Missouri football is moving on after College Station beatdown, but with problems to fix

The word of the week in the Missouri football facility: “Responsibility.”

Mizzou head coach Eli Drinkwitz said it no fewer than 10 times during his weekly press conference Tuesday, three days after Missouri suffered its first loss of the season — and its first loss since Nov. 4, 2023 — on Saturday at Kyle Field, where Texas A&M dismantled Mizzou in a 41-10 beatdown.

Drinkwitz’s general message was that the team is taking Saturday on the chin; moving on with a greater sense of internal accountability.

The coach’s words for the team struck a similar tone.

“This week, I had a very clear and direct message with our team, and I want to say it again here to y’all,” the Missouri football coach said. “One bad day doesn’t define our team or our season. Our response will. There’s going to be bad days you’re going to have. You know, you’re not always going to have peak performance as much as we would like to.

“It doesn’t have to define us, but we do have to respond, and we do have to respond in a better manner. And how we respond will define who we are as a team and what kind of character we have as a program.”

Drinkwitz shouldered the blame for, well … just about everything that went wrong in College Station, and that meant he shouldered the blame for quite a lot.

The Tigers go back on the road this weekend with a Saturday morning game in Amherst, Massachusetts, against UMass. The Minutemen aren’t expected to cause Mizzou too many problems, as the Tigers have opened up as four-touchdown favorites.

Before then, Drinkwitz said the coaches have identified problems in all three phases — offense, defense and special teams — but are trying not to “jerk the steering wheel too fast” over making incremental adjustments. Here is what some of those are:

More: Missouri football plummets in national polls…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/missouri-football-moving-college-station-225525129.html

Author : Columbia Daily Tribune

Publish date : 2024-10-08 22:55:25

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.