Tennessee football vs. Missouri: Five key Tigers to watch for against Vols

With the dominant defensive line of the Missouri Tigers, Tennessee football could be in for another rough outing against a team that likes to make things ugly. Mizzou hasn’t lost any SEC game by more than one score for a reason this year, and they haven’t allowed any team in the league to even score over 26 points against them.

As we get set to look at the most important players for Mizzou in this game, we’re going to analyze those players most responsible for those stats in the previous paragraphs. It’s compacted to a couple of units and actually got somewhat hard to narrow this list down.

That’s shocking considering the fact that the Vols are facing a 4-5 team, but they are two fluke plays from 6-3 and could easily be 8-1. Let’s teak a look at who has been responsible for keeping them in all of these games. Here are the five Tigers Tennessee football will need to key on when facing Missouri Saturday.

Mizzou has lots of physical players who could give the Tennessee football Volunteers trouble.

6’5″ 296 pounds

Everything about Missouri starts with their defensive line. Football Outsiders has noted how dominant they are up front, as they have a top 20 rush defense in yards per carry allowed and are top five in line yards per carry, standard down line yards per carry and stuff rate. It all starts with Darius Robinson in the middle of that unit.

Robinson and Oklahoma State Cowboys transfer Jayden Jernigan have anchored the middle all year, and while Jernigan has played a huge role in upgrading this unit, Robinson has racked up more stats on the inside. He has three and a half tackles for a loss, two and a half sacks and 20 tackles, 15 of which were solo.

If Josh Heupel’s offense is going to take off, Tennessee football has to run the ball well, and that starts with containing Robinson in the middle. He is a huge part of getting the necessary push up front for Mizzou and is great at making plays when they need him to.