This morning, Eli Drinkwitz met with the media to pregame Central Arkansas. Here is what he had to say. 

Injuries:

“Logan Reichert suffered a lower-body injury two days ago that will keep him out six to eight weeks. So that’s going to be the, really, the first, hopefully only, injury that will keep somebody out of the game. We are monitoring a couple of other situations, but we feel good that we’ll have everybody healthy.”

Ongoing QB situation:

“Quarterbacks, we have a plan in place and have discussed with the team, and feel prepared to execute that plan, and don’t feel the need to share that plan with you.

“I felt like both quarterbacks played really well, really since the spring. I think they both established the leadership with the team, as evidenced by both being voted captains, and just didn’t feel like I could make a decision without a little bit more information, and I didn’t want to rush the decision. I think the decision of the starting quarterback, for me personally, is something that I’m going to have a lot of conviction about. And I felt like both of those guys, like I said, played winning football throughout the camp, and I had a lot of confidence that both can execute at a high level. So really, the only other thing to measure was to put them in live competition. Nowadays, I’m never going to do that practice, just because of the nature of college football now and the investments that we have in those positions. So the ability to play live football Thursday night, the ability to watch these guys prepare, to see how they handle the preparation, I felt like was the best course of action, and that was the decision, done before working out pretty good.”

Central Arkansas recap:

“Yeah, you know, it’s a challenge, obviously, to figure that out, to some extent, because they do have new coordinators, you know, from a calling standpoint. Obviously, Nathan has taken, or Coach Brown has taken back over the play calling, too, because he hasn’t done that, I don’t believe, since he was the coordinator under Steve Campbell. So, you know, we can watch last year’s scheme. It’s always been a little similar to the scheme he played for when he played for Coach Comp. So they’re always going to establish the run. They’ve got a big, big running back. I think the Chambers kid played quite a bit for him last year. They’ve got two really good guards that will allow them to try to establish the line of scrimmage. They’ve always been a gap scheme. That’s something coach Hollingsworth has always believed in when he was the line coach, even now as a tight ends Coach, obviously, Malachi was a freshman all American wide receiver, so they’ve got a unique skill set there.”

What Eli wants to see out of the defense week 1:

“I mean, it all starts with us stopping the run. I think we want to make sure we can establish the ability to stop the run. I think we want to see if we can rush the passer without having to be too exotic in our pressures. I want to see if we can establish the ability to affect the passer. I think we want to see what kind of coverage ability we have. Are we going to have to be a team? Can we be a team that denies the ball, or do we have to be a team that has a touchdown-proof defense and just try to keep everything in front of us? Can we force takeaways, and do we tackle them? Well, so there are a lot of things to figure out. I think we know going into it what we want to try to establish. But everybody goes in with a plan.”

Missouri opens up this season on Thursday night at 6 pm against Central Arkansas.