Missouri Tigers Restructure Offensive Line Following Loss to Indiana

Following an embarrassing loss to the Indiana Hoosiers on Saturday which knocked them out of the Top 25, the Missouri Tigers have announced significant changes to their offensive line in advance of their SEC opener against the South Carolina Gamecocks.

First of all, the Tigers had to replace redshirt senior left guard Anthony Gatti, who suffered a torn ACL on Saturday and presumably has played his last down at Mizzou. The plan at that position is to use Brad McNulty, who replaced Gatti against Indiana and performed effectively. McNulty was previously the Tigers’ starting center in 2012 when the team moved incumbent Mitch Morse to tackle, but was relegated back to reserve duty when Evan Boehm moved to the position in 2013 after playing his true freshman season at guard.

At the right guard spot, redshirt junior Mitch Hall has been benched and will be replaced by Connor McGovern, the Tigers’ starter at the position in 2013, who had been playing right tackle throughout the duration of the non-conference schedule. Though Hall is physically massive at 6-foot-5 and 320 pounds, he obviously wasn’t playing up to the standard that the coaching staff had set for him. As a result of this move, redshirt junior Taylor Chappell becomes the starter at right tackle. Chappell, a 6-foot-5, 300-pounder, has been a highly-regarded tackle prospect for some time now, so it should be interesting to see what he can do.

That will leave only Boehm at center and Morse at left tackle as incumbents for the Tigers’ game at South Carolina. That’s certainly not the way you want to approach facing a tough SEC opponent on the road, but we’ll see if the group can gel quickly over the next few days and show some competency versus the Gamecocks.