Eli Drinkwitz is well aware that Mizzou entered the 2023 season with plenty of doubters. His team, however, dismissed the noise to start 7-1, earning a No. 16 ranking entering Week 9.

Drinkwitz talked about critics and self-motivation during a Monday appearance on “SEC This Morning” with Peter Burns and Chris Doering.

“There’s a saying that says, ‘let your haters be your motivators.’ Honestly, we’ve decided to ignore the noise,” Drinkwitz said. “Prognosticators aren’t right most of the time, anyway. I think Vegas had us at over/under 6 wins. There was a poll this summer would we even make a bowl game? At this point, it’s really not about anybody else but our locker room.

“We have a saying, ‘just us.’ It’s just about us. It’s about our football team. When we celebrate this team in 10 or 15 years, come back and have a reunion, they’re not going to talk about the haters, they’re going to talk about how much love they have for each other and how they laid it on the line each week for each other.”

Players like Cody Schrader, a Truman State who joined Mizzou in 2022 as a walk-on, help Drinkwitz keep his priorities in check.

“Cody Schrader had 60 cc’s of blood drained out of his quad on Sunday. The guy is a warrior,” Drinkwitz said. “I just worry about waking up today, proving to him that he’s worthy of putting his trust into me. That’s really all I care about. I couldn’t care less about Twitter warriors, they’re a bunch of fake phonies anyway.”

Schrader and the rest of Drinkwitz’s Tigers are off in Week 9. Mizzou returns to action in Week 10 for a showdown with No. 1 Georgia.