The 37 year-old pizza man failed to deliver before halftime on Saturday Night, and as advertised, Texas received their meal free of charge.  It's been a little while since we've thrashed someone's dreams that thoroughly.

Before the game I predicted a 41-30 Texas win.  My reasoning was that Missouri would have some game film on our four-wide formation, and they had a whole week to scheme around defensive line.  The problem with my reasoning is the omission of the Pinkel Factor.  I'd imagine the game plan meeting went a little something like this:

[ten minutes of silence]

Chase Daniel:  Hey, does anyone have a hacky sack?

Atmosphere - Well apparently you guys did a good job lining up at the North Gate before the game.  It's the first thing Mack Brown mentions in his Monday Presser.  I actually had to miss it because of some impossibly slow companions, but make no mistake, I made good on the rest of my promise.

This was a great game for the crowd in some ways.  This was the earliest I've ever seen the stadium start to fill up.  Usually we're at about five percent capacity with a quarter of an hour to kickoff, but tonight I would say we had almost a third of the crowd in their seats as the team ran off the field into the locker room.  The lower west grandstands again missed the memo, however, and there was a painfully obvious boundary of population density between the seatbacks and the benches.  I'm bringing my camera to the next game to hopefully get a picture of how ridiculous the demarcation is.

Once the stands filled up, the crowd got pretty loud for the first series or two.  It was genuinely loud, though understandably nowhere near the level of bloodlust at the Cotton Bowl last weekend, and the defense was feeding on it.  After the first quarter, though, absolutely no one outside the student section would do Texas Fight.  It was the damndest thing I ever saw.  This was one of the better crowds we've had at DKR, and then suddenly half of it mentally checked out of the game.  I understood a little complacency after 35-0, but this was much earlier on.  I'm scared to death we're going to go back to sleepwalking through games in which we're favored as soon as we take a lead, and the timing of this could not be more dangerous.  Game starts at 2:30 this weekend.  I'll see you at the North Gate at 12:30.

Game Ass Beating -  The first thing I saw when I got back to the tailgate after the game was the gameday recap showing our highlights with "Texas destroys Missouri" as the caption.  I couldn't have put it better myself.  Forcing a three and out on the first possession of a team that had been three and out I think twice before in six games was just huge.  The offense absolutely flattened Missouri's 4-7 defense, abusing their LB/DB hybrids with the short passing game and yet still overpowering them in the run game.  Ogbonnaya absolutely owned that defense, and except for (understandably) whiffing a block on an unblocked defensive tackle, played an almost perfect game.

Speaking of perfect, did anyone notice that Colt McCoy is an absolute machine?  We didn't even appear to be trying on probably 3 of our first 5 scoring drives.  We just walked down the field, zip! 7 yards to Cosby zip! 5 yards to Shipley BANG! Chris OMG rumbles for 15 yards.  You. Watch.

Most importantly, Brandon Collins and Malcolm Williams showed us a little bit of the future of this offense.  I'd say Brandon is very nearly arrived as a fixture in the offense, and Malcolm will begin to show us good things more and more frequently.  Dan Buckner looked very, very good wearing number 4.  I don't think we've seen that since Sweed left with his wrist injury.

So overall, not a lot to say.  The defense was extremely sloppy in the second half, but with the game in hand, I guess Muschamp felt no need to press.  Hopefully Norton isn't seriously hurt, because I'm already having nightmares of Bobino diving at the ankles of Dez Bryant and Co.

--Hook 'em!--