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Every week, PowerMizzou.com publisher Gabe DeArmond answers questions from Tiger fans in the mailbag. This format allows for a more expansive answer than a message board post. Keep your eye out each week to submit your question for the mailbag or send them to powermizzou@gmail.com. On to this week's inquiries.
KCTiger05 asks: Games like Saturday are killers for a program that’s actively trying to bring in fan donations and attendance. Drink did little to quell the disappointment/concern in his presser. Ok - you take responsibility for the L but what are you doing differently going forward to change the results? I suppose we will find out over the next couple of weeks if he has a solution. I guess my question is this: why on earth should fans expect anything better than what we’ve gotten over the past 6-7 years, which has been at best mediocre play? Therefore why the hell would I allocate personal funds to donate to this football program going forward? These questions are what DRF and Drink have to have an answer for.
GD: Lots to digest here. First off, I can't manage your expectations. What you expect is up to you. And often, the more people expect, the more angry they are. Our message board was largely full of people who not only thought Missouri was going to beat Kansas State, but was going to beat Kansas State badly. Other than Missouri being in the SEC, Kansas State being in the Big 12 and hope, I'm not sure what it was based on, but there was a lot of it. And when it goes exactly the other way, those people are angry because they feel like they've been let down.
Why should you expect more and why should you donate? Totally up to you. You will or you won't. I can't tell you to. Desiree Reed-Francois and Eli Drinkwitz can ask you to, but they can't make you. It all comes back to the same chicken or the egg question in college sports: Do resources allow winning or does winning bring resources?
Lastly, I've seen some people upset that Drinkwitz said "it's my fault" without providing a solution. What coach has ever told us exactly how he's going to fix something? If he knew how to fix it, he'd have fixed it already. So now he'll go look for another way to fix it. But taking responsibility is what he should have done. He gets paid four million dollars. It's all his fault. That's how this works. If he'd have gotten up there and ripped Brady Cook and his offensive line and his assistants and his players, everybody would have gotten mad at him for that too. When you lose a game the way Drinkwitz lost one on Saturday, there's literally nothing you can that is going to satisfy your fans.
jmklf asks: How did the offensive line get so bad?
GD: Well, like every other unit, I'm not sure it's quite as bad as it looked on Saturday. But it's recruiting. Nothing more than that. I posted the numbers the other day, but offensive line is a position where Missouri just hasn't gotten very many highly-ranked players at all. The Tigers have done a pretty good job of turning two- and three-star linemen into really good players, but it never hurts to have some studs who are studs coming in. Missouri's best lineman is Javon Foster. He's an above average player, maybe second-team all-SEC, maybe a mid-to-late round NFL Draft pick. They do not have another lineman who you can reasonably expect to play on Sundays. It's that simple. Also, against Kansas State, it was widely said all week that the Wildcats' strength was the defensive line. And, again, despite everyone wanting to dismiss that, it turned out to be true. So you have the opponent's strongest unit going up against what is a relative weakness and you get what you got Saturday.
