Missouri led the SEC with 42 sacks last season.

Despite losing defensive ends Shane Ray and Markus Golden, there’s been no indication this spring that the Tigers suddenly will struggle to put pressure on opposing quarterbacks.

To wit:

  1. The team pulled off a last-second rescue of defensive line coach Craig Kuligowski, who appeared all but set to take a co-defensive coordinator position at Illinois.
  2. The defensive tackles, including Harold Brantley, Rickey Hatley, Josh Augusta and five-star freshman Terry Beckner Jr., are poised to be a Top 10 group at the position nationally.
  3. Barry Odom, the team’s new defensive coordinator, seems to be straddling the line between continuity and leveraging the skill sets of his athletic players well. As such, I’d expect an occasional 3-4 look, more exotic and aggressive blitzes — but not too many — and schemes designed to take advantage of the team’s versatile defensive linemen and linebackers.
  4. Charles Harris and Marcus Loud have been groomed for this moment for more than one season. They’ve shown nothing to indicate they’ll be as good as the Ray-Golden combination, but they’re talented and polished enough at this point to be better than average as a pair of pass-rushing defensive ends in the SEC.

Still, just in case there’s a slight, or even moderate, drop-off in the team’s pass rush, the Tigers are more than equipped to handle it on the back end of the defense.

Mizzou returns a pair of starting cornerbacks in Aarion Penton and Kenya Dennis that has a chance to be one of the four or five best tandems in the SEC.

Entering last season, Penton was a promising young player thrust into a key role a half-season or so before he was fully ready. Dennis was a junior college transfer still clawing his way up the depth chart, needing to make an impression as an injury replacement before being reconsidered as a starter.

The team’s secondary relied on two things last season — senior safety Braylon Webb to make sure they lined up correctly each snap and the defensive line to get so much pressure on the quarterback that it mitigated whatever flaws the defensive backs may have possessed.

This year the corners don’t need as much of a safety net.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Missouri’s young receivers … had their training wheels ripped off (during one of the scrimmages this spring) … as Penton and Dennis at times took turns manhandling their counterparts.”

Dennis, the biggest, most physical corner on the team as a 5-foot-11, 200-pound senior, also has a tendency to play aggressive. He stacked up 61 tackles last season and broke up nine passes, good production for a player who didn’t enter the schedule as a starter. But he’s learned to gamble less and leverage his good instincts into more consistent play.

“When you come from junior college you tend to do things that we won’t let them get away with here,” cornerbacks coach Cornell Ford said, according to the Post-Dispatch. “(Dennis) is more disciplined now and we got some of his bad habits under control.”

Whereas Dennis is the most physical and aggressive, Penton is the team’s most natural man-on-man lockdown corner, a fluid player with good ball skills.

He missed two starts last season, one due to a hamstring injury and another due to an arrest for misdemeanor marijuana possession. Still, he finished the season with three interceptions and 10 pass breakups. The most fundamentally sound player in the secondary, Penton hasn’t gotten into any more trouble off the field since mid-fall.

Logan Cheadle and John Gibson, backups who should play a role this year, and Thomas Wilson, a backup safety who could serve as the nickelback, represent decent depth. Enough that the team felt comfortable shifting the fast, sure-handed Raymond Wingo to receiver.

With an athletic front seven and a coordinator who doesn’t seem afraid to take some chances, Penton and Dennis seem to compliment each other well. The coaching staff trusts the starting corners to a much higher degree than one year ago.

“We want them to be more aggressive but be smart and not put them in positions to hurt the defense,” Ford said, according to the Post-Dispatch. “Hopefully (with) their experience from last year they know the ins and outs and know how to do things differently. I’ll allow them a little bit more flexibility than I did last year, just because of their youth.”

If SEC East offensive coordinators think they can pass their way through the Mizzou defense without Ray and Golden, the Tigers’ starting cornerbacks could experience a productive, headline-grabbing season.