Inside Mizzou's red-hot recruiting week
Speaking to reporters via Zoom on June 17, Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz lamented that the Tigers had gone more than a week without landing a new commitment on the recruiting trail. As a result, Drinkwitz said the staff was “behind the eight-ball” and needed to “pick it up.”
Those remarks may have been somewhat tongue in cheek, but in the week since, Drinkwitz and his staff have embarked on a serious recruiting heater. When St. Louis safety Tyler Hibbler committed to Missouri Tuesday night, it marked the fifth commitment in a six-day span for the Tigers. Four of those prospects — Shemar Pearl, Zachary Lovett and Dameon Wilson, in addition to Hibbler — came from members of the 2021 class, while graduate transfer wide receiver Keke Chism joined the class of 2020.
The parade of pledges is the most recent and striking example of how, even in the face of a pandemic that curtailed prospects’ ability to visit campuses and coaches visiting players, the new Missouri staff is not just surviving but thriving. The Tigers now have 15 commitments in the 2021 class, 11 of which have come since recruiting went completely virtual in mid-March.
Thanks to the past week, Missouri appears to be filling out its signing class on a record pace. As best we can tell, in the 20 years that Rivals has logged recruiting results, the Tigers have never had 15 players commit by June 24. (The database doesn’t list players who ultimately withdrew their commitment, but given that the previous high was 11 in 2014, it feels safe to say this is the quickest Missouri has gotten to 15 commitments.)
That’s representative of both Missouri hitting on its primary targets and the recruiting environment as a whole. Recruiting coordinator and tight ends coach Casey Woods said last week that there have been something like three times more commitments across the country than at this time a year ago. While that, too, is hard to verify, commitments have clearly been sped up by the pandemic. A 247sports article found that, as of May 6, 627 players had committed to FBS schools. That number is up from 302 commits on May 6, 2019 and 243 on May 6, 2018.
Woods said commitments are up in part because virtual recruiting is more efficient than visiting prospects in person. Instead of traveling all day to see one or two prospects in a given city, the staff can have FaceTime conversations or conduct virtual visits with several players a day. There’s also been a sort of commitment snowball effect — as more and more players announce their college decisions, other players feel the need to commit before classes fill up.
“We have more of a concentrated effort to show these guys what we have without traveling and driving in a car eight hours a day and visiting eight schools and then tell them, ‘hey man, you got to get to campus,’” Woods explained. “... These guys know more about the program because we have been able to singularly focus on more specific players in these environments, and so they're more comfortable committing.”
Missouri’s success isn’t simply reflective of the nationwide run on commitments, though. Out of the 130 FBS schools, the Tigers are one of 24 to have at least 15 committed players in the 2021 class. There’s been some quality mixed in with the quantity, too. Missouri has two four-star players committed in defensive end Travion Ford and cornerback Daylan Carnell. The program landed just three four-star recruits in the past four recruiting cycles combined. The Tigers’ current average star ranking of 3.13 would be its highest since 2015.
Put all that together and Missouri ranks No. 20 in the Rivals team rankings. A few other teams will likely pass the Tigers as they get more commitments, but Missouri should have a legitimate shot at its best finish in the recruiting rankings since 2010, when it finished No. 21. A finish better than 30th would mark the program's second top-30 ranking in the past 10 years.
That’s not bad for a new head coach hired more than three months after schools were allowed to start contacting 2021 recruits, especially since, as Woods said, the core of Missouri’s recruiting philosophy has been if they can get kids on visits, they have a shot.
“One of the tenants of our program is get (prospects) on campus,” Woods said. “Get them on campus because there's such fabulous things for sale here, and there's so many things that we can get done. So we had to immediately refigure that train of thought.”
The staff has adapted by forging relationships and finding ways to highlight things that prospects would normally see on a tour — namely, the new South End Zone football facility — through virtual visits. Wilson, who committed to Missouri on Sunday, never got a chance to visit Columbia, but he felt comfortable pulling the trigger because Drinkwitz and linebackers coach D.J. Smith started recruiting him when they were at Appalachian State and he was impressed by his virtual look at the facilities.
“I’ve never been there but I took some virtual tours,” said Wilson, a North Carolina native. “All the facilities looked great and they're really new. I just feel like I could be comfortable there and become a great football player.”
The other big emphasis made by Drinkwitz and his staff has been keeping Missouri prospects in-state. Nearly every time he has spoken publicly since taking over as head coach, Drinkwitz has discussed the importance of locking down the state borders, often citing the statistic that 26 of the last 41 NFL Draft picks from Missouri went to high school in the state. Even though the coronavirus kept coaches home during what would have been last spring’s evaluation period, the Missouri staff devoted an entire week to “evaluating” in-state players from a distance.
This recruiting class reflects the effort to recruit locally. Hibbler became the seventh pledge from either within the state or just across the border in East St. Louis.
"That was (Drinkwitz’s) main focus, his No. 1 topic," Hibbler said. "It was an emphasis on the guys from home. ... It’s a big pride, because when you go out on the town back home, if you are with the home school, everyone watches it and everyone back home is going to notice.”
Aside from the in-state focus, Drinkwitz has said that he doesn’t necessarily want Missouri to lean on recruiting a particular area. He said the staff has drawn a circle around Columbia with a radius of 450 miles — about one tank of gas — and hopes to cover that entire area, which includes Chicago, Indianapolis, Memphis, Oklahoma City and more. But he also said that, if players outside of that range express interest in Missouri, the staff will be interested as well.
The recent commitments reflect that. In the month of June alone, the Tigers have landed players who played their high school ball in Missouri, Indiana, Florida, Texas and North Carolina.
“I do think Mizzou has an opportunity to recruit in the Midwest with the SEC logo and be successful, and that's that's the approach we're going to take,” Drinkwitz said. “Now, at the same time, we are in the middle of the middle and I can get to anywhere in the country. If there is a connection to Mizzou and the SEC and if somebody’s lifelong dream is to be able to play at Mizzou, which is a heck of a dream and awesome, then we will make way for them to recruit.”
Given that it can only sign 25 players, Missouri won’t be able to keep up this recruiting rate forever. Fans shouldn’t start coronating the 2021 class yet, either. Woods acknowledged that the higher rate of spring and summer commitments, especially those made without taking official visits, will likely lead to an unprecedented number of flips between now and the early signing period in December.
However, it’s easier to keep committed players on board than to fill empty spots late in the cycle. Plus, given the fact that Drinkwitz and his staff have put together this recent hot streak — and done it in their first class, and done it without being able to contact prospects in person — there’s certainly reason to be optimistic that this class could wind up being among Missouri’s best in the Rivals era.