The makings of Eliah Drinkwitz: How Mizzou football’s new coach ascended to the SEC
Eliah Drinkwitz found himself staring right at a lull during lunchtime. His fellow coaches were gone for a workout, and the “engine room” — affectionately named by the young graduate assistants and quality control coaches — was empty.
Tucked away in that room was a makeshift closet, off to the side but not exactly out of view. Drinkwitz thought he had time for a nap. He settled into the cozy confines of his temporary chamber, shutting his exhausted eyes for a quick pick-me-up.
Then Guz Malzahn caught him.
“I’ll never forget it. Gus said, ‘Some people just aren’t cut out for college football,’” Drinkwitz said with a laugh. “I was embarrassed. I apologized and went back to work.”
It was difficult to blame Drinkwitz, who was in his first year as a quality control assistant. His official timecard clocked in just shy of 30 hours per week, but reality was exhausting. Drinkwitz said he knew the job expectations: Get in the office before Malzahn (to make sure his coffee was hot and ready), and leave after his boss.
It’s just that Malzahn, then Auburn’s offensive coordinator, was “pretty religious” about getting into the office at 7 a.m. and leaving well past midnight, Drinkwitz said.
Sometimes a nap was a necessity — even if Drinkwitz eventually got busted.
Drinkwitz didn’t wait long to find out he was more than cut out for college football. He’s by far the youngest coach in the SEC at 37, hired as the Missouri Tigers’ top guy one decade after getting his start in the collegiate ranks.
The first-year coach is tasked with turning around a program that lost momentum, injecting his “pro-tempo” offense paired with youthful exuberance. The past decade — from Auburn to Arkansas State to Appalachian State to Mizzou — has all been in preparation for his MU inauguration.
That comes Sept. 26, when Drinkwitz runs on Faurot Field to lead his team against the SEC’s elite, Alabama.
“I knew pretty early that Eli would have a chance to make it big in college football because of his work ethic,” Malzahn said. “Nobody’s going to outwork him. Then you throw in his character and his integrity and the type of person he is. When you add up all those, I felt really strongly that he’s going to have a chance to make it.”
A perfect collegiate debut
Drinkwitz’s leap into college football was built on a calculated risk. After moving his way up the prep ranks, Drinkwitz was offensive coordinator at Springdale High in Arkansas, where Malzahn, too, used to coach.
Then Malzahn visited Drinkwitz to pitch his coaching gig. It was an opportunity to climb to the college ranks, Drinkwitz remembered Malzahn saying. Drinkwitz discussed it with his wife, Lindsey. After visiting Auburn and receiving job offers — Drinkwitz in coaching, Lindsey with the school district — the couple decided to go all-in.
Except the coaching job paid just $15,000, and offered no benefits. The Drinkwitzes had just had their first of four daughters, Addison. But they downsized from a family-sized Arkansas house to a 950-square-foot apartment.
“I honestly don’t know how we survived for two years,” said Drinkwitz, who held the Auburn job from 2010-11. “We just did whatever we needed to do. Basically her parents and my parents were generous to us. Whenever they would come visit, they would pay for our meals. I don’t know what we were thinking to be honest with you.”
Drinkwitz’s time at Auburn laid the foundation for relationships that evolved into his present coaching staff. It was there he met Erik Link and Casey Woods, fellow quality control assistants who are now among his assistants at MU. Curtis Luper was Auburn’s running backs coach then and serves in the same role with Mizzou now. Rhett Lashlee, now Miami’s offensive coordinator, was another Malzahn assistant on that staff, so it boasted a lot of coaching talent.
That bond between Link, Woods, Lashlee and other lower-level coaches on Malzahn’s staff at Auburn was built in the “engine room” where Drinkwitz was caught napping. The room, buried in the Auburn football facility, earned that nickname because it’s “where all the work gets done and nobody sees,” Woods said.
“You spend more time with them than you do your wives or your kids,” Woods said. “At that time in my life, I wasn’t even married yet. Coach Drink had been (married) and a baby had just been born. Any time that you work together in those kinds of settings you have the opportunity to grow.”
Drinkwitz’s job duties as a quality control assistant included pretty much any gruntwork imaginable. He drew up play cards, broke down film and fetched other coaches their breakfast and coffee. He drove assistants to airports for recruiting trips or to speak at clinics. He ran peewee camps and gave recruits tours when they visited campus.
Drinkwitz quipped that he was “responsible for ensuring that the quality of the offense was able to win the national championship.” Of course, Auburn went on to do just that in 2010, going 14-0 in Drinkwitz’s first season.
The cohort of future Mizzou coaches earned a first-hand view of how perfection was created. Luper, the lone offensive coach in the press box, and Drinkwitz, Woods, Link and Lashlee dissected whatever they could from that bird’s eye view.
“I don’t know how many people know it, but in the national championship year, you had a GA and two QCs, not only in the game, but even in-game with what you were seeing,” Lashlee said. “Gus leaned on us a lot. Eli was a big part of that.”
As the season unfolded, the wins piled up for Auburn. And with that success came the national spotlight. A midseason showdown with then-No. 6 LSU. The legendary “Camback” in the Iron Bowl against Alabama as Auburn overcame a 24-0 deficit. And, of course, the national championship victory.
Despite the hoopla, Drinkwitz said he doesn’t remember the season nearly as much as some of the other coaches do. He said he was so dialed into his daily tasks that a lot of it is a blur. But it’s fair to say that Mizzou’s current coaching staff was integral to one of college football’s greatest seasons.
“That’s the first time we looked up, Week 7, and we thought, ‘Holy (smokes), we’re pretty good,’” Woods said. “(The LSU game) was one of the most magical atmospheres that I’ve ever been a part of on a Saturday. That’s really something you have to do. If you go to an atmosphere like that, you go seeking it for the rest of your life.”
‘The Three Stooges’
Malzahn marveled at his assistants one day — his coaching staff that consisted in part of Lashlee, Woods and Drinkwitz.
Woods remembers Malzahn saying he was “really concerned about the youth of our staff” — Drinkwitz, Lashlee and Woods were each just 28.
Except Malzahn wasn’t really angry about this. He saw potential in them, so much so that he named each of them some kind of coordinator. Lashlee was offensive coordinator, Woods the recruiting coordinator and Drinkwitz the special teams coordinator.
“We were kind of like The Three Stooges figuring it out at Arkansas State,” Lashlee said. “That year was fun. It was my first year at the Division I level as an offensive coordinator. It was Eli and Casey’s first full-time position job.”
Drinkwitz called being able to coach at the Division I level with Malzahn a major breakthrough in his career. And it just so happened some of his closest friends in the profession were in that same room.
With the promotion came a pay raise to $50,000 — a fortune compared to the $15,000 he was making at Auburn. The funny thing was, Drinkwitz recalled, that he was still making less than the $51,000 he took home as a high school coach.
And now he’s commanding a $4 million salary at Mizzou.
“I thought I hit the jackpot even though I was still making less than I was as a high school coach,” Drinkwitz said. “I was just thankful for the opportunity. The opportunity to coach Division I football. I was familiar with Arkansas State having been familiar with the state.”
Drinkwitz, who’d been working as a running backs coach for Malzahn, was thrust into a new role in leading Arkansas State’s special teams. Even back then, Drinkwitz-led meetings were legendary, full of details, confidence and the trademark Drinkwitz energy that has already endeared him to Mizzou fans.
While Drinkwitz admitted he wasn’t exactly proficient in special teams, he said he recognized the opportunity it represented. It was the first time he’d commanded an entire room — offense and defense.
The perfect training ground for a future head coach.
“It says a lot about how I thought about him,” Malzahn said. “I was impressed with him. Special teams are so important in college football. The fact that I trusted him enough for special teams coordinator without having experience, I think that says it all.”
Malzahn departed after one season at Arkansas State, leaving Drinkwitz at a crossroads: follow Malzahn back to Auburn or blaze his own path? Drinkwitz chose the latter. New Arkansas State coach Bryan Harsin retained Drinkwitz and promoted him to co-offensive coordinator; he shared those duties with Bush Hamdan, now his wide receivers coach at MU.
Drinkwitz said he knew it was a risk to leave Malzahn’s safety net, but for his own personal growth in the profession, “the best (path) for me was to set out on my own.”
Doing so seems to have worked out perfectly for Drinkwitz in the long run. He bounced from Boise State to North Carolina State to Appalachian State before landing at Mizzou. MU athletic director Jim Sterk handed him the keys to the Tigers’ football program last December.
He’s navigated an unconventional offseason punctuated by a pandemic, recruiting restrictions and the need to earn his team’s trust during a social-justice movement.
Now all that’s left is to coach some football.
“My wife and I, we prayed about it,” Drinkwitz said. “We took a chance to move to Auburn and sell our house and move into a small apartment. If we’re gonna go, let’s go all-in. That was really the opportunity there. The more you grow, the more you learn.”