There was some pride.

Missouri football coach Eli Drinkwitz was proud, surely, because after all the mistakes, lapses, inefficiencies and costly calls, the Tigers dug deep, again, and eked out a 30-27, double-overtime win over Vanderbilt.

There was a whole lotta relief.

Missouri defensive tackle Chris McClellan said he felt a “weight drop off” his shoulders, because the Tigers escaped a potential September disaster at the hands of the Commodores when a game-tying field goal try sailed wide left.

Pride and relief. You can’t blame the Tigers (4-0, 1-0 SEC) for feeling those.

Then Brady Cook came in, and there wasn’t — at least outwardly — a whole bunch of either.

Nothing close. Not even a win-is-a-win smile.

Detailing Missouri football's poor offensive performance

“I guess I'm a little disappointed in how I performed, how the offense performed. Straight up,” Cook said. “But at the end of the day, we found a way to win. … I think that's important. That's going to teach our team a lot as far as adversity and being in those tense situations. That's going to take us a long way, but at the same time, we just have a lot to get better at and a lot to work on.

“That's kind of where I'm at.”

Can’t blame him for feeling those feelings, either.

Here’s why the general mood was chipper: Mizzou won. Vanderbilt kicker Brock Taylor missed a 31-yarder in double-OT, and MU went 4-0.

Here’s why Cook wasn’t: In four red-zone trips in regulation, Missouri converted two into touchdowns. The Tigers balked twice inside the 10 and earned just 3 points from those trips as kicking woes hit redshirt freshman Blake Craig.

Missouri was 7-of-17 on third downs. That’s a 41% clip.

The Tigers started four drives within 10 yards of midfield four times, and those drives resulted in just six total points.

“Yeah, I mean, it's just not good enough,” Cook said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

How Missouri quarterback Brady Cook played

The quarterback had his moments.

On the first play of the first period of overtime as the Tigers needed a touchdown to stay in the game, Cook delivered, dropping a perfect ball on wide receiver Luther Burden III’s perfect route into the left corner of the end zone. At the other end of the wild game, the pair connected on a 20-yard score in the first quarter. Cook finished the game 23-of-37 for 236 yards, two touchdowns and no picks.

But there was more, it seemed, that wasn’t working.

He was on the run a lot — and not forward. He rushed 11 times and gained seven yards. He was sacked three times, and many more plays were blown up as the Tigers never looked overly comfortable up front. MU took eight tackles for loss. Mizzou did not score in the fourth quarter.

That’s just the offense.

Another busted coverage assignment let Vanderbilt open the scoring with a 65-yard, first-quarter touchdown. Redshirt freshman kicker Blake Craig missed three field goals, including two while the game was knotted in the second half.

It just wasn’t the eagerly anticipated Missouri outfit that has helped put four straight sellout crowds in the Memorial Stadium stands to open the season for the first time in a near-half century. It seldom looked like the No. 7-ranked team in the country was taking on a Vanderbilt squad that had just lost on the road against Georgia State.

Missouri football's offensive trend

Mizzou was meant to cruise through Week 4. Of course, it’s never that easy.

That in mind … it has seemed awfully hard for the Tigers for two straight weeks.

“We are held to a different standard (this season),” Cook said. “Our standard is higher. We expect more. I expect more. … We’re not settling for anything this year, so, when we're not playing to that standard that we have set we all agreed upon (and) that we know we can play at, it's a little disappointing. But I mean, like I said, finding a way to win is huge.”

The expectations, ultimately, don’t change for Missouri.

The Tigers are unlikely to drop out of the top 10 teams in the country in Sunday’s polls. Mizzou is, as an unbeaten team heading into October, still in control of its path to the expanded, 12-team College Football Playoff.

But in the same way you can’t fault Drinkwitz for feeling pride, or McClellan for feeling relief, or Cook for feeling disappointment … you can’t fault a Missouri fan for maybe feeling a lot less confident than two weeks ago.

Drinkwitz recognized the errors, which spanned third downs, red zone woes, field goal problems, busted assignments and missed tackles as problems to fix. In short, Texas A&M on Oct. 5 was a long way from his mind.

“We’ve got to go take a hard look at the Missouri Tigers,” he said. … “What I'm concerned about is our team enjoying a win, being 4-0, which is as good as we can be record-wise, but we're not as good as we can be playing-wise. And we're going to have to settle in on that and figure out what we’ve got to do to improve.”

But the Tigers have two weeks to prepare for College Station.

Other than a Saturday off, that ain’t much relief.

“Tonight, tomorrow, there's just going to be a lot of watching the tape,” Cook said. “Watching it over, and over, and over, and over, and over to see what we can do better, and to see how I can be better and how we can score more touchdowns. Period.”

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Why Missouri football QB Brady Cook wasn’t relieved after double-OT escape