I watched a Monday Night Football game between Denver and San Diego in 2012 with a Broncos season ticket holder.

The rarely-critical Jon Gruden shoveled praise on every player he could find on his telestrator, but this was too much. My roommate burst out laughing as Gruden said something like this: “I LOVE this center J.D. Walton!!! What a football player!!!!”

Walton, of course, got injured, and the Broncos’ offense actually improved after the team signed Dan Koppen, a former Pro Bowler with New England, but at the time a street free agent at the tail end of his career.

Walton wasn’t very good. Yet Gruden made him seem like a Hall of Famer.

Which brings us to this week’s Missouri-Toledo game.

“We’re playing a good Toledo football team. They’re getting 18 starters back, they were real good a year ago. A team that I think, really, is one of the better Mid-American Conference teams I’ve seen for a long time,” Pinkel said during Wednesday’s SEC conference call. “They’re a real well-coached, disciplined team. It’ll be a challenge for us, and we’re looking forward to going there and competing.

“I’ve been there before when good football teams have come in to the Glass Bowl, and their fans — it’s on national TV — the students at the University of Toledo, they’ll be out en masse. It will be a great college game-day environment.”

Granted, Pinkel’s praise of Toledo is more legitimate than Gruden’s of Walton. A road game against a good MAC team is no gimme. Much less so that Toledo’s offense, now governed by Alabama transfer quarterback Phillip Ely, looks prepared for a monster season. (South Dakota State moved the ball well at times against Missouri, and the Rockets’ offense is better on paper.)

Las Vegas opened Missouri as a six-point road favorite, but that line since has fallen to 3.5 at the Las Vegas Hilton.

Make no mistake: Missouri should win this football game. If the Tigers really are one of the Top 25 teams in the country and a true contender in the SEC East, the team won’t lose to a MAC school, on the road or otherwise.

But if Missouri falters — if the defense doesn’t defend the pass better and the passing game doesn’t find consistency — Toledo is capable of winning Saturday.

Pinkel appears to have an intentional strategy. Take Toledo as seriously as any SEC opponent, and make sure every assistant coach and player does the same.

As we’ve talked about before, the margin for error on this team is smaller than it was in 2013. It’s great that the team gets four non-conference games before launching into the meat of its SEC East schedule. The Tigers can expect to develop at a faster rate than other teams in part due to Pinkel’s track record and in part due to the team’s relative inexperience and youth.

But Missouri needs to claim the non-conference games as wins in the process. UCF and Indiana also will be capable of beating Missouri even though the Tigers will be favored, assuming they win Saturday. At 4-0, though, the Tigers probably set a basement of seven wins, barring major injuries. Eight or nine seems reasonable, and maybe even more with a few upsets. Lose to Toledo and fans may have to re-evaluate expectations for the 2014 season.

Asked to name the benefit of playing a road game against his former program, Pinkel joked that when he approved scheduling the game several years ago, he thought he’d be fired before the 2014 season.

“All kidding aside … (Toledo) asked me if we would do it. We talked about it several years ago, going back, and I said I wouldn’t mind doing it later on. This is the date they picked,” Pinkel said. “Knowing the history of how well they play and their history of beating nationally ranked teams and top-level football teams, we don’t do this very often.”

Toledo’s coaches aren’t going to get much bulletin board material this week. And Missouri has eliminated any excuse that it didn’t take the Rockets seriously.

But overall, Pinkel is taking a smart tone regarding this game.