When Missouri reconvenes for fall practice, the Tigers will field a new starting left tackle: Connor McGovern.

The coaching staff confirmed as much after the spring game, even as the 6-foot-4, 300-pound redshirt senior sat out the second half, more or less, of the 15 practice sessions due to strained knee.

Despite returning its most experienced line in years, Mizzou has labored to match player and position outside of Evan Boehm at center. Boehm and McGovern are the team’s two best offensive linemen. Center and left tackle are the two most important positions.

Quarterback Maty Mauk, throwing to an inexperienced (triple-underline that word) group of pass-catchers, needs to improve his comfort level within the pocket. The team doesn’t want to watch him get driven to the ground from behind early in the season while waiting for those receivers to get open. If that happens, all the offseason work could get tossed out as we see the return of catch-and-bail Mauk after most snaps.

Taylor Chappell and Malik Cuellar manned the post throughout spring practice. Chappell probably is a better fit at right tackle, and Cuellar is a junior-college player who, at the end of the spring, still needed time to adjust.

Boehm is not a left tackle, and McGovern is the most trustworthy player on the line. Why not give him the responsibility?

It may make sense in a vacuum, but there are some curiosities surrounding the decision.

The first and perhaps most notable is that we’ve seen McGovern at tackle before. He embarked on Mizzou’s 2014 schedule at right tackle.

Four games into the ’14 season, Indiana upset Missouri at home. The Tigers’ defense gave up way too many points, but the offense failed to take advantage of a usually-shoddy Hoosiers unit. IU’s defensive line dominated large stretches of the game.

It didn’t help that Anthony Gatti, the starting left guard, suffered a season-ending injury. But a certain native of Fargo, N.D., played only OK at right tackle. As Mizzou entered SEC play, the latter reality precipitated a move back to right guard for McGovern.

The offensive line got much better from that point, especially blocking for Russell Hansbrough and Marcus Murphy. The Boehm-McGovern combination, playing off each other’s hip, proved very effective. Hansbrough topped 1,000 rushing yards and Murphy nearly did as well.

It seems at least curious that the team would transplant McGovern, who spent all spring prior to the injury practicing at right guard, to left tackle in the fall, just weeks prior to his fifth and final year at Mizzou.

The team does have two other players capable of starting at guard in Mitch Hall and Brad McNulty. Incidentally, both of them are redshirt seniors as well. So by putting McGovern at left tackle, the team ensures a rare opportunity within the SEC.

With a potential line of McGovern, Hall, Boehm, McNulty and Chappell, Mizzou would start five experienced seniors.

I’m not an offensive line coach. I didn’t watch one snap of the team’s spring practices and got all my information secondhand. So I can’t pretend I possess anything close to the knowledge of offensive line coach A.J. Ricker, offensive coordinator Josh Henson or head coach Gary Pinkel.

From the outside, though, in theory, I like the idea of playing your best players at their best positions. Last season illustrated that McGovern is a better guard than a right tackle. You didn’t have to be versed in every nuance of offensive line play to discern that much.

McGovern is a weight-room connoisseur, and his functional strength is one of his best assets. It stands to reason he’d be at least as good at right tackle as left tackle. Maybe the Mizzou coaches know something about McGovern the player that indicates he can morph from a serviceable right tackle to an above-average left tackle in one year.

Or maybe they’re just trying to plug a hole with their most trustworthy player, uprooting a good, bordering on great college right guard so that the team can put its second-best lineman in the most critical spot.

In all my interactions with college and NFL offensive line coaches, many of whom taught different techniques and employed different schemes, continuity was the one overriding buzzword. It’s one of, if not the, most important aspects of elite offensive line play.

Keeping McGovern at right guard would allow a continuation of the Boehm-McGovern power duo that performed so well most of last season and into the spring. It also would theoretically allow Mizzou to retain its ’14 starters at four of five positions, needing only to replace second-round pick Mitch Morse at left tackle.

Of course the problem with that is that someone has to play left tackle.

As often as the coaching staff shuffled the line during spring practice, it wouldn’t be a total shock for McGovern to begin fall camp at left tackle and move back to guard by the season.

If the Tigers choose to disregard the benefits of continuity, the silver lining is that the team has developed intense and rare flexibility. Unlike last season, if one of the starters gets injured — other than Boehm — there ought to be at least two capable backups ready to fill the spot more or less seamlessly.

Offensive line play isn’t the sexiest element of football to most casual fans. It’s certainly not the hot-button topic in terms of fan interest surrounding the Mizzou offense entering the fall. But whether the team makes good choices in how it uses the available talent at offensive line should make a significant difference for the play of the rest of the team.

Is McGovern to left tackle the right or wrong move? I’m not qualified to give a definitive answer, but it’ll be fun watching it play out.