Quarterback questions remain focus of offseason
Since the end of Missouri’s season, no position has drawn as much scrutiny as quarterback. The day after the Armed Forces Bowl, Connor Bazelak announced his transfer. Bazelak and his 601 pass attempts over 19 starts landed at Indiana. Remaining at Mizzou were redshirt sophomore Brady Cook and redshirt freshman Tyler Macon.
Cook started the bowl game and threw for 345 yards on 58 attempts in five games last season. Macon went 9-for-17 in three games, including a start at No. 1 Georgia. The only other scholarship quarterback on the roster this fall will be Sam Horn, a true freshman who signed in December, but won’t arrive on campus until June.
But despite ten additions through the transfer portal, Eli Drinkwitz and his staff haven’t added a quarterback to that trio…which doesn’t mean they won’t.
“We’ll always reserve the flexibility to do what we think is in the best interest to win and I’ve had this discussion with our team so that there’s no misunderstanding: Our goal is to win,” Drinkwitz said. “It’s not about protecting anybody’s feelings, it’s not about protecting anybody’s roster spots, it’s about what do we need to do in order to win the SEC East? That’s what we all came to do. So if in our evaluation we feel like we need to take another quarterback to provide either depth or provide competition, then we reserve the right to do that."
Drinkwitz said so far there hasn’t been a transfer quarterback that fit with the Tigers. Mizzou has signed 27 players in this recruiting cycle, 17 high school prospects and ten transfers. Due to an NCAA exception for this year, the Tigers still have up to five scholarships available for this class. Those could be handed out at any point prior to fall camp in August or they could simply not be used.
Missouri was never heavily tied to any quarterback in the portal. There was a 24-hour cycle in which a dalliance with Spencer Rattler was rumored before Rattler landed at South Carolina. There has been recent speculation that the Tigers might have an interest in Georgia transfer J.T. Daniels. Daniels was injured early this year and never got the job back as Stetson Bennett led the Bulldogs to the national title. He is already in the transfer portal, but will not finish classes in Athens until May and is reportedly in no hurry to make a decision.
And once it gets to that point, Missouri may or may not have much interest in Daniels. Or anyone else. Players have until May 1 to put their names in the portal and be eligible to play at a new school next fall, but Drinkwitz talked on Wednesday morning like a coach that was perfectly happy to let his three current quarterbacks fight it out for the starting job.
“I think everything is a competition, whether you’re throwing the football or leading in the locker room,” Drinkwitz said. “Brady and Tyler really embrace that process. I know Sam is already itching, has already got a playbook and is trying to learn that on his own. It will be a little bit tougher without him being here until the summer, but it is going to be a fun competition. All of these guys are ultra-talented, ultra-competitive.
“I look forward to seeing who really takes the reins of this thing.”
Regardless of who starts at quarterback, the structure of the position will be different for the Tigers. Missouri hired Texas State offensive coordinator Jacob Peeler to coach the wide receivers this season. That means Bush Hamdan, who coached both receivers and quarterbacks last season, will focus solely on the signal callers. Drinkwitz will remain the offensive coordinator and call the plays, but he will spend less time devoted specifically to coaching the quarterbacks.
In giving the reason for the moves, Drinkwitz alluded to the Jekyll and Hyde nature of Missouri’s season in 2021.
“Our quarterback play was pretty good early, but our team was not functioning as a unit very well,” he said. “So I stepped away from the quarterbacks and spent more time on the team and then our quarterback play fell off late in the year. Just looking at that, felt like I wasn’t doing a good enough job coaching the quarterbacks and handling the team responsibilities.”
In the first four games, Bazelak averaged 300 yards passing per and threw ten touchdowns versus just three interceptions. But over his next five, he averaged just 223.5 yards per game and had six touchdowns and eight picks, including some critical mistakes. His season ended with a 10-for-26 for 65 yards (2.5 yards per attempt) clunker in which Mizzou was blown out by Arkansas. Drinkwitz opened up the competition for the bowl game and Cook won it. He went 27-for-34 for 238 yards and a touchdown and ran for 53 yards and another score, but Mizzou lost to Army on a last-second field goal to finish the year 6-7.
When Bazelak opted to leave—a decision that seemingly was made well in advance of the bowl game—it left Drinkwitz with a quarterback room that has little experience and production. Rather than trying to fix it all himself—because Missouri’s problems went beyond the quarterback position—Drinkwitz is turning to Hamdan and will divide his time among the many other duties of the head coach.
“It allows me to be more hands-on in developing relationships with every player on our team,” Drinkwitz said. “It just takes a little bit off my plate, allows me to be more flexible in recruiting and also recruiting both boosters and donors and doing all the different things as a head coach. It’s just kind of like a glass of water: If you stick your hand in it, when you take it out, something will fill it back up. So there’s other things that will fill up my time.”
Drinkwitz has plenty on his plate. The Tigers are set to open spring football in a little more than three weeks. Cook and Macon will battle throughout spring ball and then Horn will hit campus in June. Whether more changes will come to the quarterback position for Mizzou remains to be seen.
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