Since Kyle Pitts and Florida haven’t  been on the field since Oct. 10, some of his eye-popping numbers from early in the season may have been put on the back burner. But Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz, who plays at Florida this week, is well aware how dangerous the dynamic Florida tight end is to SEC defenses.

After a huge opening game at Ole Miss where he had eight catches for 170 yards and four touchdowns, Pitts has had a combined nine catches for 104 yards and three touchdowns against South Carolina and Texas A&M.

Drinkwitz said deploying a weapon like Pitts in the way Florida coach Dan Mullen does, and as a play-caller on top of that, is why Mullen is sometimes rumored for NFL openings.

“They split him out, they use him like an NFL (tight end) and I think that’s why you hear so much about Coach Mullen eventually being a head coach in the NFL because of the way he utilizes his players,” Drinkwitz said. “He utilizes Pitts like they do (George) Kittle (of the San Francisco 49ers) and they do Travis Kelce (of the Kansas City Chiefs) and some of the other great ones where they line them up single receiver to the weak side and create four by ones, and make you isolate him with no underneath coverage.”

Often with Pitts, the conversation turns to matchup problems, and the kinds of players a defense chooses to defend Pitts with in a given situation.

“They do a good job of getting him matched up on mike linebackers over the middle of the field,” Drinkwitz said. “… They use him all kinds of ways.”