RECAP: Mizzou puts Murray State away early, starts season 1-0

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Behind a historic start to its season-opener, Mizzou Football kicked off the 2024 season with a 51-point rout of Murray State. The Tigers scored three touchdowns by the 9:41-mark of the first quarter, putting 21 points on the scoreboard in its fastest time in program history. Eli Drinkwitz previewed the Murray State game by calling it one of the most challenging season-openers he's had to prepare for during his tenure at MU, but it did not take long for the team to figure out how to attack its opponent's scheme.

"It took us four plays," Drinkwitz said after Thursday's game. "They started with some unbalanced formations, but again, that's just a hats off to Corey [Batoon] and his staff for having our guys that prepared and really just answering the bell."

Mizzou is now turning the page to Week 2, striving to turn its season-opening win into a 2-0 start to the new campaign. The challenge is to avoid letting Thursday's dominant effort lead to a slow start on Saturday, Sept. 7 against Buffalo.

"I think we're where we wanted to be, and now, we just got to keep improving. The name of the game is how much better can you get, and two years ago, we had a big win, and then, kind of laid an egg the very next week because we patted ourselves on the back for a week, so we're not going to do that. We're going to get in there, and we're going to figure out how to improve and we're going to attack it this week in practice," Drinkwitz said.

You can watch ABC 17 Sports Director Nathalie Jones' full recap of Thursday night's season-opener in the video player above.