Missouri’s offensive line featured three new starters a season ago, yet it finished the season having allowed the fewest tackles for loss of any team in the country, and tied for the fifth fewest sacks. The good news: All five of those starters are back for the 2018 season. The potential cause for concern: the line has had to adjust to a new offensive scheme under Derek Dooley and a new position coach in Brad Davis.
Speaking with members of the media Wednesday, several offensive linemen said the changes have not lowered their expectations for this season.
“One of the best in the country,” senior guard Kevin Pendleton said of his hope for the unit. “That’s a goal of ours. It’s a new offense, new things that we’re doing, it doesn’t matter to us. We still hold ourselves to a high standard.”
Pendleton and company voiced several causes for their optimism, the most obvious being the unit’s experience. Pendleton said that experience will allow the group to better diagnose blitzes, stunts and schemes.
“We’ve played a lot of ball,” Pendleton said. “We’ve seen a lot of things. So any time we can use whatever they’re doing or how they align to tip something off, we see it in film and they’re doing it on the game field, we gotta have the confidence to call it out.”
Another factor working in the offensive line’s favor is its depth. Behind the five returning starters are seven players who have spent at least a year on campus as well as four newcomers. That allows Missouri to field three full units in practice, and still have one man left over.
Several offensive linemen pointed out that, two summers ago, the Tigers had just eight linemen on the depth chart. Those who lived through that experience expressed gratitude at having twice that number now.
“That’s less stuff we gotta put our body through, and also you get to mentor some young guys and teach them, because now you can come in actually learning, you’re not forced in the fire,” junior guard Trey’Vour Wallace-Simms said.
On the surface, losing offensive line coach Glen Elarbee after the numbers Missouri’s offensive line put up last season would seem to indicate a step backward for the unit. But the offensive linemen who spoke Wednesday uttered nothing but praise for Davis. Davis, who spent last season as the offensive line coach at Florida, has a goofy side that was evident Wednesday. He lurked behind media members as they interviewed Adams and Wallace-Simms and pretended to film the players with his cell phone. Players said that side of Davis makes him relatable, but he balances it with a businesslike approach during practice.
“He’s the perfect guy to lead this room,” Pendleton said. “He’s just like us. He loves what he does every day and he makes sure that we try to love what we’re doing and make sure that we love working and learning.”
Pendleton knows that Dooley’s new offensive system may differ drastically from Josh Heupel’s hurry-up, spread offense. But thanks to the unit’s experience and depth, he believes it will rise to the challenge.
“We need to give Drew (Lock) five, six, seven seconds,” Pendleton said. “If that’s what they’re asking, we gotta do it. If we need to run the ball 40 times in a game, that’s what we’re going to do. We want to give coach Dooley the freedom and flexibility to do whatever he wants to do to the other team, and we put that on ourselves to be able to do that.”
Williams discusses disobedient start
After the graduation of defensive ends Marcell Frazier and Jordan Harold, sophomore Tre Williams is expected to take over one of the starting spots on the edge this season. The Columbia native emerged as a factor on the defensive line in the second half of last season. After not appearing in the team’s first three games of the year, Williams finished with 20 tackles and three sacks.
Wednesday, Williams said he might never have earned regular playing time had he not taken matters into his own hands.
During Missouri’s loss to Kentucky in Week 5, Williams was standing on the sideline. Rather than wait for defensive line coach Brick Haley to tell someone to enter the game, Williams said he sprinted onto the field. On his first play, he pressured the Kentucky quarterback, forcing him to throw the ball out of bounds.
Williams said he’s lucky he made an impact on the play, because Haley wasn’t thrilled that he inserted himself into the game without checking with the coaching staff.
“He was going crazy,” Williams said with a smile. “But then when I got in, I got a hurry, so I still hit the quarterback and he threw it out of bounds, and he was like, oh, stay in there. So after that it was game on for me.”
Really, Williams said, it wasn’t his initiative in the Kentucky game that earned him more playing time later in the season, but his maturation. When he arrived at Missouri, he struggled to adapt to Haley’s loud and, at times, harsh coaching style. Following the Kentucky game, Haley told Williams he knew he was a talented player, but he needed to grow up before seeing the field. Williams believes he has done so now.
“I didn’t like (Haley),” Williams said. “I thought he was short, and he’s just yelling all the time. Sometimes you can’t hear him because he’s so short. The thing is, now, our relationship has grown. He helped me grow as a person as well as a player, and I’m so glad he’s here.”
Asked whether he recommends that other young players eager to see the field follow his example and insert themselves into a game, Williams laughed and said no.
“Wait your turn,” Williams said. “Coach will put you in. He knows what he’s doing.”
Competition for starting running back spot a friendly one
Throughout fall camp and, likely, the entire 2018 season, junior Damarea Crockett and sophomore Larry Rountree III will be battling for the starting running back spot. Rountree said Wednesday the pair haven’t let the competition damage their relationship.
“Every day, me and Damarea, we work out together, we warm up together,” Rountree said. “Our relationship has been strong since I got here, but now it’s getting stronger.”
Rountree said that he and Crockett aren’t sweating the battle for the starting spot because, as he knows from experience, a second- or third-string running back is always just an injury away from playing regularly. Rountree rushed for 703 yards and six touchdowns after Crockett suffered a season-ending shoulder injury a season ago.
“Anything can happen, so if your number is called, you gotta be ready,” Rountree said. “I was a freshman last year and Damarea got hurt and I had to step in. So if any of us get hurt, it’s next man up.”
