2022 Macadoodles Mailbag: 19th Edition

GD: People think every year is a make or break year for the program. Literally every offseason there are people saying "This is the most important season in the history of Missouri football." It's part of the allure of being a sports fan and especially a football fan. College football has the shortest regular season of any sport. That means we spend nine months building up to and analyzing 12 days. And every year, people think "this year is going to determine the future of the program for as far as we can see."

This isn't a make or break year for Eli Drinkwitz. His job is not in danger if he goes 2-10. It just isn't. Here's my prediction for the offense: There will be a point against Louisiana Tech where it struggles for a few drives, Missouri will probably put up 30 points but not 50 and we'll see posts saying "Drink didn't want to show anything before Kansas State." Then, unless the offense does put up 50 against K-State, it will be "We're saving everything for SEC play, he knows we can get through the non-con without giving away all the secrets." And in the end, that's never really true. Sure, they'll be vanilla against Abilene Christian. But other than that, they're going to run the offense he wants to run. There's this thought that Drinkwitz is a quarterback whisperer whose offense is built around throwing the ball all over the field. But in three years as a head coach, he's had three NFL running backs and his offense has been much more based around running the football than throwing it. The passing game is a lot of quick stuff, spreading the field, a lot of horizontal stuff. They'll take some deep shots, but it's not the main focus.

As far as the receivers, I think Luther Burden will be the focal point and it will be a surprise to me if he isn't the leading receiver at the end of the year.

GD: The only one that's "weird" is Gerry Bohanon. We assume when given a choice between Missouri and South Florida, most people are going to choose Missouri. And most probably will. But not all. Bohanon didn't.

Jaylon Daniels went to a better program. JT Daniels went to a similar program that wasn't in the SEC where he didn't have to face his old team. NIL may have been a factor in both, but I don't know that for sure. But every player makes a decision for reasons that are his own. As much as we want to be able to look at every recruit and analyze the offer list and predict where they'll go or look at which offense fits them better or how close it is to where they grew up or any other factor, that's just fans and media projecting their own parameters on someone else. And it doesn't work a lot of the time. If you and I are in an identical situation and given two choices, we may make the opposite choice. It doesn't mean one is right or wrong, but we have our own reasons. I don't know why Bohanon went to USF. He talked about really liking the staff. Maybe he just got along with them better. The truth is, most of us make decisions, in the end, on a feeling. This one just feels more right than the other one. Drinkwitz has landed the two best recruiting classes in school history. He brought in double digit players from the portal this year. I don't think missing on three transfers is a reason to all of a sudden worry about his ability to recruit.