions," Drinkwitz said. "(He's) not easily deceived with disguise, unaffected by pressure, (has the) ability to escape. Those three things make it really difficult to game plan a quarterback."