When Missouri football needed a jolt, Zion Young was there to provide it in a double-overtime win at Auburn. Here's how the edge rusher saved the day.
AUBURN, Ala. — Zion Young got caught on a hot microphone as the Mizzou and Auburn representatives met at midfield for the coin toss and overtime decisions with the officials.
Missouri football won the toss and elected to face the Auburn offense first. That’s what Young, it seems, wanted.
“Let’s (expletive) go,” his ever-energetic voice boomed over the press conference speakers in Jordan-Hare Stadium, presumably via an official’s mic. Young waved his arms and gesticulated. That was accompanied by more words that the microphone picked up, but they were not discernible.
The point: He had plenty of energy.
And — even after four quarters of nearly unrelenting gut-punches and mistakes and miscues and self-inflicted wounds — so did the No. 16-ranked Missouri Tigers on the road.
Mizzou outlasted Auburn through double-overtime, spearheaded by a relentless defensive effort from Young in the do-or-die moments to escape the hostile confines of the Plains with a 23-17 win on Saturday night.
“I thought our defense was just dominant,” Eli Drinkwitz said postgame. “Zion Young just completely took over the game.”
Mizzou (6-1, 2-1 SEC) wasn’t finding much success in anything for most of Saturday, other than up front on defense with five sacks and nine tackles for loss.
Auburn (3-4, 0-4) won the battle at the line of scrimmage against MU’s offense. Mizzou’s secondary was again mistake-prone. MU quarterback Beau Pribula threw two picks as he struggled with the home team’s blitz-heavy defense, which also held star running back Ahmad Hardy to a measly 2.8 yards per carry.
It was sluggish. Sloppy. Sliding toward a backbreaking loss against an opponent that more often than not — and even at points during the game — can’t get out of its own way.
Until Young took over.
“The dude wasn't going to be blocked. I mean, they ran, what? Seven plays?” Drinkwitz said. “He had to have had one sack, one TFL. I mean, that was unbelievable.”
Drinkwitz is right.
On second-and-8 in the first period of overtime, Young was immediately in Arnold’s face, knocking him over for a nine-yard loss — and perhaps taking the home team out of field goal range. Auburn kicker Alex McPherson missed a 50-yarder.
Mizzou returned the favor with a 39-yard miss from freshman, preferred walk-on kicker Robert Meyer with a chance to win the game. Opportunity — escape — squandered.
Sick of bearing the load? Not so much.
After Beau Pribula tumbled across the goal line in double overtime for the go-ahead score, Young was behind the line of scrimmage in an instant to neutralize a shovel pass from Arnold to wide receiver Eric Singleton Jr., wrapping the wideout up on the first play of Auburn’s drive.
Three downs later, the game was over.
Young had no idea his voice was picked up on a microphone postgame.
“Really?” he asked after being told.
Yes, really. So what was it you said?
“I was just telling them, ‘let's do it. It's time.’” Young said. “We wanted to go on defense first anyway, just to get it going a little bit, set the tone before the offense got on the field. We knew we were gonna stop them.”
There are certainly things for Missouri to work on. The offense for most of the evening was dreadful, going five straight drives without a point — without sniffing a point — as Auburn took control in the second half. MU’s defense bent often but seldom broke, but coverage busts again reared their ugly head.
But none of that is important.
Missouri won. Missouri has the players to get across the line when it’s imperfect ... or flat-out bad.
That takes some resolve. That takes some energy. That takes some heart.
Young has all of the above in seemingly endless reserve.
“You know, we just kept the main thing, the main thing. We held our composure,” Young said. “That was the best thing. I was telling the guys the whole time, ‘Bro, we’re where we want to be at. Like, we ain’t running from them, they ain’t running from us. We’re right where we want to be.’”
He was right. When you boil it down to the minute details, Mizzou had it when the moment got big and Auburn didn’t. That gets all the more impressive when you consider the preceding three hours of hapless football and the rigors of life on the road in the SEC.
But Mizzou pulled it out.
That takes Missouri to Vanderbilt for what likely will be a top-15 matchup next Saturday in Nashville, Tennessee. There are things Missouri has to clean up before that game, which now has legitimate College Football Playoff implications.
And Missouri, like Young said and helped make happen, is right where it wants to be.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: How Zion Young embodied Missouri football’s resolve and grit in Auburn win
Category: General Sports
