Five Takeaways from Mizzou’s 31-17 win at Arkansas

If you’re reading this, Mizzou is probably still running. To the locker room? To the bus? Hell, Drinkwitz might have them run home in the cold. It’s worked so far!

Mizzou ended their 2025 season on a high note, rolling through 2-10 Arkansas for a convincing, if often droll, 31-17 win. Here are your five takeaways from the game.

1. Trophy game titans

Eli Drinkwitz won’t be hanging many posters around the Mizzou complex celebrating the 2025 season. Much to Tiger fans delight, 8-4 isn’t as big a deal as it used to be around these parts. The Tigers want to compete for bigger trophies, and they’re paying Drinkwitz handsomely to make that happen in the future.

Still, the 2025 team will have quite a few memories lifting trophies to take with them and, for the returners, make them hungry for more. Not counting the Oklahoma game – because, as you should know, the Peace Pipe is lost for good – Mizzou went undefeated in trophy games this season, taking home the Border War Drum, the Mayor’s Cup and, for the 10th time since joining the SEC, the Shelter Insurance Battle Line Trophy. Showing up for rivalry games is a small but important part of a program’s culture, and Drinkwitz’s teams continue to prove they will play for even the smallest hardware.

2. Ahmad Hardy. That’s it. That’s the takeaway.

For two-plus quarters on Saturday afternoon, it looked like Arkansas would somehow stifle Mizzou’s Doak Walker Award semi-finalist. The Tigers seemed plenty content to lean on Beau Pribula and Jamal Roberts to provide the punch, using Hardy as a threat to dangle in front of the Hogs. Eventually, however, Ahmad Hardy announced himself in a way that only Ahmad Hardy could.

After being met by half of Arkansas’ front seven, Hardy’s legs went into overdrive. Through sheer force of will, Hardy broke three tackles all at once, punching through the Razorbacks’ wall and scampering 53 yards for a back-breaking touchdown. After that, the air went out of Razorback stadium and Mizzou simply had to run out the clock. Literally.

Clearly, the ground game was a priority for the Tigers against Arkansas’ porous front, and Mizzou ended the game with 322 total rushing yards on 58 attempts. But unsurprisingly, it was Hardy’s bruising score that sucked the life out of Bobby Petrino’s flailing hogs and put a nice cap on his memorable first season in Columbia.

3. Culture is the key

Eli Drinkwitz is one of the most handsomely-paid football coaches in the country, and Saturday showed one reason why. In a game where the only thing on the line (other than an insurance-sponsored trophy) was pride, one team came out overheated and lacking discipline. The other? Calm, cool, and steady. And while Mizzou could’ve done with a bit more fire out of the gates, their even-keeled approach ultimately won out.

The Razorbacks, clearly determined to prove they were better than their 2-9 record showed, were undoubtedly the better team in the first half while Mizzou struggled to build much momentum. But the lack of an established culture showed from the first minute of a game in which the Razorbacks were penalized 16 times for an eye-watering 121 yards. Mizzou, on the other hand, kept cool in a usually heated rivalry match up and stayed the course. Eventually, Arkansas ran out of juice and started floundering on both ends of the ball, while the Tigers’ defense grew into the game and the run game started doing… well, whatever it wanted.

No one will confuse being more disciplined than a Bobby-Petrino-interim-tag team as deserving of any plaudits. I’m sure Drinkwitz wouldn’t want them, anyway. But it feels worth pointing out that a Mizzou team in Drink’s first or second year might’ve caved to some of Arkansas’ antics. They didn’t. It’s a good indicator of what Drinkwitz has built and, ideally, what he’ll continue to build on.

4. If not QB, why QB shaped?

Thanks Sam Snelling for the subhead title idea!

It’s hard to argue too much with the way Mizzou’s run-dominant attack came away with results. But the decision to only pass seven times with Pribula will raise some questions among Mizzou fans.

Was Pribula still hurting from his recent injury return? The decision to run him 16 times probably puts the kabosh on that theory. Is he still rusty? Undoubtedly, but at some point you have to find a way to get him going. Did the conditions play into things? Sure, but Arkansas found a way to move the ball effectively through the air.

This is nit-picking in the end, as Drinkwitz and Co. likely knew that the passing attack wasn’t needed to beat a feeble Razorback defense. But it puts a little more onus on the bowl game to show us that Pribula can command Mizzou’s passing attack moving forward. Otherwise, we’ll enter the offseason with some QB controversy.

5. It’s Bowl SZN!

With the win, Mizzou finishes its regular season with an 8-4 record and the chance to win nine games in a season for the first time in program history. And while that’s a slight disappointment from where they started, there’s a chance all four of those losses will have come to College Football Playoff teams. Silver linings.

We’ll find out where the Tigers are headed for their bowl game in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we’ll spend some time decompressing on the 2025 season and preparing for the incoming winter storm that is the transfer portal. Stay tuned!