Everything Eli Drinkwitz Said After Mizzou's Loss to No. 3 Texas A&M

COLUMBIA, Mo. — No. 22 Missouri suffered its widest and most meaningful loss of the season Saturday, falling 38-17 to No. 3 Texas A&M.

Missouri had its claws in the game at points, but a strip sack in the first half and a fake punt in the second sent the Tigers spiraling.

Missouri was looking to pull off the upset with true freshman quarterback Matt Zollers, who entered the season as the team's third-string quarterback. Starter Beau Pribula dislocated his ankle in Week 9 against Vanderbilt.

Head coach Eli Drinkwitz gave his thoughts after the game on the loss, evaluated Zollers' performance, explained those two crucial errors and more. Here's a full transcript of what he had to say.

Opening Statement:

“Ultimately, I'm really appreciative of our fans for selling out the game and showing up. Awesome environment to start. I felt like our players laid it on the line. I thought they fought and fought, kept giving ourselves chances. But ultimately, poor coaching by me at the end of the day. Poor coaching by me to put us in a position to give up the fumble before half. That should be a 7-0 game. And then, to cut it to 14, have a chance right there and give up a fake punt... Again, on me. I gotta be better there. Players fought and fought and fought and gave us every chance in the world. Just poorly done by me.”

On Matt Zollers' performance:

“It got off to a really slow start. We didn't do a good enough job getting comfortable throwing the football, completions were tough. They were challenging every throw, but I thought he did a nice job of trying the deep ball, which created some pass interference calls. Thought Donovan (Olugbode) had a couple of big catches, but ultimately, we got to do a better job with the freshman quarterback protecting. There can't be free runners on him, and that happened too many times on third downs, and obviously, one of the serious momentum changes of the game.”

On the reasoning behind the agressive play calling on the drive that ended in the strip sack:

"I mean, we were trying just to make sure — they had three timeouts, so we wanted to get the first first down. Then once we got the first first down, we tried to see if we could get points. When it got the third-and-9 right there, we tried to go to a max protection flood concept, but, ultimately they had a blitz on and they were able to swing the MIKE to the field and they had a free hitter. So that's my fault, poor scheme, I gave the okay to try to get the first down there. I should have said to throw a screen instead."

On the play call on the fake punt:

"Third quarter, we're up 14, balls somewhere in the middle of the field, momentum kind of switched in our favor. We had max return called because we thought we were going to be able to generate some space for Kevin (Coleman Jr.). When you have max return called, you're not really in a great position to defend the fake. We had one guy over there, but that wasn't going to be enough. And so ultimately, that's on me. I gave the okay, I said 'Hey, we can be a max return here.' So that's on me as the head football coach, I approve those calls."

On how the Aggies were challenging with the blitzes on third down:

“When we were running our seven-man protection, they were dropping the field in and overloading the weak side. So, you got a four-man slide. They were forcing the tailback to go to the field, to pick up the double mode linebacker, and then bring the boundary safety, which would make it a four-man side. So, we tried to counter that by going max pro(tection), and they were dropping in the zone. And then we went into that 12P full slide, which was effective the first time. The second time, he went odd, brought somebody from the outside, put somebody in C gap, and then swung the MIKE to split the D gap and C-gap area.”

On the mood in the locker room:

“Devastated. That's one of the toughest locker rooms I've been in because we all believed that we were going to win. We all believed we were going to win. They fought like they were going to win. There's just a couple of really big plays on defense and a big play on offense that changes this. We give up the tunnel screen, gel bike screen, give up the long run. We give up the turnover. Ultimately, I think we get beat by 21 — that's 21 points right there.

Our guys will pull it together. Next week, senior week.

It's okay to be devastated. It really is. Like I told them, the only way you're ever going to achieve your dreams and goals is to put everything you have into it, everything. You got to work your (*expletive*) off, and you got to believe, and no matter what obstacle you face, you got to believe that you're going to overcome it. And our guys did. They kept fighting and fighting and fighting, and then you get the wrong end of the result. So now you got to pick yourself back up. You got to put your guts back in, and you got to find something else to fight for. And our team will. Our team is going to fight for each other next week, for the seniors, we're going to fight to finish strong. We were in this situation last year after South Carolina, and we found a way to just keep fighting and believing, and that's ultimately what we're going to do. This team has a lot of strong leaders on it, and we're not going out like that.”

On the defense:

“I thought they kept us in it as long as they could. Ultimately, the time of possession kind of put us in a bad spot, and a couple of bad spots — fake punt when we had the momentum, and really, that's kind of when the wheels fell off defensively. I think we had given up the tunnel screen. But then we got stops, offensive got a little bit of something going with the big return from (DaMarion) Fowlkes and the fake punt, we held them to a field goal there. But after that, we weren't able to stop the run. Really that last drive, that's a kick in the groin area. Just because you got it to 14(-point deficit), you got seven minutes left, you got three timeouts. You just need a stop. We had really stuffed the run most of the game, but we just didn't have enough left in the tank."

On what Zollers should take away from the game:

“I’m going to have to watch the tape and see. It’s hard for me to assess it. I didn’t think he made bad decisions in the pass game. It’s not like he was throwing the ball up for jeopardy and putting us in terrible spots. We let him down as coaches tonight with the protection plan.”

On Missouri going 0-6 against ranked SEC teams over the last two seasons:

"They're good teams. They're good teams, and I don't do a good enough job coaching."

On Ahmad Hardy's low amount of carries in the first half:

"He finished with 13 carries for 109 yards There are other players out there. There are things that Jamal (Roberts) does well; he's a really good player."

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