For Mauk, A Short Trip From Folk Hero To Goat

This fella touches all the bases on this one...

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For Mauk, A Short Trip From Folk Hero To Goat

The entire column can be read HERE

By JOE WALLJASPER
Sunday, October 12, 2014

Early in his college career, Missouri’s Maty Mauk was a mysterious quarterback. He fled the pocket unnecessarily, he threw into crowds and he completed barely half his passes in an era when the best spread-offense QBs convert 70 percent. Yet, he threw many touchdowns, tossed few interceptions and won a lot of games.

Just how good was he? The only right answer was, “It’s complicated.”

It’s getting less complicated.

And not in a good way.

Mauk was far from Missouri’s only problem in a 34-0 loss to Georgia on Saturday, but he gave the Tigers no chance to win. For the second game in a row, Mauk was a statistical disaster — he completed 9 of 21 passes for 97 yards with four interceptions and a fumble — but this time he couldn’t produce a miracle finish to camouflage the stench with victory cologne.

Maybe, in the end, that will be best for his growth as a quarterback. Mauk has had a knack for going about his business in a way contrary to the generally accepted norms of good quarterback play. He usually came out smiling in the end. In his first nine starts, he went 7-2, including an improbable win at South Carolina on Sept. 27, when he rallied the Tigers in the final seven minutes despite completing just 12 of 34 passes on the night.

If there was no rush to change some of his bad habits before, there should be now.

For starters, there is the thing where he spins out of the pocket — often while the pocket is still a perfectly good place to be — turning his back on his receivers as he scrambles in an arc to the sidelines. In the third quarter, Mauk pivoted not once but twice before chucking an off-balance throw over the middle into the arms of Georgia defensive back Dominick Sanders. That was interception No. 4 in the game. That is two more than he had in four starts last season.

Mauk is mobile, but he’s not fast enough to outrun SEC defensive ends and linebackers to the edge, especially if he starts the race by reversing his field to the point where he’s 12 yards behind the line of scrimmage.

Mauk simply has to hang in the pocket better. Easier said than done. Blaine Gabbert heard that for three years at Missouri, but his happy feet followed him all the way to the NFL and haunted him there. Offensive coordinator Josh Henson might need to meet Mauk halfway and start moving the pocket on designed rollouts occasionally.

Something has to change. Saturday’s stats are alarming. The Tigers gained 147 yards. They didn’t convert a third down the entire game. They ran just 43 plays — half as many as Georgia — and held the ball for only 17:37. They ran four plays in Bulldogs territory, and three of them resulted in turnovers.

If that mess came against a legendary defense, so be it, but Georgia is a middle-of-the-pack SEC defense with a shaky secondary. South Carolina, with the worst defense in the SEC, also stonewalled Missouri, and the Tigers had a week in between to get themselves sorted.

Missouri couldn’t lean on its running game, because the line couldn’t get much push up front. Even with the return of Jimmie Hunt from injury, Missouri’s wide receivers weren’t helping the cause. Two of Mauk’s interceptions should have been caught by Marcus Murphy and Hunt. Even the reliable Bud Sasser had a drop.

In a play that was emblematic of Missouri’s day, Wesley Leftwich dropped a 62-yard touchdown pass on the final snap of the first half, but it would have been called back by a holding penalty anyway.

It was a failure so thorough, it causes a reassessment of what Missouri’s season can be. As recently as Friday, after news broke that Georgia star running back Todd Gurley was suspended for a potential NCAA violation, the 23rd-ranked Tigers were considered the favorites to repeat as SEC East champions.

Georgia refuted that argument persuasively.