Missouri punted in the closing minutes at Mississippi State, and the Bulldogs needed just five plays and 1:44 to score the go-ahead touchdown with 3:57 left. That was the difference in a 31-24 loss in which Missouri led 24-17 after three quarters before Mississippi State scored 14 unanswered in the fourth, a 14-play, 73-yard drive tying it first.
That fourth quarter is the whole story of Week 5. The loss dropped Missouri to 3-1, 0-1 in the SEC, and ran the program's losing streak in ranked SEC games to eight. Missouri does not need to discover a new identity against Florida. It needs to finish a game it is already in.
What last week actually proved
Plenty of it was good. Austin Simmons threw for 295 yards and three touchdowns with no interceptions, a performance that had fans wondering whether the passing game was real. Four games in, it looks real. Missouri can move the ball on SEC defenses through the air. On defense, Daeden Hopkins produced 3.5 sacks, half a sack off Missouri's single-game record, and now leads the team with six on the season, tied for second-most in the SEC. Watch him against Aaron Philo. He is the one Missouri defender who can wreck a drive by himself, and the Tigers will need two or three of those.
The gaps are just as clear. Jamal Roberts carried 26 times for 95 yards, solid but below his previous two 120-yard games, while Ahmad Hardy sat out a fourth straight game, still recovering from his offseason gunshot wound. Missouri's best offensive player has not played a snap this year, and nobody should assume he plays Saturday. Roberts has to be good enough on his own against a Florida front, because Missouri's margin is thin.
Then there are the flags. Missouri committed eight penalties for 91 yards against Mississippi State, including holds in the red zone and late in the game. That follows nine penalties for 90 yards against Troy, with Drinkwitz pointing at three facemasks and a false start by Naeshaun Montgomery, while starting center Dominick Giudice has drawn a penalty in each of the first three games, and 10 at Kansas before that. Three games, three double-digit penalty-yardage days. In a one-score game against a top-10 team, a holding call that wipes out a red-zone snap decides it.
The game
Florida visits Faurot Field on Saturday, Oct. 3 at 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC, and it is Missouri's Homecoming. The Gators are 4-0 and ranked No. 8 in the AP poll, up 13 spots from the previous week, while Missouri slipped to No. 25 at 3-1.
The rankings make this look worse than the model does. Missouri is a 51.7% pick at home. This is a coin flip with a homecoming crowd attached, not a hope-for-chaos afternoon, and the venue history backs that up. Florida has not won at Faurot Field since 2019 and is 2-4 there all-time, with Missouri taking the last two meetings in Columbia in 2021 and 2023.
The stakes are real in both directions. Win, and Missouri's playoff odds sit around 8%; lose, and they fall to roughly 3%. Those are two branches of the same Saturday, not a number that moves during the game.
What to watch for, specifically, is whether Missouri is still ahead in the fourth quarter, and what happens on third-and-short when it is.
Full breakdown at the interactive guide; the numbers come from our methodology.