Offensive line starting to come into focus

During the first three weeks of fall camp practices for the Missouri football team, head coach Eli Drinkwitz said trying to field an offensive line at each practice has been “like casting die.” Between injuries and COVID-19 quarantines, the staff never knew which players would be available each day.

Throw in the fact that the Tigers have to replace three multi-year starters from an offensive line that underperformed last season, have to get players acquainted with a new position coach in Marcus Johnson and a new offensive system and have had less time to do so than normal with 12 of the team’s 15 spring practices being canceled, and you might forgive Drinkwitz for thinking those dice were loaded, and not in his favor. With the team’s season-opener against No. 3 Alabama just 17 days away, this is not the time to still be figuring out the starting lineup.

“I think you want to get your first team set and build chemistry,” Drinkwitz said in a virtual press conference with reporters Tuesday. “I mean, if we were in spring practice, I'd say yeah, it's a great thing. But two weeks, two and a half weeks out for our first game, we’d like to know those five guys, being able to work together, communicate, understanding how they work together and the way they work through combinations together and all that. So it's less than ideal.”

Don’t expect the situation to suddenly get more stable any time soon, either. Drinkwitz revealed Tuesday that Missouri recently had four players test positive for COVID-19. That increases the number of players unable to practice — either because of an injury, positive diagnosis or contact tracing — to 14, the most since the team was able to resume football activities in July. It’s unknown which position groups have been impacted by the quarantines, but Drinkwitz did say junior tackle Hyrin White, one of just three offensive linemen on the roster who has started more than one game in a Tiger uniform, missed Saturday’s scrimmage with a shoulder injury. The extent of White’s injury is not yet clear, but Drinkwitz expects him to be out for at least another week.

All that uncertainty, coupled with reports that the pass rushers have consistently harassed Missouri’s quarterbacks early in camp, might inspire justified concern about the offensive line. But there appears to be a glimmer of hope. Drinkwitz said that the unit looked the best it has since the outset of camp during Saturday’s scrimmage. Tuesday, he revealed that a starting five has begun to emerge.

“I think today is the first time that we really played with the same five for five or six consecutive practices, and it's been really nice,” Drinkwitz said Saturday. “They're starting to work together and starting to understand how to play with each other and create that unit.”

Missouri has loaded the right side of its offensive line with experience, and that side has been relatively stable. Larry Borom, who started 11 games as a redshirt sophomore last season, has seized the starting spot at right tackle. Junior Case Cook, a team captain and arguably the best offensive lineman on the field last season, will play right guard. Graduate transfer Michael Maietti brings needed experience to the center spot. Maietti started 33 straight games for Rutgers before coming to Missouri.

“His leadership has been invaluable,” Drinkwitz said of Maietti. “He’s done a great job anchoring (the line). … Maietti’s seen a lot of (defensive looks) before because he’s experienced starting at center, and he’s been able to keep guys calm, communicate, echo calls, and he knows what we’re thinking.”

It’s the left side of the line, where Yasir Durant and Tre’Vour Wallace-Simms spent much of their time last season, that has given Missouri more trouble. White entered camp as the likely frontrunner to start at left tackle. In his absence, the team has turned to Bobby Lawrence, a 6-foot-8 native of St. Joseph who played more than half of his career snaps against Southeast Missouri last season. Fellow redshirt sophomore Xavier Delgado has been “the guy” at left guard, according to Drinkwitz, but it sounds like he’s been in and out of the lineup himself. Drinkwitz mentioned last week that the absences have forced true freshman Dylan Spencer to take on a larger role than the staff would like in recent practices.

“The left side had a lot of different pieces with Hyrin’s injury, with Zeke (Powell) being in and out with some nagging injuries,” Drinkwitz said. “Bobby Lawrence has taken quite a few reps at left tackle, and then left guard position, Xavier Delgado has really been the guy. But, you know, things have kept him from being consistently in that position, and so there's other guys that are needing to step up, and we're still trying to figure out who that group of five is going to be.”

Cementing the left side of the line soon will be key because the top contenders for playing time bring virtually no experience. Between them, Lawrence and Delgado have played a combined 112 college snaps, just 13 of which came against Power Five competition. Spencer and Powell, a junior college transfer who started his career at South Alabama, have never played against a Division I opponent. Drinkwitz praised Johnson, who spent the past two seasons at Mississippi State, for getting them and the rest of the group up to speed on the offensive system and their role in it in such a short period of time.

“I think coach Johnson has done an outstanding job just continuing to develop these guys’ demeanor and how we want to play, what kind of effort we want to play with,” he said. “He's done an unbelievable job.”

Drinkwitz acknowledged Tuesday that the team’s offensive line situation is less than ideal. But for a first-year coach trying to instill a new offensive system amid a global pandemic, ideal has long since stopped being realistic. Instead, Drinkwitz and Johnson have to play the cards — or, sticking with Drinkwitz’s analogy, the dice — they were dealt. Saturday’s scrimmage provided hope that they might have finally found a winning combination with their most recent roll.

“Today was probably the best day they've had in protection, which gives a quarterback the freedom to sit in the pocket and gives your wideouts the chance to make contested catches,” Drinkwitz said. “So that was good to see.”