First look at UK's 2018 schedule: Missouri

Perhaps no team in the entire country improved as much as Missouri over the course of the 2017 season.

Then the Tigers rattled off six straight wins before a bowl bid that seemed like an impossible dream after a month of the season.

And then Drew Lock decided to return.

Kentucky at Missouri, October 27th, 2018

2017 Overview: The "tale of two" anythings narrative is overused and obnoxious, but it's perfectly fitting for Missouri. In fact, it's really the only way to describe the Tigers' season. How did a team that lost to Purdue 35-3 and started the season 1-5 end up 7-5 going into its bowl game?

Well, the early season schedule was harder than expected for starters. Purdue was better than advertised. So was South Carolina. Auburn and Georgia were fantastic. Kentucky was a bowl team. But that doesn't really explain just how bad Missouri was in the first half of the season. An offense that was supposed to be a strength was woefully anemic until the second half of the Kentucky game.

In fact, that second half in Lexington might have been the turning point of Missouri's season. A team that had seemed to pretty much quit on its 2017 season kept fighting back and cutting into UK leads before finally going down to UK. The Tigers put up a spirited offensive effort against UGA but the following week is when things really turned.

It's worth noting that Missouri's turnaround in the second half came against the likes of Idaho, UCONN, a Florida team that had tanked, a Tennessee team that was also a dumpster fire and poor Vanderbilt and Arkansas squads.

So it's impossible to avoid the fact that Missouri's resurgence came against mostly bad teams. But anyone who watched the Tigers in the first half of 2017 knows they actually did improve quite a bit.

Lock finished the year with 3,964 yards, 44 touchdowns and 13 interceptions, breaking Andre Woodson's SEC record for the most touchdown passes in a single season. Overall it was the best Missouri offense since 2013, when the Tigers went to one of their two consecutive SEC championship games.

Offseason Questions and Storylines: Odom gained a new lease on life with Missouri's second half improvement but he made a curious decision to hire former Tennessee head coach Derek Dooley as his quarterback's coach and offensive coordinator. It will be Dooley's first time as a play caller. He has been the Dallas Cowboys' wide receiver coach since being relieved of his duties in Knoxville in 2012.

Josh Heupel, now the head coach succeeding Scott Frost at Central Florida, was last year's offensive coordinator.

How much will the coordinator change impact Missouri's offense? That will be one question that floats around all offseason until we find out next fall. It stands to reason that with such an accomplished senior quarterback returning, along with several other offensive weapons, that the Tigers should be able to keep humming along when they have the ball.

Besides Heupel, the biggest shoes to fill are those of receiver J'Mon Moore, who had 65 receptions for 1,082 yards and 10 touchdowns.

But the offense will get running back Damarea Crockett back after an injury that ended his 2017 season prematurely. How well will he return to health and become acclimated into that offense under Heupel?

The defense will return most of its key contributors, from linebackers Cale Garrett and Terez Hall, the team's two leading tacklers, to defensive backs Kaleb Prewett and DeMarkus Acy. But the biggest returning piece is defensive tackle Terry Beckner, once a five-star recruit. The big interior lineman had been viewed as a prime draft candidate but opted to return to Columbia. He will be one of the SEC's best defensive linemen.

But the defense has to improve. While the unit played better later in 2017, they were not especially good against Arkansas and Texas in the regular season finale and bowl game. They were downright bad for the first half of the year.

Missouri didn't allow any of its last seven opponents to rush for even 150 yards. But there's that question we just can't answer yet. How much of the improvement was real and how much of it was the schedule getting a lot easier as the team hit its stride? The same defense allowed Georgia to rush for 370, gave up 188 to Kentucky, 263 to Auburn and 205 to Purdue.

Previewing Missouri's 2018: Predictions are always risky business but Missouri seems especially difficult to forecast because it's so hard to tell whether they just caught lightning in a bottle from October-on last year, or whether they really turned things around in a way that will make them fare better against tougher competition. Few teams in the country return a quarterback like Lock, and he's got enough weapons that Missouri should have one of the SEC's more dynamic offenses. And Beckner is an outstanding foundation on defense, although the jury is definitely still out a little more on that unit.

The Tigers play at Purdue on September 15th and Georgia the following week. Then they get South Carolina at home and Alabama on the road. "Surviving" the first half of their schedule looks like 3-3, but if they can find some way to start 4-2 then they could make a lot of noise the rest of the way again.