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Breaking down Mizzou's QB situation

By now, Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz has made it clear that he won’t reveal who will start behind center for the Tigers when the team opens its 2020 season against Alabama on Sept. 26. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know anything about the players Missouri has on its roster at the most important position in football.

After the loss of redshirt junior Taylor Powell to the transfer portal last week, Missouri is down to three scholarship quarterbacks: junior Shawn Robinson, who sat out all of last season after transferring from TCU, redshirt freshman Connor Bazelak, who made one start last year but exited early with a torn ACL, and true freshman Brady Cook. Drinkwitz has described the collective quarterback play as up and down thus far during camp. He complimented the group following the team’s scrimmage on Sept. 5, but his report was less rosy a week later.

Robinson continues to look more and more like the favorite to win the opening-week starting job, although don’t entirely count Bazelak out of the race. And considering that, as of Saturday, the team had already lost three players for the Alabama game as a result of coronavirus quarantines, it’s not out of the question that Cook could be pressed into duty, as well. Drinkwitz said the position will need all hands on deck.

“We’ve got three scholarship quarterbacks, and those guys are going to have to be ready,” he said. “There’s a limited number of reps, so they’re going to have to maximize those reps and maximize their ownership of understanding what we’re trying to do on the offensive side of the ball.”

While intel is limited due to the lack of media access to fall camp practices, here’s what we know about each of the three Tiger signal-callers.

Missouri will hope Shawn Robinson looks more like the high school All-American than the interception-prone TCU starter after a year away from the game.
Missouri will hope Shawn Robinson looks more like the high school All-American than the interception-prone TCU starter after a year away from the game. (Jordan Kodner)
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Shawn Robinson

Even though Robinson requested a waiver from the NCAA, which would have granted him immediate eligibility last season, Todd Peterman, his coach at DeSoto high school, believes sitting out might have been the best thing for him. That’s because Robinson was coming off an injury to his throwing shoulder that he tried to play through in 2018. Ultimately, he opted for season-ending surgery after eight weeks.

“You get him in a situation where he can actually use his skillset and his body and his mind to compete, he’ll sell out, he’ll give you everything that he’s got,” Peterman said. “It’s just hard for him to do that when he had pins in his shoulder.”

Now that Robinson is fully healthy, Peterman expects him to finally showcase the physical talent that made him an Army All-American coming out of high school. Robinson threw for 3,413 yards and 28 touchdowns while rushing for another 13 as a senior at DeSoto, leading the team to a 16-0 record and state championship.

“He can shoot a deep ball 45 yards down the field into a 30 mile per hour wind and hit a strike in front of 40,000 (fans),” Peterman said. “I’ve seen him do that in high school. He’s incredibly special.”

Robinson started nine games across his first two seasons on campus at TCU, but he never quite lived up to the All-American billing. He struggled, especially, with turnovers, throwing eight interceptions compared to nine touchdowns in 2018. He completed 59.3 percent of his passes during his TCU career.

One aspect of Robinson’s game that stands out among Missouri’s quarterback group is his mobility, which could be key while playing behind an offensive line that could be a weakness in 2020. Robinson rushed for three touchdowns in 2018. Drinkwitz’s offense at Appalachian State last season featured a dual-threat quarterback in Zac Thomas, who carried the ball 104 times. Peterman believes Robinson has the passing ability to stick in the pocket if he’s asked to, but his size and speed make him a rushing threat as well.

“He can do what the coaches are asking him to do,” said Peterman. “If they want somebody who can sit in the pocket and use their feet a little, he can do that. If they’re going to ask him to run as well as that, he can do that. He can do both and have the frame and the size and the weight to be able to do that, as well as the speed.”

Peterman doesn’t believe Robinson, the son of a high school football coach, will have any issues mastering Missouri’s new offensive scheme. The unanswered question with him is whether his struggles with inaccuracy and interception at TCU resulted more from injury, as Peterman believes, or from ability.

Connor Bazelak

Bazelak lacks the college experience of Robinson, but he showed a few impressive flashes during his limited playing time last season. Bazelak led the Tigers’ best drive of the night, albeit when the game was well out of reach, during a loss at Georgia, then started the regular-season finale at Arkansas. Unfortunately, his performance was cut short when he slid awkwardly in the second quarter and tore the ACL in his right knee.

But Bazelak’s coach at Archbishop Alter high school in Dayton, Ohio, Ed Domsitz, believes even that small slice of experience served Bazelak well entering his first full offseason with a college program.

“I think it benefits him tremendously, greatly,” said Domsitz. “... No matter how good you are at the high school level, it’s just bigger, faster, stronger once you get up at the Southeastern Conference level. Let’s face it, that’s a different level of competition. So yes, having that experience, I think not only does it help physically, but mentally in terms of confidence, in terms of understanding how fast the game is moving out there.”

Like the Missouri coaching staff, Domsitz said Bazelak entered fall camp recovered from the ACL tear and able to participate fully in team activities. And since he didn’t miss much during spring practices, with the team only able to practice three times before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered sports, the coaching staff has given him a shot to battle for the starting job.

“He has good plays and bad plays, he’s growing, learning, making mistakes, going back, answering the bell and trying to fix them,” Drinkwitz said of Bazelak a few weeks ago. “He’s got a teachable spirit and he’s fine, he’s battling. … He’s right there in the mix.”

Bazelak’s high school offense looked different than Missouri’s with the team spending about half its time running the option out of the wishbone and the other half in a more typical shotgun formation. He attempted fewer than 200 passes as both a junior and senior.

Still, Bazelak looked poised and accurate during his limited action last season. He completed 15 of 21 passes and didn’t throw an interception. Domsitz also noted that, awkward as his slide may have looked last season, Bazelak is a good enough athlete to buy himself time in the pocket and take off running if no receivers come open downfield.

“I think the fact that he was required to be a running quarterback as well as a passer on the high school level, I think that can benefit him,” Domsitz said. “I think more and more schools are looking for that quarterback who can provide that extra dimension out of the backfield, particularly when there’s nothing open. So he’s capable of doing that.”

Brady Cook

Cook enrolled early in January but wasn’t able to benefit much from the curtailed spring practices. As might be expected, Drinkwitz said he’s made some good plays and some plays that looked like a true freshman during fall camp. While Drinkwitz would undoubtedly like to give Cook a year to watch from the sidelines and continue to develop, he said Saturday that Cook “has got to be ready.”

“He’s handled some things really well,” Drinkwitz said. “I thought last scrimmage he actually performed really well and had a good week of practice. Tonight it moved a little bit fast for him. But you know, he really knows the playbook and he has a plan pre-snap, and as long as we can keep him within the plan, he’s going to have to be ready to play. ... There’s been freshmen who have played before. If he does, he’ll be ready.”

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