51ºÚÁÏ

COLUMBIA, Mo. — There was a time in football history when the forward pass was not the offensive staple we know it to be today. A time when the run was en vogue and spirals rarely took flight.

That time was ... Saturday.

Missouri’s defense didn’t give up much to Louisiana in the 23rd-ranked Tigers’ 52-10 win — but especially in the air. The Ragin’ Cajuns, trailing for almost the entire game, did throw the ball. Fourteen times, to be exact.

Daniel Beale completed one pass for 5 yards. Backup and wildcat option Lunch Winfield completed one for minus-1 yard.

So Louisiana’s combined tally of passing yards? Four. F-O-U-R. The kind of box-score stat that better befits the days of yore.

Saturday becoming a day of four makes it one for the record books — and a wild dive into Mizzou’s history with single-digit passing games.

The last time the Tigers held an opponent to single-digit passing yards was in 1991, when Iowa State completed just one of its five passes, finishing with 6 passing yards.

And the last time MU held an opponent to 4 or fewer passing yards? Nov. 20, 1976, when the Kansas Jayhawks finished with 2.

Here’s what’s remarkable, though: Prior to Saturday, Missouri had lost the previous five games in which it had held opponents to single-digit passing yards.

Iowa State, with its 6 passing yards, beat Mizzou in ’91, 23-22. Oklahoma threw for only 8 yards in 1988, yet won 16-7. When KU managed only 2 yards through the air in 1976, the Jayhawks still won 24-22.

That 1976 season, with Al Onofrio in charge, actually saw four games in which MU opponents threw for single digits.

The week before that ground-based affair with Kansas, Oklahoma hadn’t thrown a single pass while still steamrolling the Tigers 41-14. Two weeks earlier, Oklahoma State needed only 8 passing yards to win 24-14.

Those were the last five single-digit passing games from Mizzou opponents, all defeats for the black and gold.

The Tigers’ most recent win against a single-digit passing team was a month earlier in 1976, when Missouri beat Ohio State 28-21 on the road. The Buckeyes completed one of their eight passes, finishing with 9 yards.

“They stopped our offense cold in the second half,� legendary Ohio State coach Woody Hayes said after that game. “We didn’t deserve to win. Missouri did.�

The novelty of that win, to Mizzou, was not so much the defensive coverage but the play of Pete Woods, who replaced starting quarterback Steve Pisarkiewicz to lead the Tigers to an unexpected victory in Columbus, Ohio.

“This has to be the greatest game a Missouri team ever played under the conditions that existed,� Onofrio proclaimed afterward.

It took the Tigers nearly 49 years to win another game under the very specific condition of an opponent throwing for less than 10 yards in a game.

Nobody’s proclaiming Saturday’s thumping of Sun Belt Conference member Louisiana as the greatest game in any sense, though. Tailback Ahmad Hardy put together a career-high 250 yards as MU’s ground game dominated, but that wasn’t especially unexpected.

Two factors seemed to help Mizzou keep the Ragin’ Cajuns from finding much through the air.

For one, Louisiana is without Walker Howard, the Louisiana State and Mississippi transfer who began the year as its starting quarterback. He suffered a serious oblique injury in a season-opening loss to Rice, so the Ragin’ Cajuns came to town as a team already far more likely to lean on the run than the pass.

Second, after struggling in zone coverage at times against Kansas last weekend, MU defensive coordinator Corey Batoon trusted his defensive backs to hold up in man coverage more often.

“If I’m going to be real: Obviously, their starting quarterback got dinged up, and he’s a really good player,� Tigers coach Eli Drinkwitz said after the game. “... We just felt like we needed to be very aggressive and relentless in our coverage. I don’t think we called much zone cover today. The first completion they had was zone and that was about it. We knew we wanted to take away windows.�

Novel and dominant as it was, holding a team to 4 passing yards isn’t especially repeatable for Missouri. South Carolina, headed to face the Tigers next weekend, has a star quarterback in LaNorris Sellers. Even in any other blowouts that may happen this season, the losing team still tends to land one or two passes of merit.

So don’t hold your breath for the next single-digit passing game from a Mizzou opponent. If history holds true, it’ll be a few decades.