Could Marquis Gracial start for Missouri football at defensive tackle? Camp reps suggest so

Marquis Gracial always believed he could play.

This year, the sophomore Missouri football defensive tackle knew he could play.

Mizzou lost three of the four players that formed its oft-rotating two-deep at defensive tackle last season, returning just Kristian Williams, a team captain, from that core group. The Tigers went to the portal to help plug the gap, bringing highly ranked Florida transfer Chris McClellan and New Mexico State newcomer and St. Louis native Sterling Webb to Columbia over the offseason.

But during Friday’s practice, which for the first time this fall camp was open to reporters from beginning to end, as the Tigers went into 11-on-11 situational football work, McClellan and Webb were not among the first tackles to walk onto the field.

Williams was one.

Gracial was the other.

“With the older guys leaving, my mindset has changed a little bit, you know, knowing that I could go out there,” Gracial said Tuesday, three days before the open practice. “I mean, I felt like that when I was younger, too. But it’s like now, there’s no senior, there’s nobody that can come in, like, ‘oh well, I know I’m not gonna play for real.’ The competition’s wide open.”

There have been early hints at his progression up the depth chart.

At the beginning of fall camp, MU head coach Eli Drinkwitz told reporters that the 6-foot-4, 323-pound tackle had “really improved his game” between his second and third years with the program. Before Friday’s practice, Gracial himself said “there’s no starter right now.”

Then came the proof of what is seemingly still an open battle for reps.

Alongside Williams, Gracial took a lion’s share of the reps during the portions of practice that came closest to resembling a live game. That doesn’t necessarily confirm he’s a Day 1 starter, but it does seem to indicate that…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/could-marquis-gracial-start-missouri-081532397.html

Author : Columbia Daily Tribune

Publish date : 2024-08-18 08:15:32

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