Simmons throws 4 TDs before Drinkwitz calls him 'the story'

Simmons throws 4 TDs before halftime, and Drinkwitz calls him 'the story'

Austin Simmons made his long-awaited first start count: the Ole Miss transfer went 17 of 19 for 252 yards and 4 touchdowns before Drinkwitz pulled him in the second quarter, per Field Level Media. He strung together 8 straight completions before his lone incompletion of the night, hit Shaun Terry II for a 25-yard score to open his account as a Tiger, found Donovan Olugbode twice — Olugbode finished with 8 catches for 116 yards — and connected with fellow Ole Miss transfer Cayden Lee for a third. No. 25 Missouri had the game decided before the third quarter started, and it showed in a 54-14 final over Arkansas-Pine Bluff.

09/04WvsArkansas-Pine Bluff54-14

It's the payoff for exactly the discipline Drinkwitz spent camp installing. "We don't need to be out here just willy-nilly trying to put balls in tight windows and potentially throwing interceptions," the coach had said heading into the opener, and Simmons obliged with zero interceptions against his 4 touchdowns. Afterward on SEC Network, Drinkwitz didn't bother spreading the credit around: "The story is him," he said of his new starter.

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𝑪𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑮𝒂𝒎𝒆 🎙️ First Call of the Game this season, first TD of the season. @austnsimmons ➡️ @ShaunTerryll t.co/lVyMFgtgvw

The rest of the night was messier than the scoreboard let on. Drinkwitz was blunt that he was "very disappointed in the third quarter from an overall intensity standpoint, a coaching standpoint," flagging special-teams penalties and calling stretches of the offense "embarrassing" even as the lead ballooned — proof that a 40-point win over an FCS opponent still left him plenty to coach on before Kansas.

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Goodnight, Tigers 🐯

Hardy's bone has healed, but Kansas is still more doubt than answer

Pete Nakos reported the Wednesday before the opener that Ahmad Hardy "continues to progress back from his gunshot wound and won't be available tonight," and Drinkwitz confirmed left tackle Cayden Green would sit out too — the full detail is in Ahmad Hardy, Cayden Green Both Out For Missouri's Opener. Backup Jamal Roberts, who ran for 753 yards and 6 touchdowns a year ago, took the early-down work, and Jack Lange, the 6-foot-8 sophomore Drinkwitz had praised all camp, made his first real start in Green's place.

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First career rushing touchdown for @MattZollers ⭐️

The names that actually lit up Missouri's own feed were further down the depth chart. Matt Zollers scored his first career rushing touchdown, then came back and did it again — "That's six for No. 5," the account posted the second time — and Preston Hatfield, a Kansas City native, punched in his own first career touchdown.

The injury table hasn't cleared him yet, either. Covers listed Hardy as Questionable with a leg injury as of September 4, with no word yet on whether he suits up against Kansas on Friday. That tracks with what Drinkwitz has said all along: the bone has reportedly healed from the gunshot wound, but he wants to see two weeks of full-speed practice before trusting Hardy in a game again, and "mid-September" was always a target, not a promise, for the Kansas trip.

A walk-on lineman just earned his scholarship in front of the team

Buried between the countdown graphics and gear posts, Missouri's own account put up the kind of clip that actually stops a scroll: "Earned it. @domgiudice56," tagging offensive lineman Dominick Giudice with a video the day before fall camp wrapped. It has all the shape of a scholarship reveal — the two-word caption, the tag, the media — for a 6-foot-4, 312-pound senior who has been grinding in the trenches for a program that just spent camp obsessing over red-zone push.

It is exactly the kind of moment that never shows up in a box score or an injury table, and it is also the best thing Missouri's own feed put out all week. No scholarship count or roster move confirms it beyond the post itself, but that has always been the point of days like this one — a lineman who has been at Missouri long enough to know what "earned it" means, getting told so on camera in front of everybody.

Border War rematch at Kansas, and a Jayhawks team that just changed quarterbacks too

Missouri heads to Lawrence Friday night at Kansas as a road favorite, with the line opened at -6.5 and the total set at 52.5 — a middling number for a series that has run hot in either direction depending on the year. Kansas is 1-0 too, coming off a 51-6 win over Long Island University, so this is a genuine test rather than a get-well spot for either side.

It's also a new-quarterback game on both sidelines. Kansas enters the post-Jalon Daniels era with redshirt sophomore Isaiah Marshall installed as the starter after beating out Cole Ballard in fall camp, ending months of competition to replace the program's career passing leader (Yahoo Sports). Ahmad Hardy's availability is still the open question on Missouri's side — Covers has him Questionable with a leg injury as of September 4 — but for now it's Simmons who has the Tigers a step ahead of schedule, and Friday is the first real chance to see if that holds against another 1-0 team.