Whatever trust and goodwill Missouri football engendered in fans during the offseason is quickly fading. A confusing win against an FCS team and a frustrating loss to conference opponent South Carolina puts the Tigers (1-1, 0-1 SEC) at a potential crossroads, in both support and postseason hopes.
The team has a chance to change that this afternoon.
Purdue football hasn't been nationally relevant since Kyle Orton was in West Lafayette, but the team is exciting again under Jeff Brohm and his staff in their first year, playing Louisville close and using a strong offensive performance to breeze by Ohio.
The Boilermakers, also 1-1, have every appearance of trending in the opposite direction of Missouri after two games.
Today's game is scheduled for a 3 p.m. kickoff and will be televised on SEC Network. Here's what to watch for.
Defensive response
It was no secret DeMontie Cross was defensive coordinator in name only from the second half of the 2016 season onward, and head coach Barry Odom made the decision to fire Cross Sunday evening after a respectable defensive performance in a 31-13 loss.
Odom said after the fact the firing had nothing to do with on the field performance and was more of a philosophical difference, which begs the question why didn't he make the change during the offseason?
"You look at the timing and the timing is, I don't know if you ever can say it's the right time or the wrong time," Odom said. "I know that the staff that we have in place, I'm confident that we can go do what we need to do in order to give ourselves a chance to be successful.
"I don't put a watch on when you make a decision when you're presented with the things you've got to do to move your program forward and that's where we're at."
Players said the firing was a surprise, and Cale Garrett, Terez Hall and Joey Burkett of the middle linebacker group Cross coached commented on the situation.
"It is what it is, and we just have to move forward from here and work on Purdue," Garrett said. "It's one of those things that we can't thing about too much now, we just have to move forward."
"It's a team thing, man, I just leave that to coach Odom," Hall said. "I came here to play football, so I'm not really going to get on that. It just is how it is, move on, move forward."
"Not much else you can do," Burkett said of rolling with the punches after coaching changes. "Just wake up, 'OK, let's go.' It doesn't matter who's in charge, we're going to do what they tell us and trust them, and give it everything we've got."
"We were a bit caught off guard," Terry Beckner Jr. said. "Really wasn't expecting that. I hope everything goes well with that situation, because it's a tough one."
How the defense responds to a large cosmetic change but a relatively small functional change will be worth watching. Players didn't seem to miss Cross, but it's hard to tell if there truly was no love lost between them, or if they didn't want to open up about the firing. Missouri played well defensively against South Carolina. Jake Bentley was held in check and the Gamecocks scored just two non-Deebo Samuel touchdowns in the game.
The Boilermakers have struggled on third down so far this year, converting just 9-of-25 attempts, but Brohm has converted 3-of-4 attempts on fourth down.
Quarterback questions
The talk around Missouri football after Week 1 was how much of a jump junior quarterback Drew Lock had made. He put up incredible numbers against Missouri State, partly because the team needed him to, but followed up a 500-yard passing game completing 14-of-32 passes (44 percent) against the Gamecocks, and a respectable 245 yards and a score were negated by two interceptions.
In 18 career games against Power 5 opponents, he's thrown for, on average, fewer than 200 yards per game with a 49 percent completion percentage. Lock has 13 touchdowns in those games, against 18 interceptions.
He and others in the program have said he's become more comfortable in the offensive scheme, at making reads, at throwing the throws offensive coordinator Josh Heupel asks him to make.
"I think he and we are close to playing at a high level in conference or out of conference," Heupel said Monday. "We weren't able to do that last week, we weren't able to put the ball in the end zone. A quarterback in part is only as good as the ten other guys around him. At the same time, the quarterback's got to be good enough to make up for the ten other guys. I know I'm talking out both sides of my mouth right now, but that's how it all comes together."
Purdue might be a good candidate for Lock to make a positive dent in his numbers against. The Boilermakers gave up 211 yards passing to Ohio's Nathan Rourke on 16-for-23 passing, and 30 completions on 46 attempts for 378 yards and two TDs to last year's Heisman winner Lamar Jackson.
For the Boilermakers, the question at quarterback is who will get the most snaps? Purdue has played David Blough and Elijah Sindelar similar amounts through two games, and Blough, a junior, looks like the starter. He's completed 75 percent of his passes for 510 yards through two games, throwing five scores and two interceptions. Sophomore Sindelar is 20-for-42 (48 percent) for 178 yards and three touchdowns to an interception. His completions net an average of four yards per attempt, less than half of Blough's 9.3.
"I would anticipate they'll both play," Odom said Tuesday. "They both played pretty well and it doesn't appear that they ask one guy to do something that they keep out for the other, so either (Sindelar) is in there or (Blough) is in there, and they do what they do."
Blough, on paper, is the bigger threat, but Missouri's defense will be tested by both.
Red zone efficiency
The Tigers had three red zone opportunities against South Carolina and turned them into three points. Johnathon Johnson's late TD was ruled incomplete and Missouri turned the ball over on downs, and a possession inside the 10 resulted in a blocked field goal.
Heupel would like to score quickly, and Missouri has in both games. But driving into the red zone and coming up empty-handed is a recipe for offensive failure. He said the most disappointing thing to him about the South Carolina game was only scoring one touchdown.
"We didn't take advantage of the opportunities in the red zone and obviously the turnovers," Heupel said (the Tigers had three). "Those two things typically lend itself to not being successful as a football team."
Purdue has yet to be stopped in an opponent's red zone this season. The team that squanders more red zone opportunities today will have a hard time winning.