re: SEC East 2014

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Can the .... Mizzou fans of the board please give me a fairly unbiased breakdown of their ...team..

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happy to, remember last year? expect a whole lot more of the same.

It all starts at the line, and Mizzou will come back strong this year with 3 returning starters and a great number of returning subs with game experience and upper class development. In some ways that slew of injuries from two years ago actually helped us, as we had more kids moving around and getting experience early out of necessity. I think this may also be somewhat the case for UGA though I'm not speaking for them, but at some point only so much can go wrong and we are back this year not with just a strong core of starters but significant players behind them. Barring another wipeout of injuries we will be strong on the OL and that will apply to TE position as well.

Last year may have been a perfect storm but when Josh Henson took over for Dave Yost it was immediately apparent we had an upgrade at the OC, making adjustments that mattered and tweaking the team for the SEC well beyond what we might have expected.

Though there are new faces at skill positions, there will be plenty of names who have seen the field before, and the absence of Henry Josey should not be an issue, not only do we return two of the triumvirate of star RB's, one of the best spring performances came from Morgan Steward who is expected to take up the reins as a bigger but still versatile RB with great balance.

At receiver it's more of the same, guys behind the starters will take over and most of them already have had years of developing and creating chemistry with (somewhat)new QB Maty Mauk. Let's face it, most Mizzou fans would have loved to see Mauk take over at QB permanently last year, calculating the upside he has right now is difficult, he may not be the prototypical 6'4" 230lb NFL QB, he does share some of physical traits with a certain recent Heisman winner though. When Mauk took all of two plays to put 6 on the Gator defense in his very first start, we knew the kid just might be special.

On the defensive side we will still have a host of the D line that played the lions share of last season, on the inside the DT depth is better and maybe A LOT better than a year ago. If early depth chart is any indication we will be 3 lines + deep on the inside, so the real question is how well Golden and Ray will be backed up on the ends. If you've followed Mizzou football much you know that one the best positions the Pinkel staff has shown a penchant for development is defensive line, relative unknowns like Aldon Smith and Mike Sam are just a couple of examples of players who had some nice college careers. The idea that Mizzou is suddenly out of quality DE's would not be a good bet. Defensive backfield is another area with enough depth to suffer a few vacancies, if there is a real question on D it would be how well we can replace two starting Linebackers. Again we have quietly picked up the same kind of recruits that MU has been known for over the years, no flash appeal names, just kids who quietly work themselves into NFL jobs.

You see it's really not a matter of did we recruit enough 5 star guys to replace the ones we lost, because we never really had more than a couple to lose in the first place. There's really nothing different about this team than any that Pinkel has had in previous years who have turned in 10 or more win seasons more often than not in the last 8 or so years.

or you can trust the USC fans that tell you we are going to finish 1 game ahead of the basketball school...