Mizzou football’s breaking in a new coach and scheme. COVID-19 makes that a challenge
When spring football was shut down for the Mizzou, the Tigers were just three practices into the Eliah Drinkwitz era.
Their first-year head coach was hired this winter to replace Barry Odom, seen as an up-and-coming offensive guru who’d overhaul the offense. The Tigers were right at the halfway point of what Drinkwitz called a “six day install” as he implemented his new schemes when the coronavirus put a halt to that.
With few opportunities to evaluate the team because of the pandemic, that process continues, but it’s been hampered. Drinkwitz and his staff have some unknowns in their personnel — the players.
Instead of benefiting from the NCAA’s usual allotment of 15 spring practices, Drinkwitz and staff had just those three sessions to evaluate the team and begin to impart culture.
There’s also the matter of a starting quarterback. The new coach said he doesn’t yet know who that will be.
“You always want to design your game plan around your players’ strengths, not around what your ideas are,” Drinkwitz said. “It’ll just depend on who our quarterback is.”
The Tigers’ starting quarterback role is up for grabs because former quarterback Kelly Bryant exhausted his eligibility after the 2019 season.
Shawn Robinson and Taylor Powell were set to duke it out for the job this spring. Connor Bazelak figures to be in the mix during training camp, too, but he’s rehabbing a torn ACL suffered during the 2019 season finale against Arkansas.
With the differing skill-sets of Robinson and Powell, Drinkwitz said he doesn’t yet know exactly how he wants to build his first offense at MU. But it’s notable that he has experience with both pass-first and dual-threat quarterbacks.
For now, Robinson is labeled as the projected starter, and he brings a dangerous run game to his resume. That much was on display in his two years at TCU before he transferred to Mizzou. When Drinkwitz was the coach at Appalachian State in 2019, he started Zac Thomas, also considered a mobile quarterback.
Powell, meanwhile, is as more of a pure passer who likes to throw from the pocket. In 2018, when Drinkwitz was the offensive coordinator at North Carolina State, he worked closely with Ryan Finley. Now with the Cincinnati Bengals, Finley threw for 3,928 yards in his senior year.
Regardless of who starts in the Tigers’ scheduled Sept. 5 kickoff against Central Arkansas, Drinkwitz knows what his foundation will be: He calls it a “pro-tempo style,” a mix of pro-style concepts based on tempo.
In explaining it, Drinkwitz said pro-tempo features a dominant downhill running game with an emphasis on outside and inside zone rushes. In passing situations, the quarterback focuses on horizontal seams and vertical throws.
The hallmark, Drinkwitz said, is “execution.”
“When you talk about what it’s going to look like, hopefully it’ll be those three things,” Drinkwitz said. “But we’ll see.”
As Drinkwitz tinkers with his offense, he stressed that he was fortunate to retain defensive coordinator Ryan Walters. The Mizzou defense was stellar in 2019, allowing 19.4 points per game, 16th in the nation, and kept the Tigers afloat while the offense struggled.
The MU defense has lost some crucial pieces from its 2019 edition, such as defensive back DeMarkus Acy and defensive tackle Jordan Elliott, but Drinkwitz said returning seven starters should help immensely with continuity.
“That scheme is going to stay the same, which is an aggressive mentality,” Drinkwitz said. “Plays a lot of man-to-man, multiple front defense that is going to stop the run and get after the quarterback in multiple ways.”
And amid the coronavirus pandemic and all its uncertainty, Drinkwitz has been able to find another small victory ... on film.
During his transition from Appalachian State to Mizzou, he said, he didn’t have much time to self-scout or watch other teams with similar styles. With so much unexpected time on his hands now, he’s been able to step back and do some quiet viewing.
“This past week, I’ve spent a lot of time watching similar-style schemes, whether it’s NFL or college football,” Drinkwitz said. “Trying to create some new ideas that could fit into what we’re doing. From that standpoint, it’s been really helpful.”
When the Tigers broke camp early on March 7, Drinkwitz said no starting positions were going to be earned during spring football anyway. He said those jobs would be determined at camp over the summer, roughly a month before the season kicks off in September.
While it’s unclear what that timeline might look like now — or if or when the season will actually begin at all — Drinkwitz said the Tigers will be ready to play when the time comes.
“That’s what our mindset is,” Drinkwitz said. “Who’s going to do it and how we’re going to do it — we’ll figure that out when guys are back on campus.”