With Mizzou it’s always, ‘Yeah, but…’ Tigers can quiet critics vs. Bama

• Eli Drinkwitz is 26-5 at Missouri since start of 2023 season. That matches Lane Kiffin’s record in that time.
• If Missouri beats Alabama, it can silence some critics and skeptics.
• Clash with Alabama is a chance to ‘go knock some heads off.’

Missouri’s top feats since joining the SEC tend to be qualified with a two-word rebuttal.

Yeah, but …

Missouri won the SEC East in 2013 and 2014.

Yeah, but, Florida and Tennessee were down, and Georgia hadn’t hired Kirby Smart.

Missouri won 21 games the past two seasons.

Yeah, but, it capitalized on a favorable schedule.

No. 14 Missouri is now 5-0, one of four undefeated SEC teams.

Yeah, but, who have the Tigers played?

Yeah, well, here comes No. 8 Alabama into Faurot Field. A win against the Crimson Tide would be an uppercut to the chin of the yeah, but, brigade.

“How many of the old guard,” mused Mike Kelly, Missouri’s play-by-play voice since 1994, “said, ‘Yeah but,’” after any Missouri achievement since it joined the SEC from the Big 12?

“You never really got full credit for having damn good football teams,” Kelly added, “because others — the longtime guard in the league — would not give you credit for that.

‘If you beat Alabama, does that give you more credibility among those longtime viewers of this conference?”

Never mind the naysayers. A win against Alabama would cement Missouri as a College Football Playoff contender and polish the bona fides of sixth-year coach Eliah Drinkwitz.

This isn’t Nick Saban’s Alabama that won six national titles, but the resurgent Tide snapped Georgia’s 33-game home winning streak two weeks ago.

Many within this generation of college football players started paying attention to the sport while Alabama’s dynasty still ruled.

“It was the ‘A.’ You saw them, and it was just like, that was the school you wanted to get offered by, or you wanted to go to,” Missouri linebacker Josiah Trotter told USA TODAY Sports. “I’m just looking forward to the opportunity to just go play them and go knock some heads off.”

A horse-riding Heisman Trophy contender

The first thing you need to know about Missouri tailback Ahmad Hardy is he rides horses.

The second thing you need to know about Hardy is he’s a bundle of tenacity, a portrait of toughness, and he leads the nation in rushing.

By Trotter’s telling, these facts are related.

“Anybody that says they ride horses, especially in the SEC,” Trotter says, “I would think they’d probably be a load to tackle.”

Hardy, a Louisiana-Monroe transfer, is the latest in a line of flourishing transfer running backs in Missouri’s outside zone scheme.

Drinkwitz learned the merits of the outside zone after spending three seasons on North Carolina State’s staff with offensive line coach Dwayne Ledford, who now coaches the Atlanta Falcons’ offensive line.

The outside zone benefits offenses with athletic linemen. It’s designed to get 300-pound defensive linemen moving from sideline to sideline. Get those big defenders moving laterally, and they become easier to move out of the way. That’s the idea.

“It allows the running backs to put their foot in the ground and find a hole,” Drinkwitz said. “Defenses all want to fit gaps. Well, those gaps are now moving at a rapid rate.”

That’s all very technical sounding, but quarterback Beau Pribula boils it down to brass tacks.

“When you have one of the best backs in the country,” Pribula said, “it makes your job a lot easier.”

A play caller, plus Beau Pribula, feed Missouri uprising

Pribula, like Hardy, became a jewel of Missouri’s transfer class that ranked among the nation’s finest. Pribula showed his running ability as Penn State’s backup last season. In five games starting for Missouri, he’s proven to be much more than a set of wheels, while completing nearly 76% of his passes.

Pribula visited Mississippi, Central Florida and Iowa last winter while evaluating transfer options, after first visiting Missouri.

“I knew after that visit, (Missouri) was going to be tough to beat,” Pribula said.

Nobody ever surpassed Missouri, where he knew he’d have a chance to start and would fit the scheme.

Drinkwitz came up coaching on offense, and he called Missouri’s plays his first few seasons. His record after three seasons: 17-19.

Drinkwitz describes himself as college football’s dorkiest coach, and, what the heck, dorks like calling plays, so he admits handing off play-calling was tough — but necessary. He hired Kirby Moore as his offensive coordinator before the 2023 season and delegated play-calling duties.

“I just had to fully embrace that my role for the team was to be the head coach,” Drinkwitz said.

Drinkwitz’s record since that fork-in-the-road alteration: 26-5.

If you’re scoring at home, that record identically matches Mississippi coach Lane Kiffin’s record the past 2½ seasons. Kiffin generates more headlines, but Drinkwitz keeps the wins coming, too.

It would be an oversimplification to say Drinkwitz’s play-calling change triggered this windfall of success, but his decision to delegate those duties “might have been the final straw that helped us break through,” he says.

Eli Drinkwitz allows Missouri ‘to dream’

What’s Drinkwitz meant to Missouri?

Kelly, the voice of the Tigers, describes it like this:

Former coach Larry Smith gave Missouri hope in the late 1990s. Gary Pinkel provided Missouri with consistency. Drinkwitz gives Missouri “the opportunity to dream,” Kelly says.

Dream, even, of a home playoff game played in front of a sellout crowd.

An old joke around Missouri is that home attendance would be steady until it came time to put venison in the freezer. Although Faurot Field is not currently at peak capacity amid ongoing stadium projects, Missouri’s game against Alabama will mark an 18th consecutive home sellout.

“We’ve been able to overcome deer season,” Kelly quipped.

Add that to Drinkwitz’s ever-improving resumé.

Missouri took a circuitous route to hiring Drinkwitz. Its board of curators rejected the first batch of candidates during the 2019 search. The search then pivoted toward Drinkwitz, who won 12 games in a single season coaching Appalachian State.

The Missouri job called to him for two reasons: The campus is located 125 miles away from two metropolitan areas, St. Louis and Kansas City. Proximity to metros aids recruiting. Also, coaching Missouri meant the chance to build an unrivaled legacy.

Missouri stood on the doorstep of preeminence under Pinkel, but Lucy kept yanking the football away. The Tigers were positioned to play for the BCS national championship in 2007, before Oklahoma routed them in the Big 12 championship.

A win in the 2013 SEC Championship could have propelled Missouri into a spot in the national championship game. Auburn ensured that possibility went no further with a 59-point outburst in Atlanta. As Kelly joked of that game, “Tre Mason is still picking up yards somewhere against” Missouri.

Pinkel’s 12-win seasons in 2007 and 2013 mark the program’s summit, at least since Dan Devine led the Tigers to triumphs in the Sugar and Orange Bowls in the 1960s.

“There’s things that we can accomplish that have never been done in Mizzou football,” Drinkwitz said, “and that’s something you can take great pride in.”

Two years ago, Missouri started 5-0 before losing at home to LSU. Yeah, but, here’s a fresh opportunity for Missouri to elevate onto a higher plane.

‘We got to go out there and earn our respect,’ Trotter said.

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.