Just jumping in? Here are the previous rounds of the Missouri Tigers Football Draft:
Welcome, Tiger fans, to #PeakOffseasonContent. Despite a lack of championships, the Missouri Football Tigers have had some excellent players throughout the years, both at the college and professional levels. There have been excellent ambassadors on and off the field, as well as some that changed the program or revolutionized a position. So what better time than now to draft a hypothetical team of these exquisite athletes?
BK and I will build a team of 22 starters (sorry, specialists!) to craft a team to play against the other. For simplicity’s sake, we’re limiting our selections to guys who played on the 2000 team going forward, including the current roster in 2020. Each Round will alternate who goes first and we’ll provide our reasoning/explanations/defense afterwards.
At the end, you all will be able to vote for who you think has the best team! And of course, we’d love to hear your picks for each round as well and why we are dumdums who don’t know what we’re talking about.
Round VI starts with Team Nate!
Round VI, Pick 11: Nate selects TE Chase Coffman
This might be a jerk move: I just took Martin Rucker and now I take Chase Coffman? Rude! Buuuuuuut....I need two excellent tight ends to run my Pistol offense and why not take the two best tight ends of the past 20 years?
Missouri is known for three ends: burnt, tight, and defensive. And barbecue aside, when Missouri has elites at the end positions, magical things happen. So I’m taking the second of the elite Missouri tight ends.
Coffman was never much of a blocker, but that didn’t matter. He was a mismatch machine in the secondary: too big for a nickel or safety to cover, too fast for most linebackers to cover. He arrived on campus in 2005 and immediately contributed 500 yards and 4 touchdowns. Over the next two years he and Rucker provided over 1,000 yards and 10 touchdowns, and then in 2008 Coffman, on his own, logged 90 catches, 987 yards, and 10 touchdowns as a consensus All-American and the John Mackey Award. He was a tad too early to be utilized correctly in the NFL but that doesn’t matter: for four years Coffman was an absolute force and one of the best pass catching tight ends in college football history.
Round VI, Pick 12: BK selects DE Markus Golden
Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be, huh? Just gonna go completely off the board and take two tight ends? Sweet, Nate. Real sweet.
(In all seriousness, great pick. I hadn’t given enough consideration to going with multiple tight ends. Hell of an idea).
Alright, back to your regularly scheduled pick, one of my all-time favorite Mizzou players: Markus Golden.
Golden was the man responsible for popularizing the term “D-Line Zou.” He was a card-carrying member of being #MizzouMade. If you’re looking for someone to represent your program the right way, look no further than Golden.
He was a record-setting running back at Affton High School in St. Louis, but eventually had to take a detour at Hutchinson Community College to achieve his lifelong dream of playing for Gary Pinkel and representing his state as a Tiger. When he got to Mizzou, he took full advantage of every opportunity.
Golden racked up 6.5 sacks and 13 tackles for loss as a backup on the Cotton Bowl-winning 2013 team before ultimately breaking out as a starter in 2014 when he finished with 8 sacks and 19.5 tackles for loss. And he wasn’t just a pass rusher, either. Dave Matter of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently noted that Golden finished 2014 with 78 total tackles. No SEC defensive lineman has produced more total tackles since.
An all-around player, a leader, and frankly one of my favorite players to cover. Welcome to the team, Markus. We’re thrilled to have you.
BK’s picks:
Round 1: QB Chase Daniel
Round 2: LB Sean Weatherspoon
Round 3: WR Jeremy Maclin
Round 4: DE Aldon Smith
Round 5: CB E.J. Gaines
Round 6: DE Markus Golden