Multiple times during Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz’ regular Tuesday press conference, he was asked questions about positives despite mistakes he saw in certain areas of the game on Saturday in the loss to Alabama.

“Again, like the ‘other than the fumble,’ there is no other than the fumble,” Drinkwitz said. “You can’t fumble a punt return. You can’t muff a punt. I think we made them punt four times, so if you give it back to them once, there is no other opportunity. With that being said, I think our kickoff return, we had a couple of missed assignments and poor job on our kickoff return that didn’t get out of the 20, which is unacceptable, which is why we fair caught the rest of them.”

Drinkwitz added that he doesn’t take any moral victories out of the Tigers’ 38-19 loss to No. 2 Alabama. “There’s no ‘we fought hard,'” Drinkwitz said. “That’s the expectation.”

The same was said for new QB Shawn Robinson, who Drinkwitz referred to when he said negative plays are a part of the plays at quarterback.

“It’s the holistic approach,” Drinkwitz said. “This is a hypothetical, ‘Well, if you didn’t throw those two interceptions, you played a good game,’ well you threw those two interceptions. I thought he showed some toughness, he took some hits in the pocket, stayed in there, but again I think he had somewhere minus-40, minus-35 yards rushing because of the negative plays, and those just cannot happen, and those have to get corrected. Those are a part of the game, so there’s really no, ‘You played good but.’ You either played good or you didn’t, and nobody played well enough to win.”