Mizzou football is down, not out, according to Eli Drinkwitz: 'Seasons are long seasons'

On Saturday, then-No. 19 Missouri football lost to then-No. 24 Mississippi State in a rowdy Davis Wade Stadium. An early Heisman-candidate quarterback in Kamario Taylor, a world-record 41,819 simultaneously ringing cowbells and a red-hot Bulldog offense contributed to the fall.

Now-No. 25 Missouri hasn’t beaten a ranked opponent since Week 3 of the 2024 season, and although the Bulldogs posed a difficult challenge, the Tigers, at one point, could have tasted victory — they held the ball with the lead in the fourth quarter. All things considered, it’s a disappointing loss to suffer. Missouri failed to do what it has been on the verge of for years in what appeared to be one of its best chances yet to end the drought.

Disappointing, sure. A death sentence? No, says Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz.

“We want to be really quick to write people off and write chapters of a story, or finality, or obituaries or whatever you want to say based off of one thing,” Drinkwitz said. “But seasons are long seasons, and it's not always going to go your way.”

Through four games in 2026, Missouri has already shown an innate ability to stand tall in the face of adversity. Ideally, the team isn’t in those situations — often put there by self-inflicted wounds, but we’ll address that later —in the first place, but bouncing back from those single-game deficits should spark hope for a midseason turnaround.

First, the Tigers trailed the Jayhawks, 7-0 in the first quarter in a rowdy David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium in Lawrence, Kansas, a deficit largely caused by two consecutive blocked field goals. They trailed Troy 10-0 in the first quarter after giving up a 76-yard touchdown on the second play of the game and a 19-play, 81-yard drive on the Trojans’ second possession. Most recently, the Tigers were put in a 14-0 first-half hole in Starkville thanks in large to an allowed deep shot, penalties and a missed field goal.

Missouri rallied back to win the contests against Kansas and Troy and, while not taking down Mississippi State, did complete the comeback to take a fourth-quarter lead.

At the center of each was quarterback Austin Simmons, a 20-year-old lefty in his first season at Missouri and as a full-time starter.

“The amount of poise that he has when things aren't going well, he's super level-headed with the way he approaches things,” starting center Dominick Giudice said. “But also, you know, he knows when to speak. Like, it's not going to be a lot all the time, so that the words become meaningless. He's going to speak, and when he speaks, it's going to mean something. And I think that's super important as a quarterback… he's super confident back there. We have all the confidence in him, and he has all the confidence in us because of the amount of preparation that we put in.”

Simmons is smart both on and off the field. He’s adaptable and has been on a continuous line of learning since arriving to Columbia.

“He doesn't really get rattled by a lot of things,” Drinkwitz, now having coached four games with Simmons under center, said. “He treats everything as an opportunity to grow and learn from, and he understands that there were some things that we all can do better. We can give him better play calls on third- and fourth-down down there inside the red zone. We can give him better play calls in that two-minute drive so that the ball can be out of bounds.”

Simmons isn’t without blame either. The passing offense struggled tremendously in the first and fourth quarter against Mississippi State and was flawed throughout against Troy. Both were relatively unexpected after Simmons’ first two games with the Tigers sent many to cloud nine — he was near flawless in each.

Against Mississippi State, Simmons put the ball in danger, had poor lapses of judgement in regards to situational awareness in the final few drives and took two bad sacks. Different problems were present against Troy.

"I think that's just part of the journey of growing as a quarterback,” Drinkwitz said. “Everybody wants it to happen right now, but the best teacher is experience, and you can't manufacture experience any other way than going through it... As much as he wants to be perfect and play perfect — and we all want him to be perfect — he's just continued to grow and (run) his race and his journey and he's doing a good job of that right now. We need him to continue to grow at the rate that he needs to grow and not try to press it. Because once you start pressing and trying to push, then that's when bad things happen as a quarterback, and I think that's really what happened in the Troy game."

Simmons and the Tigers have a chance to right the ship against No. 8 Florida at 2:30 p.m. Saturday when the Gators come to Memorial Stadium. After losing to Mississippi State, who’s been at the bottom of the SEC for the last few seasons, many are jumping to conclusions about who Missouri is and what it can accomplish.

But the loss to Mississippi State doesn’t have to be the knockout blow.

Just because Missouri lost to Mississippi State doesn’t mean it’ll fall to Florida. Since the beginning of the 2023 season, only three teams have beat the Tigers at Memorial Stadium: LSU in 2023 and Alabama and Texas A&M in 2025, all of which finished top-15 in the final AP Poll of their respective seasons. Florida could absolutely finish in the top 15 come the conclusion of the 2026 season but that’s far from guaranteed — see Florida State in 2025, who was ranked No. 8 in Week 5 but fell out of the polls entirely by Week 7 and finished the year with a losing record.

One loss could dictate how the story of Missouri's 2026 season is told, but it doesn't have to.

“Losses are lessons to learn from,” Drinkwitz said. “So it's not one-and-done on any of these. It's opportunities to go back and see where you made a mistake and try to grow from.”

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