Commentary: Time to bury the same old Mizzou attitude
Eli Drinkwitz doesn’t do things the way they’ve been done at Missouri before. He made it clear from day one when he branded his rebuild the #NewZou.
Drinkwitz is brash, he’s cocky and he’s happy to let you know. He let everyone know in the way his team beat Florida on Saturday, 24-23 in overtime on a two-point conversion. More than that, obviously, he let them know in the post-game press conference after.
That’s a grudge held for a year, a callback to the man on the opposing sideline Saturday afternoon—probably for the last time—dressing up as Darth Vader after helping to incite a half-time brawl and blowing the Tigers out 41-17 in the first meeting with Drinkwitz.
So, yeah, Drinkwitz is a change of pace from the buttoned up coaches Missouri has had for the entirety of this century before him. It seems somehow appropriate that these latest antics came at the expense of the school that made its bones cheering for Steve Spurrier and—at least for now—employs the coach every other SEC fanbase most loves to hate.
Bringing a new attitude is one thing. But what if Drinkwitz’s brashness actually means something on the football field?
For years, Missouri fans held their identity in the fact that they always carried a cup around in case anyone was about to kick them in the place you don’t want to be kicked (Hint: It’s the same body part Drinkwitz put on display going for two when he didn’t have to and putting the game on the right arm of his much-maligned and not healthy quarterback rather than doing the simple thing of handing it to his best player). Missouri is Charlie Brown. Lucy keeps putting the football down and they keep running at it and they keep ending up head over heels and flat on their ass.
It’s a calling card. It’s who they are. Where other fans see a light at the end of the tunnel, Missouri fans see trains. Even tonight on our postgame call-in show, multiple people expressed joy because “this is the kind of game Missouri just doesn’t win.”
Look, I get it. You guys, well, you’ve seen some shit. A lot of it. And through fifth downs and kicked balls and doinked kicks and blown pass interference calls, you’ve come to convince yourselves that bad stuff always happens to you and it happens to you a lot more than it does to anybody else.
Except you know what? That’s completely false. At least it has been lately.
Drinkwitz has coached 21 games at Missouri. His team has won three of them on the final snap. That’s one out of every seven games. That’s 14% of the games he has coached here that the Tigers have won on the final snap. Overall, Missouri has five wins by one score in the last two seasons. Ole Miss has five and Kentucky has six. No other SEC team has won as many close games as Mizzou in the last two years. And I don't really want to look it up, but I'm going to bet that neither the Rebels or the Wildcats have won three of their one-score games in quite so dramatic a fashion.
So maybe it’s time we retire this idea that nothing good ever happens to Missouri, huh?
In the third game Drinkwitz ever coached here, a defense that gave up 479 yards stopped the defending national champion four consecutive times from the one-yard line. Sure, 2020 LSU wasn’t exactly 2019 LSU, but Missouri sure didn’t care at that moment. Just about any team can average nine inches a play and score on four plays from the one. Not LSU on that day.
In the 10th game Drinkwitz ever coached here, KJ Jefferson completed a 14-yard pass to Mike Woods and then Sam Pittman went for two and Jefferson hit Woods again and Arkansas led Missouri 48-47 with just 43 seconds to go. It was over until it wasn't when Connor Bazelak drove the Tigers 60 yards in six plays and 40 seconds and Harrison Mevis made a 32-yard field goal and the Tigers beat Arkansas at the gun to finish 5-5 in Drinkwitz’s first season.
On Saturday, in the 21st game he ever coached here, Drinkwitz’s team trailed Florida 23-16 after the Gators had scored in overtime. They handed the ball to Tyler Badie for 12 yards and a first down. They handed the ball to Tyler Badie for 13 yards and a touchdown. And then trailing 23-22 they huddled up and Drinkwitz decided he was ready to be bold and brash and go for two.
"They always know if we’re up second, we’re going for two,” he said.
And instead of handing the ball to Tyler Badie—the most valuable player on the team and maybe the conference and honestly maybe the country—again, he had his quarterback who is playing somewhere around 85% (at least that’s the optimistic estimate), who had been booed off of his home field two weeks in a row, who had completed less than 60% of his passes for 6.3 yards per attempt, throw the ball to his tight end who, despite claiming that he has the best hands in the SEC for the last four years, is known mostly as a blocker and hadn’t caught a pass all day long and was the third read on the play.
And, well, it worked.
It worked despite the quarterback falling down as he threw it with pressure in his face. It worked despite very little having worked all day on offense. It worked—and for those who have been Mizzou fans for a minute this isn’t insignificant—despite being run into the North end zone where so many Godforsaken things hadn’t worked before.
“Every Friday we practice that play,” Drinkwitz said. “Normally we just go through it mindless, we come out and we just go to the tailback. For whatever reason, yesterday, Connor came out, boom, fakes it, looks, buys the exact same play like he did right there and threw it up to Daniel and he caught it. I thought, well, that’s interesting. And then practice execution makes game day reality.”
Maybe it worked because, well, a lot of those things have worked for Drinkwitz at Missouri. The close games? They win those a lot more than they don’t. Sure Missouri had two seven-point losses earlier this season including one in overtime, but nobody wins them all. Drinkwitz is 5-2 in one-score games in two years in Columbia. He is 7-3 in them as a head coach when you add his year at Appalachian State.
This isn’t to say Drinkwitz is a miracle worker. He’s still just a game over .500 in his Missouri career. It hasn’t been without some bumps so far and it won’t be without some going forward. But if this really is the #NewZou, maybe it’s time to bury that myth that only bad things happen to you and that they happen to you more than they happen to anyone else. It wasn’t ever really true to begin with, but it’s definitely not true now. Maybe you’re no longer the fanbase that walks around with both hands over your groin every time the score is within seven points. Maybe now you’re the fanbase whose team has won three games on the final play in a little over 14 months and whose coach waved a light saber around the post-game press conference while symbolically dancing on the grave of the guy he probably just got fired.
Maybe now that’s the most Mizzou thing ever. It seems better than the other stuff.
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