This week, the football offseason finally comes to a close. Missouri will begin its second fall camp under head coach Eli Drinkwitz on Friday, with this year’s iteration looking a lot more normal than in 2020.
Despite having to navigate multiple schedule changes and a 10-game, all-SEC schedule, the Tigers scratched out a 5-5 record last season, and fans are optimistic the team can take another step forward in 2021. Starting quarterback Connor Bazelak will be back behind center, and first-team all-SEC defensive end Trajan Jeffcoat headlines the returners on the defensive side of the ball. There will be a host of new faces thrust into prominent roles, however, both on the coaching staff and on the field.
Local media will be allowed to attend parts of seven practices during camp. Here are the primary storylines we will be monitoring in advance of the season opener Sept. 4.
1. What does Bazelak look like after a full offseason with Drinkwitz?
Bazelak lost the starting quarterback job to Shawn Robinson during fall camp a season ago, but he took over behind center during the second game of the season and never gave up the spot. Considering the circumstances, he played pretty well. Bazelak threw just 21 passes as a true freshman in 2019, and due to both a torn ACL suffered in the season finale and the pandemic, he hardly practiced with the team during the last offseason. He wound up completing 67.3 percent of his passes in 2020 and throwing for 2,366 yards while being named the SEC co-freshman of the year.
Still, Bazelak showed clear room for growth. He struggled to complete passes down the field, connecting on just 28 percent of throws that traveled more than 20 yards in the air, and threw seven touchdowns compared to six interceptions. Over the past few months, Drinkwitz has been vocal about the fact that Bazelak will be Missouri’s unquestioned starting quarterback, but he’s also acknowledged that the passing game has to get more efficient both throwing downfield and in the red zone (especially with bell-cow running back Larry Rountree III gone to the NFL). Fall camp will give us our first glimpse of how Bazelak has developed over the past eight months and whether his experience will allow Drinkwitz to get a bit more creative with his play-calling.
2. Which young receivers make a push for playing time?
Bazelak isn’t the only one at fault for the lack of explosive plays and touchdowns in the passing game last season. The coaching staff made a clear effort to add big-play potential at wideout during the offseason, and we should get an idea during fall camp of whether some of the younger players at the position are ready to make an impact.
The biggest name added to the offense since the end of last season was former Ohio State receiver Mookie Cooper. A former top-100 recruit out of St. Louis, Cooper brings quickness and speed that Missouri simply didn’t have at the position a season ago. However, Cooper comes with some question marks. At 5-foot-8, 174 pounds, he’s undersized, and he hasn’t played in an organized football game since 2018. The Tiger staff would love for Cooper to make an immediate impact, but there might be a bit of a learning curve. Same goes for Dominic Lovett, a four-star freshman out of East St. Louis. Lovett was a big-play machine in high school, catching 73 passes for 1,541 yards and 16 touchdowns as a junior, but it’s never wise to assume a true freshman can become a difference-maker in his first year of high-major football. The wild card at the position might be JJ Hester. A highly sought-after member of the 2020 class, Hester didn’t catch a pass last season due to injury. But Drinkwitz has continually mentioned Hester’s name during the offseason. If he’s healthy and can live up to his billing, he could provide a boost to the pass-catching corps.
3. Who will start along the offensive line?
Overall, Missouri’s offensive line served as a pleasant surprise in its first season under Marcus Johnson in 2020, but the group’s lack of depth got exposed a bit as the season went on. With Larry Borom, arguably the best player on the line a season ago, gone to the NFL, the line is a question mark once again, particularly at tackle.
The interior of the line should be solid, with two of the three starting spots set in stone, barring injury. Michael Maietti opted to use the additional year of eligibility offered to all players by the NCAA to return in 2021. The former Rutgers transfer started all 10 games a season ago. Case Cook will flank Maietti at right guard, where he has started 20 games in a row. While the left guard spot will be up for grabs during fall camp, Missouri should have several solid options among the competition. Both Xavier Delgado and Luke Griffin started multiple games last season, and former four-star recruit EJ Ndoma-Ogar transferred to Missouri from Oklahoma during the offseason.
Tackle is much more of a mystery, both in terms of which players will start and how effective they can be. The good news for Missouri is the Tigers get Hyrin White back. The 6-foot-7 White was expected to start a season ago before suffering a shoulder injury that ended his year before it began. If White can live up to the billing he’s received from the coaching staff, that should shore up one edge of the line. Opposite him, the competition will include Zeke Powell and Bobby Lawrence, both of whom started games a season ago but struggled with consistency. Redshirt junior Javon Foster and Montana State transfer Connor Wood should also factor into the competition.
4. How quickly can the defensive transfers learn the scheme and adjust to SEC play?
Since the end of last season, Missouri has lost four of its five most experienced defensive players in terms of games started. Linebacker Nick Bolton and safeties Tyree Gillespie and Joshuah Bledsoe went to the NFL, while cornerback Jarvis Ware transferred to Central Florida. The coaching staff will look to replace much of their production with three similarly experienced graduate transfers. But the big question, as always, will be how quickly those players can make the jump from Group of Five conferences to the SEC.
Rice transfer Blaze Alldredge will likely have the most difficult job of the defensive newcomers: replacing Bolton at weakside linebacker. Alldredge was a tackling machine at Rice, racking up 149 tackles and 24.5 tackles for loss across his last 17 games, but only three of those games came against Power Five competition. With the help of former Tulsa cornerbacks coach Aaron Fletcher, who Drinkwitz hired during the offseason, the Tigers also added Akayleb Evans and Allie Green IV to the defensive backfield. Evans has started 28 games across the past four years while Green has started 25. The goal of the staff is clearly for all three players to play major roles this season; that’s why you add graduate transfers. If all three can quickly work their way to the top of the depth chart during camp, that would bode well.
5. How does Steve Wilks' defense differ from that of Ryan Walters?
After replacing Walters as defensive coordinator in January, Wilks was adamant during spring practices that implementing a new scheme wasn’t his priority, that spring ball was about individual development. As a result, the team largely operated out of very basic personnel packages. But fall camp should give us a more concrete idea of how the defense will look different than it did during Walters’ three years at the helm. Wilks and Drinkwitz have talked about running a 4-2-5 base formation with three cornerbacks on the field and instituting more zone coverage in the secondary as opposed to the press man Walters favored. Obviously, media aren’t likely to get to see every situational sub-package during camp, but how Wilks structures the first college defense since he’s coached since 2005 will be of primary interest.
