Since arriving at Missouri a little more than two years ago, Eli Drinkwitz has scarcely spoken publicly without mentioning his “1-0 mentality.” Drinkwitz has made the phrase a mantra for his football team to hammer home the importance of focusing solely on the next task, the next practice, the next game.
Yet by his own admission, for the better part of the week following the announcement that Missouri would finish its 2021 season by playing Army in the Armed Forces Bowl, Drinkwitz’s focus has been winning battles elsewhere — specifically, on the recruiting trail.
Shortly after he finished speaking to reporters about the Tigers’ bowl destination on Dec. 5, Drinkwitz left Columbia to pay an in-home visit to a recruit. He barely returned over the following five days, spending last week criss-crossing the Midwest in order to make his final pitch to Missouri’s top targets in the 2022 recruiting class. His return to town coincided with the arrival of nine official visitors for the team’s biggest on-campus recruiting weekend of the year. Drinkwitz and his staff entertained them until Sunday morning.
“It's been a real challenge, just because we've known our opponent for a week, but I was out on the road from Sunday night all the way until … Friday afternoon,” Drinkwitz said during a Sunday press conference. “And then rolled right into a recruiting weekend.”
The hectic week doesn’t indicate a lack of focus on the part of Drinkwitz, but rather the reality for college coaches this time of year. Since the early signing period was implemented in 2017, allowing prospects to sign their National Letters of Intent on the third week of December instead of the first Wednesday in February, the recruiting calendar has accelerated. That means as soon as the regular season ends, recruiting takes center stage — even for a team like Missouri with a bowl game before Christmas. That’s been especially true this year because of the fact that, until a couple weeks ago, college coaches hadn’t been able to visit prospects in their homes since March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s tough,” Drinkwitz acknowledged. “But it is what it is, and you’ve got to just maintain focus on what the most important task at hand is right now.”
Complicating matters further is the fact that Missouri students are taking final exams this week, which means no practice between Sunday and Thursday. Missouri held its first practices since learning its bowl opponent on Saturday and Sunday. Drinkwitz said the Tigers will resume practice again Thursday afternoon and will travel to Forth Worth on Saturday.
But despite the hectic schedule, Drinkwitz and Missouri have started to prepare to face Army. Drinkwitz said he’s carved out some time on flights to watch film of the Black Knights and their unique triple-option offensive attack. He also watched “every snap” of the Army-Navy game on Saturday, in which the Midshipmen upset Army 17-13.
“Offensively, they’ve got two dynamic quarterbacks,” Drinkwitz said of Army. “Both of them present different strengths. We're going to have to prepare for both the option, but they do spread out and run some conventional offense, too, which creates a whole other set of issues. And then defensively, Nate Woody does a tremendous job. Multiple front defense, multiple pressure packages, zone and man coverage. And so it's going to be a real challenge, and you saw that on display yesterday.”
The good news for Missouri is that Army has had even less time to prepare for the postseason matchup. Army coach Jeff Monken told reporters Monday that, due to the late game against Navy, he and his staff were just starting to prepare for Missouri. Army held a practice Monday but won’t practice again until Friday due to final exams.
“We’re finishing up with watching the game from Saturday and getting into preparing last night and this morning for the Missouri team,” said Monken. “We haven’t had a chance to see all of it but enough to know that they’re very talented and very well-coached and it’s going to be a real challenge for us.”
Missouri’s bowl prep isn’t limited to preparing for Army, although the Black Knights’ uniqueness does require a bit more of a specific approach than most opponents. For instance, defensive tackle Darius Robinson said practices this weekend for the defensive line largely focused on defeating the cut blocks Army uses to create holes in its run-heavy offense. But the Tigers have some questions of their own on the offensive side of the ball that need to be answered.
The most prominent one comes at the quarterback position. Drinkwitz said Dec. 5 that there would be an open competition between Connor Bazelak, Brady Cook and Tyler Macon for the starting spot. Sunday, he said that competition is still ongoing. He also shed a bit of light on what he’s looking for in a starter behind center.
“We really judge on basically five different things: Toughness, preparation, decision making, accuracy and leadership,” Drinkwitz said. “I think within those, you've got the decision making and accuracy, which are tangible. You can see that every play, whether or not they're making the right decisions on the reads or whether or not the accuracy of the pass. I think as the preparation goes, you can see that on the field, but you can see that off the field, too, where guys are coming in, putting in extra time, understand the schemes that we want. Leadership, I think, is are the guys rallying around them and do they display, do they bring something to the practice, to the environment that they’re put in? So we’re evaluating all of that. And then toughness is how do you bounce back from a bad performance? Whether it's bad play, whether it's bad interception, whether it's a couple bad plays, how do you respond? And do you still provide the things that we need to this football team in order to help us win? So all that's in consideration.”
Missouri also finds its tight end room in flux. Daniel Parker Jr. and Messiah Swinson both entered the transfer portal, and shortly thereafter tight ends coach Casey Woods left to become the offensive coordinator at SMU. That leaves Niko Hea as the only tight end on the roster who has caught a pass in college.
Drinkwitz said two different quality control assistants, Keegan McDaniel and Cole Cook, have been working with the tight ends during practice. One of the two will be promoted to the interim role for the bowl game. True freshman Ryan Hoerstkamp and walk-on Kibet Chepyator could both play larger roles against Army. Hoerstkamp has appeared in three games this season while Chepyator has played in eight, almost exclusively on special teams.
“Obviously Ryan Hoerstkamp can play and not burn his eligibility,” Drinkwitz said. “We’ve got Kibet Chepyator that’s gonna be ready to go. And then we can potentially play some 20 personnel with two running backs on the field, we can potentially play with 10 personnel. We haven’t finalized what that will look like yet.”
Despite their crowded schedules, both Drinkwitz and his players said the team has felt focused and motivated on the practice field. Only one senior, cornerback Akayleb Evans, has opted out of the game.
While the early bowl date — the earliest of any team from a Power Five conference — cuts down on the number of bowl practices for Missouri, Drinkwitz said the fact that players will be able to spend Christmas with their families serves as “a really good carrot to have in front of them.” And even though the final recruiting push has resulted in some long hours for himself, Drinkwitz didn’t complain.
“It's the most wonderful time of the year,” he said. “Bowl season, football season, Christmas season and signing season all kind of wrapped up in one.”
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