A Friday night trip to Lawrence is an odd way to open SEC-vs-Big 12 business, but it's a real early gut check for both programs trying to prove last year was the outlier, not the norm.
+Rehired Andy Kotelnicki, OC from Leipold's best Lawrence years
+Portal additions Dylan Edwards, Connor Stroh target specific 2025 flaws
+Home crowd for a Friday night opener-adjacent game
−Quarterback job still undecided entering camp
−Coming off a disappointing 5-7 season, missed bowl
−Over 50 roster turnover creates chemistry risk early
Missouri walks into this one as the more finished product, at least on paper. Austin Simmons, the lefty transfer who won the Tigers' quarterback job after arriving from Ole Miss, gets one of the softer landing spots imaginable for his Mizzou debut — a Kansas defense that's about to break in a completely reshuffled two-deep of its own.
Kansas, meanwhile, still doesn't know who's taking snaps for it. Jalon Daniels is gone after years as the face of the program, and Lance Leipold has spent camp watching Cole Ballard, Isaiah Marshall and Rice transfer Chase Jenkins battle it out. Leipold's been blunt that it won't be decided by one flashy throw — he wants the guy who's most consistent, not just the most talented arm in the room. That kind of uncertainty entering a game against an SEC defense is not the spot Kansas wanted.
The number crunchers haven't posted a line on this one yet, but the shape of the matchup is already obvious: Missouri's trying to protect a defensive identity, Kansas is trying to find literally anyone else's identity. That gap tends to show up fastest in the first month, before either roster's fully settled.
Missouri's calling card the last two years has been defense, and 2025's group was the best of the Drinkwitz era — top-10 nationally in total defense, top-15 in scoring defense. The catch is a lot of those veteran leaders are gone now, which means this Kansas trip doubles as an early audition for whoever's replacing them. Ahmad Hardy still gives the Tigers a proven ground game to lean on while that defense finds its footing, and new pieces like transfer receivers Cayden Lee and Caleb Goodie give Simmons real targets from day one.
Kansas isn't without answers. Bringing back Andy Kotelnicki to call plays is a real move — he was part of the staff during Leipold's best Lawrence stretch — and portal additions like running back Dylan Edwards and offensive lineman Connor Stroh were aimed squarely at fixing what broke in a 5-7 season. But more than 50 new faces means chemistry is still a work in progress, and whoever wins that quarterback battle will be doing it in front of a home crowd against a defense with a lot more continuity than Kansas has right now.
This is exactly the kind of September game that tells you more about December than the final score might suggest — a program trying to hold onto an identity versus one trying to build a new one in real time.
