If there’s anything to take away from their three SEC wins, you should never count out the Missouri Tigers.

When Vanderbilt forced the game into overtime, they found a way.

When starting quarterback Brady Cook was in the hospital as the offense struggled against Auburn, they found a way.

When Oklahoma scored a go-ahead touchdown with two minutes left on a recovered fumble, the Tigers found a way.

“They’ve all been uniquely different,” head coach Eli Drinkwitz said in a press conference this week. “They’ve all had a little bit different flavor to it. So, I think it’s just all three phases of the game and needing to work together to find ways to win.”

Missouri enters their Week 12 as 14-point underdogs. Cook was listed as doubtful on Friday night.

Missouri has been undefeated at home, but its roadtrips have gone about as good as David Spade and Chris Farley’s in “Tommy Boy.” The Tigers ran into College Station, Tx, undefeated and left maimed as a team and in public perception, dropping 12 spots in the rankings. A trip to Alabama in Week 9 ended with Cook suffering a second injury as Missouri fell 34-0.

Both of those games were decided by the second quarter, if not earlier. Texas A&M took a 17-0 lead 33 seconds into the second quarter and Alabama took Drew Pyne’s first pass attempt for a interception near the end of the first half.

Though Cook is doubtful and starting wide receiver Mookie Cooper is already listed as out, the Missouri offense have made one step toward full health this week: leading rusher Nate Noel is progessing toward full health. Noel’s availability could be cruical to Missouri’s chances against the Gamecocks.

Noel returned to action for the Tigers in Week 11 against Oklahoma after missing Week 9 against Alabama with a foot injury he suffered in Week 8 against Auburn. But in the win over the Sooners, Noel only took 10 of Missouri’s 46 carries.

“It was feeling pretty good on Saturday,” Noel said of playing with the injury against Oklahoma. “I feel like I’m getting closer and closer to 100%. I’ve been working with my trainers and strength staff and I feel like I’m getting very close to that mark.”

Without Noel in the lineup, Missouri’s run game has relied on the powerful Marcus Carroll and the shifty Jamal Roberts. Against Oklahoma, Roberts rushed for 54 yards on 13 carries and Carroll for 25 yards on 13 carries.

On 46 total carries, Missouri rushed for 135 total yards, with 70 coming in the second half. Establishing the run game in the final two quarters to take the pressure off backup quarterback Drew Pyne, filling in for an injured Brady Cook.

“I thought we did a nice job of finding tough yards,” head coach Eli Drinkwitz said of the performance against Oklahoma. “We didn’t run for a ton of yards against [Oklahoma], but we did outrush them in the game, and I thought that was the separator for us.”

Although Missouri’s first two touchdown drives ended with passes from Pyne, the play selection tells the story on how the Tigers made it down to the end zone. On the two drives, Missouri ran 13 runs compared to just five passes. The runs went for 49 yards and the passes for 36.

“We knew we needed to establish the run to take some pressure off of him [Pyne],” Drinkwitz said. “I thought he delivered. I thought he did a really nice job stepping up in the pocket.”

Success from Noel, Carroll or Roberts not only takes pressure off Pyne and yards off his plate, but also forces the defense to be wary of the threat of both the run and pass game. Especially with Missouri’s outside zone blocking scheme that can seamlessly open up the play action pass.

“It opens up so much more in their passing game because of what they’re able to do in the run game,” South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer said on a conference call Wednesday.

Whether it is Pyne at quarterback or Cook is able to make his return against South Carolina, the Missouri run game will be crucial to the Tigers upsetting South Carolina. With Cook dealing with an ankle and hand injury, he’ll likely be limited in some fashion.

Additionally, the Missouri offensive line will doing with an adjustment as Drake Heismeyer fills in for Connor Tollison. The three-year starter suffered a season-ending leg injury in the third quarter against Oklahoma.

Redshirt senior Drake Heismeyer will fill in for Tollison after allowing zero pressures on 14 snaps against Oklahoma. He’s played on special teams each of the last four seasons and has appeared in eight games along the offensive line through his career.

“He’s played quite a bit of football,” Drinkwitz said of Heismeyer. “He just hasn’t played in the role that we’re going to ask him to play now. He’s a very smart young man. … It’s really just going to be about stepping into that moment and owning the moment. We have a lot of confidence in him.”

With uncertainty at center and quarterback, Saturday’s game feels like another for Missouri that will reveal its direction early on. How quickly the Tigers can establish the run game will be a significant part of the direction it heads in.

Against Alabama and Texas A&M, Missouri rushed for a combined 25 yards in the first quarter before everything piled up against the Tigers.

Establishing the run game and early for Missouri will not only open a struggling and hampered pass offense, but also keep the pace of the game in check. Against Texas A&M, Missouri’s average first quarter drive lasted 3.7 plays and just 1:42. Against Alabama, 4.3 plays and 2:50. It wasn’t until the third quarter when Missouri was able to convert a third down without the help of a penalty on Alabama.

A consistent run game to find any sort of rhythm and more first downs early on could be the solution for road games that have quickly gotten out of hand for the Tigers.

No matter who is in at quarterback for Missouri, a consistent, effective rushing attack will be crucial to its offensive attack. A disciplined offensive attack might not have as much fireworks as the thrilling fashion the Tigers have secured victories in so far this season, but its possibly the best half against a dangerous South Carolina team.

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South Carolina, like it has in past weeks, will prepare its defense for the possibility of two different quarterbacks taking the field when it faces Missouri on Saturday.

Brady Cook, who has been the Tigers’ starter for much of the 2024 campaign, is listed as doubtful for this weekend’s game, per the team’s latest injury report. Drew Pyne will play in Cook’s stead should he be unable to suit up.

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But head coach Shane Beamer said the Gamecocks must also be prepared for Missouri’s wide receivers, regardless of who is under center.

“They have arguably the best receiving corps in this conference when you talk about Luther Burden, who will be a top-10 pick in the NFL Draft, and Theo Wease, who took over that game last week against Oklahoma in the fourth quarter,” Beamer said.

Burden has been a dangerous threat to opposing defenses long before this season began. He was among the SEC’s top wideouts in 2023, finishing third in receiving yards behind only Malik Nabers and Xavier Legette. Over the course of 13 games, Burden caught a team-high 86 passes for 1,212 yards and nine touchdowns. That strong play led to him earning All-SEC First Team honors, in addition to being named a Second Team All-American by the Associated Press and CBS Sports.

The start of the 2024 campaign has been less productive for Burden, though. He has been limited to just 505 receiving yards and four touchdowns on 45 receptions in his first nine contests. Burden has yet to record 100-plus yards in a game this season, something he did six times last year.

Despite Burden’s downtick in yardage, he remains a key part of Missouri’s offense. And Beamer said the Tigers have found creative ways to keep him involved on that side of the football.

“They get the ball to Burden in a lot of different ways, whether it be handing the ball off to him on a fourth-and-one the other night against Oklahoma on a jet sweep. Or, they get in an unbalanced formation, and he’s off the ball to the field, and they motion him in, motion him out, and he runs an out-and-up for a 50-yard touchdown,” Beamer said. “They just find different ways to get the ball in his hands.”

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While Burden is a familiar face for Beamer, Wease was on the same sideline as Beamer at one point. Wease spent the first four years of his college football career at Oklahoma. For two of those seasons, Beamer served as the Sooners’ assistant head coach and tight ends coach.

Wease caught 49 passes for 682 yards and six scores during his first season with the Tigers in 2023. And he is well on his way to surpassing those totals this year. He has recorded 552 yards and three touchdowns across 41 total catches.

Wease’s physical attributes make him a difficult player to defend, Beamer said.

“Wease is a really big receiver, also. He’ll catch a ball, and then he does a really good job of getting vertical,” Beamer said. “He’s a hard guy to bring down. He’s a twitchy, shifty, tall, big, athletic guy.”

Beamer understands that holding either Burden or Wease to zero catches will be a tall task. But keeping them from turning routine plays into big gains will be a key to success for South Carolina’s defense.

“They’re going to get their catches. It’d be great if I looked at the stat sheet after the game Saturday night, and they didn’t have any catches. Is that realistic? Probably not. What we’ve got to do is do a really good job tackling. “It’s really impressive watching those two guys, what they do once they catch the ball,” Beamer said.

“Let’s limit their catches. But when they do catch the ball, make sure we’re limiting what they do (with) yards after the catch and after contact.”

High amounts of a toxic chemical are being discharged into the Congaree and Cooper rivers from plastics factories in South Carolina, but state and federal regulators are doing little to control the pollution, a new report says.

A study by the Environmental Integrity Project, a national public interest organization, found that of eight similar plastics plants it studied, factories near Columbia and Charleston had some of the highest releases of 1,4- dioxane, a chemical tied to an array of health ailments, including cancer.

An Alpek Polyester plant in the Gaston area near Columbia released 23,728 pounds of 1,4-dioxane to the Congaree River in 2022, ranking it second in total releases behind only a plant in West Virginia that discharged 29,960 pounds. Alpek’s plant at Moncks Corner near Charleston released 9,756 pounds to the Cooper River, the report said.

But according to the report, there are no federal limits on how much 1,4-dioxane can be released from plastics plants. West Virginia only recently added state discharge limits for the plant in that state, the study said.

“This toxic pollution from plastic production is unacceptable,” Congaree Riverkeeper Bill Stangler said in a statement released by the Environmental Integrity Project. “Our federal and state agencies need to step up and protect our river and the downstream communities.”

Efforts to reach someone who could speak for Alpek were unsuccessful. The company, formerly known as DAK Americas, is part a corporation that employs nearly 4,000 people worldwide. At one time, the plant in the Gaston area had about 400 workers.

The S.C. Department of Environmental Services did not respond to questions on Thursday from The State, saying it could not discuss the 1,4-dioxane issue until a later date.

Stangler said the releases in the Columbia area are near Congaree National Park, a preserve filled with wildlife and the state’s only national park. The Alpek discharges to the Congaree River are below drinking water intakes in Columbia, West Columbia and Cayce, but Stangler said they are upstream from several drinking water pipes in the Santee Cooper lakes area southeast of Columbia.

The Environmental Integrity Project report, released Thursday, took a broader look at various discharges in wastewater released from 70 petrochemical and plastic plants that produce plastics across the country. The group focused on plastics because the industry is growing across the country. The plants were those that produced plastic materials for other plastic products.

Most of the plants studied in the United States have few, if any, government limits on the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, 1,4-dioxane, dioxins and other harmful pollutants discharged to rivers, the report said. The group’s study included data from the federal Toxics Release Inventory, an annual report that lists what the U.S. government considers legal pollution discharges.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says exposure to high levels of 1,4 dioxane can result in liver and kidney damage. Although the EPA was criticized for not doing enough to control discharges to rivers from plastics plants, the agency has said 1,4 dioxane is a probable human carcinogen.

In addition to concerns about 1,4-dioxane in South Carolina, the report questioned the environmental impacts of “nurdles,” tiny pellets used to manufacture other plastic materials. It said discharges of these materials into waterways are common. In 2021, a pellet packaging and shipping company settled a lawsuit for $1.2 million over nurdle releases to Charleston Harbor.

Environmental Integrity Project officials and others said the EPA needs to establish rules overseeing plastics pollution to rein in the environmental threat to rivers and drinking water across the country. They specifically called for requiring modern wastewater pollution controls at plastics plants, tightening rules for the release of plastic pellets and requiring better monitoring for 1,4-dioxane in water. The report also called on the EPA and state agencies to step up enforcement.

Whether any of that will happen is a big question.

The report took President Joe Biden’s administration to task for not doing enough about plastics discharges, but Biden has generally had a favorable environmental record. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to cut environmental regulations he says are hampering businesses.

During a news conference Thursday, Environmental Integrity Project director Jen Duggan said the government is mandated to enforce the Clean Water Act. Her organization maintains the federal government has not updated standards to limit water pollution from the plastics industry, as is required by law. She said courts generally have been unsympathetic to agencies that don’t follow the law.

“What’s important here is no matter what Trump’s plans are, Trump can not unilaterally waive away these kinds of mandatory, statutory requirements,” Duggan said. “This is a must-do under the statute and courts have generally had little patience for agencies that don’t comply with these kinds of mandatory obligations. The Clean Water Act has a very clear mandate to update these water pollution standards to keep pace with technology.”

She and others at the news conference suggested that more citizens’ lawsuits could be filed against the EPA. A citizens’ suit is a legal action that a person or organization can take if the government is not enforcing environmental laws.

“During the first Trump administration, we did see a pretty significant dip in the amount of enforcement cases that the EPA brought,” Duggan said. “So we do think that it will be very important for (environmental) groups … to fill that gap and hold these polluters accountable.”

The group’s findings about 1,4-dioxane being released in South Carolina aren’t isolated to plants along the Congaree and Cooper rivers.

Separately, a non-profit legal service has sued Fiber Industries LLC, a polyester manufacturer, over discharges of 1,4 dioxane to Black Creek, a well-known river in Darlington County east of Columbia.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, which represents four environmental organizations, is trying to stop what it says are excessive discharges to the creek. Reports examined by law center attorneys show the plant has discharged 1,4-dioxane into Black Creek at amounts 25,000 times higher than a safe drinking water standard, records show.

The Environmental Integrity Project report’s look at the Alpek factories in South Carolina said plastic plants, particularly those making a type of material known as PET, produce ample amounts of 1,4-dioxane. The PET material, formally known as polyethylene terephthalate plastic, is used to manufacture bottles and polyester fibers, the study said.

Overall, of the eight similar plastics facilities the report looked at, four of them produced 98% of the 1,4-dioxane pollution, including the plants in the Columbia and Charleston areas. Another plant in South Carolina, located in Spartanburg, was eighth on the list.

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