In this year’s final installment of Mizzou football’s Tiger Talk at Harpo’s, Head Coach Eli Drinkwitz previews the next opponent for the Tigers while talking about the season as a whole.
Here’s what Drinkwitz, alongside seniors Chris McClellan and Logan Muckey had to say:
Eli Drinkwitz
On Ahmad Hardy: “He’s been great. The best thing is he hasn’t gotten too worked up or too upset when his number hasn’t been called, he’s just consistently produced. And obviously in that game, I thought he did an excellent job of obviously running with the ball, gaining extra yards. But after the fumble, just responding the way he did was pretty remarkable.”
Hardy continued: “His natural ability is to run through tackles and he started off the game being able to do that. He did that on the first touchdown run he had after the field goal. But then, really, the the long run, you know, our offensive line and tight ends created the line of scrimmage two yards down the field, and that allowed him to insert vertically outside, which was really impressive. And, I mean, I thought Donovan Olugbode and Kevin Coleman had really good blocks down the field, which allowed him to get into the space. But, I mean, he’s fast. Yeah, he’s really fast.”
On Hardy being named to the Doak Walker Award Semi-Finalist List: “What’s pretty impressive too, if I’m not mistaken, in six years we’ve had three running backs on the Doak Walker List …. Tyler Badie did it, Cody Schrader did it, and now Ahmad Hardy.”
On the team’s play against Mississippi State: “I thought our guys played with incredible effort. You know, when you’re going through adversity, it’s really hard to just play with relentless effort, no matter what, no matter the circumstances. And I thought they did, even the penalties that we were getting defensively, they weren’t effort issues, right? They weren’t lack of effort. We weren’t out of position. They were just playing so hard. So I was so proud of that …. I was proud of what the defense had, I was proud of the way the offense started fast, bounced back after the turnovers. I thought special teams provided us with some really key momentum plays. I just thought the whole team really played with an energy and an emphasis and for each other that we’ve been looking for, you know? And obviously, there’s a lot of things that we needed to clean up, and we will clean up. We cannot turn the ball over on the road and have a chance to win this game. So we’ve got, we’ve got to make sure that’s an emphasis. But you know, when we did turn it over, our defense went down back. Instead of just getting turnovers, they got turnovers for touchdowns. Said, hey, we’ll just finish this job ourselves. So that was pretty impressive.
On Toriano Pride Jr: “I think my daughter told me that he started his career with the pick six, and he ended his career at Faurot Field with a pick six. So that’s pretty special. For a young man who grew up going to Missouri games. His grandpa, Percy, has always been a season ticket holder. For them to all be there for that game on senior day and to perform that well. And that’s memory that you’ll have for a long time.”
On Marvin Burks Jr: “It reminded me when I recruited him that sucker was a running back and he looked pretty natural with the ball in his hand didn’t he. That was pretty impressive. He’s got a great burst. You know, Marv’s a guy that’s played a lot, just got to continue to play with confidence. And I think that’s just another play that he’s going to have in his arsenal, that he can play with confidence. He’s a really, really good player, physical player.”
On Daeden Hopkins: “Yeah, he’s going to be a dude, like a dude, dude. He’s a remarkable young man, played all three sports in high school. Mom was a volleyball player at Nebraska. He’s got such a bright future and man did he play well. He played fearless, 1as really good in the run, had several TFL’s. I thought he just did an excellent job all night. And, you know, we got to be smart. He’s already played in this fourth game, so we’re going to try to redshirt him. You know, we’ve got Javion Hilson, he can play one more. So we’re going to try to make sure that he doesn’t have to go in. But, man, it was, it was impressive when he did.”
Wilson continued: “One of our core values is do more than what’s expected. He’s a guy who will come in, he’ll be in the indoor all by himself at 6am, he’ll stay after practice and work 15 minutes on his own on fast rush moves. He’s got the desire to be an elite player. He’s got the traits from the quickness, from the size and the speed and the security that he hit, he’s got a lot of potential.”
On the decisions behind redshirting someone: “Well, the first thing you do is you figure out what’s best for the player and then what’s best for the program. How do you marry those two? And we try to make sure that if we’re going to use a young man’s redshirt, that he’s going to get over 300 snaps. If he’s not going to get over 300 snaps, then that’s not fair to his career. If we’re going to redshirt somebody, we want to be on a two year contract. So we got Daeden Hopkins on a two year contract, so we’re pretty excited about our ability to retain him and develop him, so that was a big piece of the decision to.”
On buyouts with redshirts: “Now more than ever the buyouts are affected because the buyout has to be paid for by the other schools rev share amount. So not only are they going to have to pay the player to come, and obviously gonna have to give more money than we’re giving, but they’re also gonna have to pay the buyout, which comes out of the rev share. So they’re basically gonna have to have a two for one. Now, you know, we’ll see how all that stuff’s enforced, but you know, even last year with some of the guys that we lost, we got buyouts back.”
On Beau Pribula: “[Beau] is going through his recovery and rehab protocol. There’s steps that he has to take in order to be, you know, considered cleared and deemed playable. Last week, he was working through those and so that’s why he appeared on the injury report. He was able to do some things, if you know, each day, it’s really about how he recovers the next day, how much pain he’s in, how much movement does he have? So Saturday, he was able to go out there and get some extended work, which is what people saw. Today he got some extended work. We’ll find out tomorrow where he’s at. He’s going to have to be cleared by the doctors first.”
On Oklahoma’s defense: “We’ve gone against Coach [Venables] for a while. He’s very good at knowing your tendencies, taking specific plays and tendencies away from you, making you play left handed, not doing what you want to do. He does a really good job of staying ahead of the calls. Knowing, once I take this away, this is going to be your secondary answer. They play very aggressive style. They’re very multiple. He does a good job of being in and out of man coverage and then mixing in some trap coverage to force you into mistakes, which is why they’ve been able to get, you know, the turnovers in the last two games. He’s just really good at what he does.”
On Matt Zollers growth: “I think the first part of the game, he really started fast. He was decisive decision maker. He knew exactly where we wanted to go with the ball. He was accurate with the ball. You could just tell there was a lot of confidence there. Like I told him, you threw 15 passes, he had two touchdowns, an interception and two intentional groundings, so we got to get the roller coaster ride just to level out just a little bit. He displayed an incredible amount of toughness. He got hit several times. He managed the game …. I’ve just been very impressed. You got to remember, he didn’t play much in senior year, so every time he goes out there, there’s just a little bit more confidence”
On earlier comments regarding Zollers and Olugbode: “I made a flippant comment about, you know, we got to pay Matt and Donovan. I just want everybody to know those guys are getting paid. We’re going to keep those two. Okay, so nobody stress about that, like, we’re going to keep those two. That was just off the cuff, like, hey, you know, they’re good players, and we got to do, we can to keep them, but we’re going to keep them, so don’t stress.”
Logan Muckey
On how his cancer treatment changed his view on football and life: “God put me in this situation at this time for a specific reason. The biggest lesson that I took from the entire thing was don’t take a single thing for granted. No matter of circumstances, whether it be football, whether it be daily life, in a job, don’t take anything for granted. I think that’s something that I really didn’t pay much attention to before this. Then I got sidelined doing this thing and then that really switched my perspective on life saying, okay, now I gotta make the most of every single day I have because I don’t know really which one would be my last. I don’t know which practice is gonna be my last one. That’s something that I would love anyone else to take away from that is, don’t take anything for granted, make sure you’re maximizing every opportunity you get in whatever it may be. I think that kind of, you know, snowballed into the rest of the season, or the rest of the summer, leading up to the season. I had the most fun ever had playing football this evening. Just because of that perspective, it’s just a game.”
On the brotherhood: “Drinks tells us all the time that brothers are made from adversity. The first thing that happens when adversity hits is how is the team going to respond? How are we going to either build up together? It’s everything …. It’s something that I personally fall back on especially during my time with the cancer and everything, I leaned on these guys. I leaned on guys like Chris, Josh, Tommy, Ahmadd, these guys are family. Being in the program for going on five years now, you really realize how strong these connections are and what they’re supposed to be. We work together all day, every night, seven days a week. We’re grinding, we’re lifting weights, we’re running stadiums, we’re out there for practice for hours on end. It’s kind of hard not to be close, you know? The way that we embrace it and attack every day with that attitude of brothers over everything, family over everything, it changes the culture, and not only for this year, but for years to come. We’re embedding this culture that we create now into the freshman class, into the sophomores, that will carry it on the way that we built it for years to come. It’s a true, a Brotherhood really can change a culture. I don’t think you get that in a lot of teams. I think ours is awesome.”
On Oklahoma: “Having an opportunity to go three, back to back, 10 win seasons, do something that’s never been done before, it’s extremely important for all of us. We all realize that we need to approach every day with a different level of energy. We need to come in ready to work, ready to ball. We need to approach Wednesday, the lift tomorrow morning, like it’s Saturday’s game. That’s how we’re all moving, that’s how we’re all approaching this week. It’s all about playing complementary football. You know, offensively, we got to take care football. We can’t afford turnovers. Defensively, we got to get turnovers. Special teams, we got to create momentum plays. We got to go out there, whether it be a big kickoff return, a punt return, you know, pinning them inside the 10 on the kickoff. Those things are what’s going to contribute to a win on Saturday, if we do those things, then there’s no doubt in my mind we’re going to do what we need to do.”
Words for Missouri fans: “I’d like everyone to know that I’m currently a living a little kid dream. I grew up in Lee’s Summit which is hour and a half, hour forty-five depending on traffic away from here. Big Chiefs fan, grew up watching Mizzou since I was able to watch football. So me being in the position, I am being a walk-on in 2021 getting voted as a captain. I’m living out everything that I’ve wanted to as a kid. If I were to leave you guys with anything, I just want to thank you guys for every ounce of support you’ve given this football team. You know, whether it be for twenty years or just this season, like everything is appreciated. It’s been an absolute. Been an absolute honor to wear the black and gold and represent this university and this city. I love everyday of it. It’s a tribute to everybody, so thank you.”
Chris McClellan
On Logan’s diagnosis: “Honestly when we first found out about the news we were in Jamaica. Being on that trip and hearing that news, when we came back, we were going to do whatever we can to support Muck. He’s our brother. Everyday he’s the same dude. He never shows up emotional, no matter what he’s going through. He’s trying to help everybody out the younger guys, being that light, making sure everybody is on time for their lift. Me and [Muckey] talk everyday. Our lockers are two apart. I was hurting, me personally, because I love this dude. I feel like he’s kind of the ultimate program guy. Whenever we were doing our voting for captain, the first name I put down was Logan Muckey.”
On the brotherhood: “For the team, I try to make myself available to everybody in that locker room. Each day I go in there to be that light, to be that guy. You can call me anytime, and I’ll be there for offense, defense, special teams. I don’t care, freshmen, seniors. It doesn’t matter. Now, I want to go out there and be the guy to win them, and be the example guy for the younger guys, for the older guys, for anybody who needs it. I know that if I call Muck at 2 in the morning and I’m like, I need you to pick me up, he’ll be like, that’s kind of strange, but he’ll come do it. Having that connection to each player on the team that’s the best part of brotherhood. I can go into that locker room and have a conversation with anybody from any background and all that stuff. It doesn’t matter. We’re one unit. We’re one team, one heartbeat.”
On the emotions of Saturday night: “It was a lot of emotions going into that game. I don’t think I’ve ever been that emotional going into a foootball game. Just realizing the finality of it, like that was the last home game in college, so I was going through a lot of emotions. So going out there and leaning on my brothers was a big part of that. At the start of the game, I was very emotional, tears and seeing my family out there …. emotions were definitely high.”
On how important Mizzou Football is in his life: “Before I got here, I was struggling. I didn’t know what I was doing really, but I came to a program, and they welcomed me to open arms. It was never a question of why I was here, what am I doing, I never felt like that. From day one, I felt like I was in the Brotherhood, from the first workout to tomorrow …. there’s a lot of love …. my whole life would be on a whole different path if I never came to this University and I genuinely believe that.”
On emotions behind facing Oklahoma: “From my front door to OU’s campus is a two hour drive. So this is like, basically a homecoming for me, and I’m super excited. It’s going to be very emotional for me this week as well. This is such a big game for me. I grew up watching these guys. There’s a lot I want to do, so I’m very excited right there and play. We could play tomorrow and I’d be ready.”
Words for Missouri fans: “I think the greatest decision I ever made in my life was becoming a Missouri Tiger. That goes out to the amazing fans, the coaches, the brothers, everything. I love every bit of it. I wake up everyday excited to see what the day has ahead of it for me. The best decision I ever made was becoming a Tiger.”
