One shocking statistic says all you need to know about the Missouri Tigers’ 2017 recruiting class: Mizzou only signed one player from the state of Missouri.

Let that sink in for a moment.

No, Missouri isn’t Texas, Florida, Georgia, Alabama or California when it comes to producing top college football talent, but it’s not like the state is a wasteland, either. To land only one in-state player is disappointing, to say the least.

Barry Odom, preparing for his second season as the Tigers’ head coach, addressed the issue of in-state recruiting and his plans to fix it heading into 2018:

Coming into National Signing Day, the Tigers had hoped to land 4-star DE Chester Graves of Kansas City — the No. 1 recruit from the state of Missouri, according to 247Sports.

Graves, though, had other plans, choosing Ole Miss over his home-state squad on Wednesday afternoon.

That put Odom and the Tigers in a rough spot and prevented them from making any sort of significant move up the national rankings, which can be seen below:

Overall rank: 50
SEC rank: 13

5-stars: 0
4-stars: 0
3-stars: 22

However, Graves decided that Ole Miss was a better fit.

Graves wasn’t the only top recruit to decide against Mizzou, though. Odom and his coaching staff landed zero 4-star and 5-star players. Keeping even one of the state’s three 4-star prospects at home would have been a big help.

The only Missouri recruit to pledge his allegiance to the Tigers was 3-star ATH Daron Davis, the No. 4 overall prospect from the state. The Illinois Fighting Illini, on the other hand, landed two of Missouri’s top-10 recruits.

The rest of the state’s best talent was poached mostly by a mixture of other Big Ten schools and a few Big 12 squads.

The early rankings for the 2018 class (which Odom called the best in-state class he’s ever seen in the earlier tweet) show four 4-star players from Missouri — three from the St. Louis area and one from Kansas City. Odom and his best recruiters need to start working on landing those players now in order to avoid a repeat of 2017 at this time next year.

One positive takeaway

Even with all the gloom surrounding this year’s Signing Day, it wasn’t all bad news for the Tigers.

One area the Tigers did have some success was recruiting in the trenches. Of the 23 members of this class, 10 are offensive and defensive linemen.

Odom said getting bigger as a team was a major goal this offseason, so the Tigers at least hit on that goal:

JUCO transfer OL Yasir Durant is the biggest of the bunch, standing at 6-foot-6 and weighing in at 330 pounds. He’ll definitely add to the team’s physical profile heading into 2017.

Overall, though, it was a disappointing offseason on the recruiting trail for Odom and his staff. However, having back-to-back losing seasons (5-7 in 2015 and 4-8 in 2016) makes landing top talent a bit more difficult.

Fortunately, the Tigers have a talented offensive unit, led by QB Drew Lock, RB Damarea Crockett and WRs J’Mon Moore and Dimetrios Mason returning in 2017. If Mizzou can qualify for a bowl game, it should help boost the 2018 recruiting class.

However, if Odom can’t land more of Missouri’s top in-state talent, the future is going to continue to look bleak in Columbia.