Drinkwitz: Mizzou down several players at one position
When Missouri announced that head football coach Eli Drinkwitz would address the media for his weekly press conference at 5:15 Tuesday afternoon rather than his usual noon time slot, speculation immediately arose that something was amiss. Sources then revealed to PowerMizzou that the Tigers were dealing with the repercussions of a positive COVID-19 test, which placed several players in quarantine and endangered the team’s ability to host No. 12 Georgia on Saturday.
Drinkwitz confirmed that Missouri did indeed have one player test positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, which resulted in several high-risk contacts being placed in a 14-day quarantine. He wouldn’t reveal many other specifics, but as of Tuesday afternoon, the game against Georgia was still expected to be played, pending the results of the team’s final two tests this week.
“We had a positive that we contact-traced,” Drinkwitz said. “Contact tracing was significant in a position. But there's no outbreak or pause or anything like that. We went out and practiced today. And then we test again today, and we'll find out those results.”
Drinkwitz said he did not know how the positive player contracted the virus. He noted that, prior to this week, Missouri hadn’t had a player or coach test positive for COVID-19 in about four weeks. The Tigers saw multiple players and one assistant coach all miss games during the first three weeks of the season, but Sunday’s positive was the team’s first since the week prior to the team’s win over LSU on Oct. 10.
SEC guidelines established prior to the start of the season say a team can choose not to contest a matchup if it has fewer than 53 scholarship players available. Teams must also have at least seven offensive linemen, four defensive linemen and one quarterback able to start a game. While it wouldn’t take too much for Missouri to dip beneath the 53-player threshold — the Tigers had 64 scholarship players available against Florida on Oct. 31 — Drinkwitz’s comments about a single position being hit hard indicate Missouri might be flirting more closely with one of the positional minimums. Drinkwitz declined to reveal how many players are in contact tracing, as well as what position group was impacted.
“Just the nature of the season with injuries, contact tracing, NCAA sanctions, COVID, all kinds of stuff, I think our numbers at a lot of positions are getting tight,” Drinkwitz said. “Like I told the team, we're all going to have to find a way to help us contribute to be successful, whether it's a walk on, whether it's a scholarship player.”
If this latest round of quarantines impacts the offensive line, a thin unit would become even more shorthanded. Drinkwitz said last week that the team had just nine healthy, scholarship offensive linemen available coming out of the Florida game. Hyrin White and Mitchell Walters both sustained season-ending injuries prior to the start of the season, while Thalen Robinson opted out. Starting right tackle Larry Borom and starting left guard Xavier Delgado both left the team’s game against Kentucky on Oct. 24 due to injuries and have not returned to the lineup. Drinkwitz has already ruled both players out for this weekend. Finally, to complicate matters further, true freshman Dylan Spencer, who started in place of Delgado against Florida, received a half-game suspension from the SEC for his role in the halftime brawl between the Tigers and the Gators. He will be eligible to play the second half against Georgia, but because he will not be available to start the matchup, Drinkwitz believes he does not count toward the number of available scholarship players.
Drinkwitz said the team has had an open competition to replace Spencer, as well as at both tackle positions. Javon Foster has played every snap at right tackle since Borom exited the lineup, while Zeke Powell and Bobby Lawrence have split time at left tackle.
“Obviously Dylan Spencer is suspended for the first half of this coming contest, so then you're going to have to figure out who your third left guard is that’s going to actually start, and then there's competition at the two tackle positions,” Drinkwitz said.
Drinkwitz made clear that the decision about whether or not to take the field Saturday is out of his hands, saying that call will be made by the university administration and SEC leadership. He didn’t know whether there could be a deadline by which a final decision about the game would have to be made.
“We submit our roster every day to the SEC office,” Drinkwitz said. “And there are certain protocol benchmarks that everybody has to meet in order to play. And we submitted our roster, and so as of now I don't know when a decision would have to be made or not made.”
If Missouri is unable to play against Georgia, that doesn’t necessarily mean the Tigers would be stuck beneath the SEC thresholds for the following weekend’s matchup at South Carolina as well. Drinkwitz noted that players who test positive for COVID-19 must quarantine for 10 days then complete a re-acclimation period that can last up to four days before returning to the field. High-risk contacts must quarantine for 14 days and cannot test out of that quarantine, but that window starts from the date of the players’ contact with an infected individual. Since this positive test came on Sunday, it’s possible the infected player could return in time to face South Carolina. If any of the close contacts were around him on Friday, they could be activated by kickoff, as well.
But as of Tuesday, Drinkwitz’s focus was on Georgia, not South Carolina. Despite the growing list of absent players, he said the team had a good practice and is focused on the matchup at hand.
“I don’t think anybody Saturday is going to give me a free pass because we got six people — or seven, eight, ten people, whatever — out with COVID,” Drinkwitz said. “They’re not giving anybody free passes.”