Everything Eli Drinkwitz Said to Recap Victory Over Kansas

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Following an eventful 42-31 victory over the Kansas Jayhawks, Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz spoke to the media to recap the game.

Drinkwitz talked about the atmosphere, the poise of his team in the clutch moments of the fourth quarter and the performance of quarterback Beau Pribula.

Read everything that Drinkwitz had to say following the win below.

Opening Statement

"This is the Missouri that I've always dreamed of and believed in. I'm going to encourage our fans to continue to do this. All right. It shouldn't be about a team that we just played once. It should be the expectation of our program moving forward that that energy and passion shows up all the time.

What an undertaking. To go up six — we let our emotions get the better of us a couple of times. To be down, find a way to battle back in, tie the game up, take the lead, get down in the fourth quarter and go on 14 unanswered to put the game away. I'm extremely proud of those guys. Thought the leadership on the sideline was really good. Didn't flinch. Beau [Pribula] and Jalen [Catalon] both talked about this yesterday after practice to our team about we're going to face some things we haven't faced before. We're going to really have to respond. Obviously, Beau did that after the fumble, and I thought our defense kind of settled in right there, too.

And then I'm just going to say a really poor take that you had on that score (points to a reporter who predicted Kansas to win)."

On Beau Pribula, Missouri offense's performance

"Just a lot of confidence in his receivers. I thought he did a nice job of finding open targets. Obviously, Kevin Coleman made some big-time catches and continually does that. But, no panic. I think Beau is really cool, calm, collected. There's going to be a lot of things on tape you got to clean up. I thought we were a little bit finicky in the first half from the quarterback position, from the pocket. I thought we were moving when we didn't need to, and we missed some reads. So there's going to be a lot to clean up. There's a lot to improve on, but in the biggest moments, in the toughest times on fourth down, he was nails."

On the emotional reaction to going down 21-6 in the first quarter

"I think the offensive staff did an excellent job not being emotional and focusing on, hey, we need to correct this. This is what we saw. This is exactly what we need to do. The way the first drive unfolded, I think our guys had a lot of confidence that we could. They do a lot of different stuff on defense. They had a lot of different personnel. They were playing multiple fronts, multiple safety coverage. So we kind of knew going into it, that if there was going to be some us figuring out what they were doing, ways to attack. And I thought Kirby [Moore] called an excellent game."

On the grit of the offensive line

"It's the second game of the season. I think the biggest thing was,it showed improvement from the first week, which we knew we needed to do. And there's still a lot of things that we got to improve on. We weren't fitting up to the backer the way we needed to. But again, Ahmad Hardy was a racer. I don't know if we blocked it all that well, but most of the time, he may have gotten this, so that was pretty good. But again, it's the second week of the season. There's a whole lot of stuff that we're gonna have to get corrected. We'll worry about it tomorrow, but there's a whole lot of stuff that's going to get corrected."

On the momentum swing Donovan Olugbode's catch caused

"It was a huge momentum swing. Fourth down. We were in the red area. We needed it. He made a one-handed catch. I think that was probably the coolest thing was it wasn't our players folding in the moment that was causing us to have issues. It was our players making big plays in the moment that was also elevated this. Whether it was Donovan, Jamal [Roberts] had two massive runs, one before half and one at the end of the game, and obviously Kevin [Coleman] had the heck of a catch and run. Two St Mary's boys right there."

On fourth-down conversion attempts

"There was a couple of fourth-down situations we knew we had to be prepared for because of the field goal situation. I didn't want to put Robbie [Meyer] out there and test his confidence. So we knew, ball between first down, stick with the higher, need be going for it, and then you just get into the game. The fourth-and-goal from the 4(-yard line), there was no reason to go to 9, 21-9, and I felt like our defense would be able to hold them and get [the] ball back. We didn't get it.

Rhythm, attack, execute is our offensive philosophy, and we define execution as playing well under pressure. That's what you have to do in order to win football games. That's what we did tonight."

On what makes WR Kevin Coleman Jr. a trustworthy target

"Big time players make big time plays in big time games and that's what we needed out of him. They played a lot of soft zone. Kevin does a really good job of finding holes in the zone, and Beau has a lot of trust in him. That was a guy that, Beau and Kevin spent a lot of time in the summer and off-season, throwing RBA together. So that connection shows up. Kevin's made big-time plays every school he's ever been at. So there was zero doubt when we got him that that's what we were going to need to do. Him and Lu [Burden], both, man. Fourth downs, they are killer."

On what made Pribula on third and fourth downs

"Good play calls, but understanding what we're trying to do and then execute them. For the most part, we had really good protection. So just execution."

On Pribula's performance in a tough environment

"There's gonna be some tougher environments than this on the road. All the fans were cheering for him. Again, we're not ready to crown anybody. Really proud of him. He took a step in the right direction, but when we watch the tape, [there's] going to be a lot of things we got to get taken off the tape, like being jittery in the pocket early. Obviously, ball security is going to be an issue when we're running. Again, he had a good day, but it's Week 2."

On sideline conversations when they flipped the script against Kansas

"The conversations at the end of the first quarter was, it's a fight. Now it's time to fight. They came to fight. Now it's time to fight. We've been talking about that. The other team has a say the fight too. And Coach [Lance] Leipold had a really good football team. Quarterback, very good, very headsy. They knew what they were doing. They got us on our heels early, and they did a nice job capitalizing.

I thought our defense, we talked about start fast. We did go score. We talked about going for a run. And we talked about going for a run on defense. As a football team, it means offense, score, defense, get a stop off and then score. And we were able to do that at two different points in the game, which separated us or brought us back and separated us and then vanish with a period of effort. And we did that too, about the effort at the end. And obviously that was one heck of an interception."

On the defense's performance against Jalon Daniels

"I thought we handled him well in the run game. Very disappointed in that drive, honestly, where they took the lead. That's on us, and we played too much zone coverage there, bottom line. We'd gotten nervous because they kind of had a couple of open double moves and stuff. So we went to more zone coverage. Honestly, there were too many holes. He did a good job of picking those holes. So we'll get it corrected. But we got to be way more aggressive there."

On the rushing performance of Ahmad Hardy, Jamal Roberts

"I just figured with us having time of possession, managing it, with 86 plays, cumulatively, those are body blows that are going to land on them. The outside zone has always been our bread and butter scheme that got us out of that game. But more importantly was the blocks there on Jamal's run, the slot defender, the nickel had leverage on the play, and we had to have Kevin Coleman get that block And if he doesn't, it's probably a negative yardage play. Kevin goes in there and gets that block, and then Marquis Johnson blocks the corner, and that's how the ball surfaced the defense. So as much as our o-line was, was praised on that, it was really our perimeter blocking. They got it done and really, really impressed with those guys."

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