What Eli Drinkwitz had to say: Tuesday, November 14 edition

Missouri is coming off game where it throttled the visitors from Rocky Top. Now, the Tigers turn their attention to the Florida Gators, who are coming off a 52-35 loss to LSU last Saturday. Of course, as always, here’s head coach Eli Drinkwitz:

The Opposition

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On Florida head coach Billy Napier: “I know that Coach (Billy) Napier is building the right kind of culture and the right kind of fight and the attention to detail and they’ve got really good schemes on both sides of the ball.”

On the Gators roster: “Outside of us I think they played Tennessee as dominating of performance there. And, you know, they obviously have some really talented players and when you look at their roster, it’s littered with four- or five-star guys top to bottom.”

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On Graham Mertz: “The Kansas City native is doing a very good job being efficient in coach (Billy) Napier’s offense. He spreads the ball around very well...I think he’s very efficient with the football. He’s very decisive with his reads and doesn’t put the football in jeopardy very much.”

On stopping Florida’s offense: “It’s really going to start with stopping the run. They run the ball really efficiently and allow play action in quick game and keeping their offense on the field and were going to have to figure out a little bit of what we want to do defensively”

Internal Thoughts

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Drinkwitz mentioned every member of the senior class: Ben Straatmann, Bence Polgar, Caimin Hayes, Chad Bailey, Cody Schrader, Darius Robinson, Ennis Rakestraw Jr., Javon Foster, J.C. Carlies, Joseph Charleston, Josh Landry, Jay Jernigan, Harrison Mevis, Kris Abrams-Draine, Marcellus Johnson, Mookie Cooper, Micah Manning, Nathaniel Peat, Nyles Gaddy, Realus George, Riley Williams, Peanut Houston, Shawn Hendershot, Theo Wease, Tyler Stephens, Ty’Ron Hopper, and Xavier Delgao.

On the senior class: “A special group of men who have worked hard to restore the roar of the Zoo.”

Accomplishing things the senior class hasn’t experienced at Mizzou: “Each year we kind of pick a few things, like what have we not accomplished here before. Let’s shoot for that goal and it’s been hey, let’s consistently sellout Faurot, let’s make Faurot a homefield advantage, let’s get that field storming game win and we’ve been able to do those things so far this year.”

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On what the seniors wanted in order to come back for another year: “I think you look at Javon (Foster) and X (Xavier Delgado) ...There was a belief that we believe that Coach Drink will bring the right people in and obviously coach (Brandon) Jones has done a lot for us on the offensive line. so I think it’s a consistency in the people that we’ve surronded them with. I don’t think necessarily that it’s me. It’s more about the people that we’ve surrounded.”

On moving past a dominating victory last week: “We can’t rely on last week’s performance. We have to stand alone on what we’re going to do this week.”

What worked well defensively on Saturday: “I think we found a lot of success last week in that odd front and creating some overlap.”

On defensive line coach Kevin Peoples: “I think he represents exactly what we’re trying to do which is coach our position at a high level and recruit at a high level.”

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Glass half full for the offensive line: “I think they had a lot of pride but after watching the tap, that we got to play a lot better technique and fundamentally. We got to continue to improve. So, they were a huge part of our success from running the football and protecting the quarterback, but you know, I think the mindset of our which is embodies in why we’re playing so well is we go back in there and watch the tape we’re really critical on ourselves.”

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On Triston Newson: “He’s been a guy that has started on fire in the spring and has just slowly continued to build and I think he embraced his role on special teams and did an excellent job in that role first and has gotten comfortable with play speed of the SEC and now he’s getting more and more reps on defense.”

On keeping receipts: “The good news is somebody kept receipts of me saying the week before last season on Thursday that the whole world was fixing to find out about Cody Schrader, so I get to take some pride in the fact that I was adamant about before everybody else was so that was good news.”

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On who he would pick in an alley fight alongside Cody Schrader: “I would still put it man Ty’Ron Hopper will be right there with me. If I got to choose, I don’t know, I like both those guys...you know D-Rob is so big. D-Rob would have the intimidation factor you know.”

Injury Report

Ty’Ron Hopper - Questionable, ankle