‘Ready to roll again’: Mizzou football flips game plan from Arkansas to Vanderbilt
Missouri Tigers coach Eliah Drinkwitz got a call early Monday morning from Arkansas’ Sam Pittman. The Hogs coach was doing his due diligence, letting his opponent know they were close to the SEC’s roster threshold, meaning there was a chance their Saturday game could be postponed.
By around 5 p.m. Monday, MU knew its fate: Instead of facing Arkansas, the SEC switched the Tigers’ opponent to Vanderbilt. After meeting with his players at 5:30 p.m. to talk changes, Drinkwitz called an emergency staff meeting. Their Arkansas game plan was just about done, but they would need to formulate a different plan of attack for the Commodores.
That kicked off a long night as Drinkwitz said he was in the football facilities until midnight. Sometime around 11:30 p.m., he jokingly sent Pittman a text, telling the coach he better not be asleep because Drinkwitz was grinding away in his office.
Drinkwitz said he was then back at 5 a.m. Tuesday “ready to roll again.” The Tigers practiced at 1 p.m. Tuesday, when they’ll smooth out and continue adjusting on the fly. Perhaps the one major change, Drinkwitz said, is he switched from Diet Coke to coffee this week “just to try to make sure we’re ready.”
“We’ve had a couple games canceled and moved around,” Drinkwitz said Tuesday at his weekly news conference. “I thank the SEC for finding us an opponent. Obviously not ideal to have to switch that late. We were pretty much done with our game plan for the other team that we’re going to play. Now we’re focused in on Vanderbilt.”
While the Mizzou vs. Arkansas game was postponed because of COVID-19 protocols within the Razorbacks’ program, the Tigers are sifting through their own roster numbers.
Sunday’s round of COVID testing came back negative, Drinkwitz said, though his answer was accompanied with the weekly knocking of wood.
Drinkwitz said the roster they turned into the SEC this week had 59 scholarship players. But that includes four starters — Xavier Delgado, Larry Borom, Trajan Jeffcoat and Kobie Whitewide — who missed last Saturday’s win over South Carolina. All four players featured an “or” designation on the Tigers’ depth chart for the Vandy game, which kicks off at 11 a.m. at Memorial Stadium in Columbia.
Fortunately, Drinkwitz said they expect to return three of the 11 players who were out for the South Carolina game because of COVID-19 considerations. The Tigers only had 52 scholarship players then, below the SEC’s 53-man roster threshold. But Drinkwitz said his Tigers wanted to play despite the numbers.
MU defensive coordinator Ryan Walters also returned this week. He didn’t coach against the Gamecocks because he was in quarantine through contact tracing.
Of the returning players, though, backup quarterback Shawn Robinson is still out. That means true freshman Brady Cook is Connor Bazelak’s backup, which was reflected in the depth chart. In an emergency scenario, wide receiver Micah Wilson, who started his MU career at quarterback, will be the third-string option.
“As always with testing, there’s another round (Tuesday),” Drinkwitz said. “We won’t know until we get our results on where we’re at. There’s always a tremendous amount of nerves when you travel. We’re just waiting to see how that plays out.”
Mizzou (3-3) plays a Vanderbilt (0-7) team it was originally supposed to face Oct. 17. But the ‘Dores had fallen below the roster threshold, leading to the first SEC game postponed because of COVID-19 at the time.
The scheduling shuffle was allowed to be made as late as Monday evening because of a recent rule change. The SEC implemented a rescheduling measure that gives the league office power to revise the football schedule on a weekly basis, with the goal to maximize the number of games available to be played.
Mizzou will still need to make up the Arkansas game, along with its postponed Georgia game from Nov. 7. Because the Vanderbilt game was moved to Saturday, though, that means the Tigers have open dates on Dec. 12 and Dec. 19 to squeeze in their games versus the Hogs and Bulldogs. The Tigers’ only remaining scheduled game is Dec. 5 at Mississippi State.
“It’s been an interesting season and nothing like anything anyone probably expected,” Drinkwitz said. “But I’m very thankful for the men in this locker room, the men in this organization that have sacrificed so much and been resilient in the face of all kinds of adversity.”