After Mizzou fell flat, Eli Drinkwitz faces his most important offseason yet
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It takes very little time to flip from trendy to overrated in today’s college football. Ask Eli Drinkwitz. He knows.
In 2023, Missouri won 11 of its 13 games and finished the season inside the AP Top 10 for just the third time this century. In 2024, Mizzou climbed as high as sixth in the AP Poll — its highest ranking in a decade — and won 10 more games. Entering the 2025 season, Mizzou was left out of the preseason AP Poll, and that was viewed by many as an egregious oversight. The Tigers were 1 of just 11 FBS programs with double-digit wins in each of the previous 2 seasons. Drinkwitz looked like he was on the cusp of becoming the first coach in Mizzou history to finish 3 consecutive seasons inside the AP Poll.
The Tigers were very much trendy.
Fast forward just a few short months, and it looks like Mizzou will end the year with nothing. No 10-win season, no spot in the AP Poll, no quarterback, no momentum.
Things changed fast for the Tigers. And Drinkwitz is now staring down the barrel of a critical offseason.
Mizzou won 8 games. Drinkwitz will (and should) push back on suggestions that this was a damaging year. Though it’s not really up for debate that it was a disappointing one. The Tigers started 6-1 and closed things out with 4 losses in their final 6 games.
“I know the fans are disappointed. I’m disappointed. I know that locker room’s disappointed. That’s a good thing,” Drinkwitz said after Saturday’s 13-7 loss to Virginia in the Gator Bowl. “That’s a good thing when Missouri is disappointed after a season like this. That’s where we want to be. That’s what we’ve got to be. That’s what we’re going to continue to fight to uphold.”
Mizzou wants more, though… right?
The school certainly does. Drinkwitz was mentioned for all the big jobs that came open during the most recent spin of the coaching carousel. Interest from brand-name schools led to a contract extension in November that upped Drinkwitz’s annual salary to an average of $10.7 million a year.
Should Missouri, which had 6 double-digit-win seasons before Drinkwitz arrived, expect to challenge for a spot in the Playoff year in and year out? That’s a fair question. But Drinkwitz’s new financial commitment demands more than just wins. It demands College Football Playoff relevance, which is something Drinkwitz hasn’t managed to find yet.
Mizzou had a path this year. Given the pieces in place, perhaps this season could have been a springboard into a more realistic run next year.
That potential is sort of gone now. Offensive coordinator Kirby Moore left to take the head coaching job at Washington State, and several Mizzou staffers plan to join him on the Palouse. Quarterback Beau Pribula, who looked promising early in the year before fading, opted for the transfer portal. Matt Zollers, who looked like the future, was instead clunky in 3 starts.
The Tiger defense was excellent. Mizzou allowed less than 21 points in a game 9 times — the most such games in a single season for the Tigers since 1981. Three of those defensive performances came against AP Top 20 teams.
But Mizzou lost all 3 games. Its offense averaged 7.7 points.
The Tigers played 5 teams that were ranked at the time of the meeting and didn’t beat a single one of them. Their 8 wins came against teams with a combined 30-67 record. That included an FCS team that lost 9 games. Forget beating a ranked team; Mizzou didn’t beat a single team that ended the year with a .500 record.
Drinkwitz is going to hear about that all offseason. He’s going to face questions about it from reporters, and he’s going to have to confront that narrative on the recruiting trail, where his peers will be using it to paint Mizzou in a negative light.
But there’s not much Drinkwitz can say at this point. Mizzou has lost 8 straight games to ranked opponents.
Mizzou is 6-19 against ranked opponents under his leadership. It is 2-12 against teams ranked inside the AP Top 15. It is 0-10 against top-10 teams, with 7 of those losses coming by multiple scores. As an underdog during the Drinkwitz tenure, Mizzou is just 10-25.
The ceiling here looks pretty clear, and the Tigers are going to have to win a couple of games they aren’t supposed to in order to change that. But this year’s team had a top-10 defense and a running back who set the program record for single-season rushing, and it didn’t really come close to knocking off any of those elite teams.
Drinkwitz must nail this offseason’s quarterback decision.
Pribula had a 66.8 QBR this season, which ranked 10th among qualified SEC quarterbacks. Drinkwitz hasn’t had a quarterback in his tenure who finished a season with a QBR of at least 80. In terms of national standing, that’s around a top-15 season. Brady Cook’s 2023 and 2024 campaigns were the only seasons that came close; he finished 18th nationally both years.
It’s unclear if Zollers is the answer for Mizzou. In each of his 3 starts, he had a sub-35 QBR. Against Virginia in the Gator Bowl, Zollers completed 12 of his 22 passes for 101 yards with no scores and a pick. He looked poor for most of the game before uncorking several solid throws on the final drive of the game. The sample size is small enough to keep the door open, but the results were uncertain enough to force a move at the position.
Drinkwitz should be looking to the transfer portal again for another quarterback, if nothing more than to add another passer to compete with Zollers and bring the most out of him.
The Tigers are expected to bring Ahmad Hardy back next season. He was a Doak Walker Award finalist and an All-American. It would be a shame to waste his talent. Corey Batoon looks like a strong hire who will keep the other side of the ball in good shape.
Drinkwitz has to fix the quarterback spot. At the end of the 3-point loss to Alabama, Mizzou had an open receiver angrily waving his arms in the air while Pribula threw an interception over the middle. Zollers was bad against Texas A&M. Pribula was bad against Oklahoma. Weapons were missing against Virginia, but no one was good in the bowl game.
Last year’s CFP threats didn’t sport the nation’s best quarterbacks, but they had players who could be leaned on. Did Mizzou have a quarterback this year who could be leaned on? I think that answer was no. Even last year, Cook had a 41.9% completion rate and a 21.4 QBR in the loss to A&M. All 6 of his 2023 interceptions came against ranked opponents.
Mizzou needs a quarterback who elevates his play in the biggest moments. Had Drinkwitz had that this season, games against Oklahoma and Alabama and Vanderbilt would have been there for the taking.
And we’d be having a much different conversation about this team heading into 2026.
Next season, Mizzou leaves home twice in September. It has consecutive October games against Florida, Texas A&M, and Ole Miss. It plays Texas, Georgia, and Oklahoma in November.
The portal is brimming with quality quarterbacks. Drinkwitz needs one. Because he’s on the precipice of vaulting Mizzou into a tier it hasn’t really occupied before. Say the Tigers are much improved at QB next season and Mizzou wins 9 games, knocking off a couple of big-name SEC programs and putting itself in position to earn a Playoff bid.
Such a scenario would have Mizzou pushing 40 wins in a 4-year span. Drinkwitz would have security, Mizzou would have stability, and recruits would view this program as a force that can help their brand. Eight wins would look like the floor.
If things slide a little more and Mizzou goes something like 7-5, all that goes away.
“I think we’ve got a really good foundation in the trenches. We got a really good foundation in the skill positions. So it’s about filling in the holes,” Drinkwitz said Saturday night.
One is more important than the rest, and it’ll determine where this program goes from here.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
