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COLUMBIA, Mo. — ������Ƶ offensive coordinator Kirby Moore spent his bye week looking for the forest, metaphorically speaking.

He’d done this before, going on an arboreal adventure of sorts between his first and second seasons calling plays for the Tigers offense. For coaches, it takes something like a bye week to fully evaluate something like a forest.

“Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest through the trees during the season,” Moore said back before preseason camp. “And the stuff that you’re doing, you’re staying with it.”

By stuff, he means scheme. And at the time he delivered that metaphor, Moore was referring to his comprehensive offseason analysis of how Mizzou could improve in the red zone — especially on third downs inside opponents’ 20-yard lines.

The red zone is the part of the field in which MU started preseason camp. During last week’s bye, the Tigers spent significant portions of their practices camped out in that area, relentlessly repping red-zone possessions.

“Red-zone plays. Red zone versus the defense. A red-zone lockout period,” Missouri quarterback Brady Cook said, listing out the tedium of bye week practices, “where it’s basically offense versus defense for three or four rounds, just in the red zone.”

In case that doesn’t make it obvious: Red-zone offense was a point of emphasis for No. 9 Mizzou (4-0 overall, 1-0 Southeastern Conference) during the bye, just as it was early in the preseason. That the Tigers are even particularly preoccupied with what’s happening in that part of the field is a sign that they’re focused on the margins.

So far this season, MU has scored on 19 of its 20 possessions that entered the red zone, a 95% clip tied for 10th-most efficient in the nation. That’s close to where the program was last season when it came away with points on 96.6% of red-zone drives, the third-best mark in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

Yet coach Eli Drinkwitz remains unsatisfied with this year’s progress, just as he was with last year’s red-zone efficiency. His concern is not about empty trips inside the enemy 20 but with an overabundance of field goal tries when Missouri is so well positioned to score a touchdown.

And what play generally stands between the offense and the field-goal unit? Third down, which explains his specific emphasis.

Through four games, Mizzou has faced 12 third downs inside the red zone. Backup quarterback Drew Pyne was in the game for two of them, which takes out those plays for the sake of pursuing the best analysis.

Of the remaining 10 red-zone third-down situations in which Missouri’s starting offense was on the field, the Tigers have scored five touchdowns and settled for five field goal attempts — four of which were converted.

That means MU has converted half of its red-zone third downs, a rate slightly lower than its 54.7% third-down conversion percentage across the entire field — the sixth-highest in the country.

Comparing a red-zone third down and one farther back on the field is not apples to apples, though. The stakes seem a little higher in the red zone as failing to convert there makes a possession more likely to net three points than six, seven or eight. A failed third down elsewhere can still have consequences on the scoreboard, just not as directly.

Defenses play the red zone differently, too, as Moore explained in the preseason, because “the field is shorter.”

Drinkwitz put the onus of red-zone improvement on both Missouri’s players and Moore, the play caller.

“I don’t think there’s a whole lot that has to necessarily change,” Drinkwitz said. “I think there’s just got to be better execution, and there’s got to be better schematic fits. A couple of plays designed weren’t conducive to being successful. And a couple of plays weren’t executed the way we thought they should be. So it’s everybody doing their job just a little bit better, is really what it comes down to.”

Mizzou has been conceptually split on its starters’ red-zone third downs: Five have been passes, five have been runs. On those plays, wideout Luther Burden III has scored two receiving touchdowns while Cook has scored twice and running back Note Noel once on the ground. The takeaway — that targeting Burden through the air, utilizing Cook’s rushing ability and feeding Noel all have benefits — is not particularly novel.

While there might be schematic adjustments as a result of what Moore found during his bye week of examination, there could also be players asked to press the “do better” button.

“We could just execute a little bit better — all of us,” wide receiver Theo Wease Jr. said, pointing out that he’d missed some blocks in the red zone that stunted the Tigers’ progress.

Cook said the bye week’s added reps have the ������Ƶ offense feeling more confident in its red-zone capabilities ahead of the weekend’s trip to Texas A&M. And MU has still been scoring points, even amid what coaches identify as a struggle.

“It’s hard to win games like that,” Cook said. “Luckily, we did.”