Eli Drinkwitz discusses Missouri's lofty College Football Playoff ranking

The initial College Football Playoff rankings debuted on Tuesday night, and Missouri found itself all the way up at No. 12, within striking distance of the coveted top four if it can keep winning. But coach Eli Drinkwitz isn’t worried about the rankings at all yet.

They’re not important for his team.

“I think I channel my inner Kobe Bryant and say, ‘Job’s not done yet,'” Drinkwitz said on an SEC teleconference call on Wednesday. “So I don’t necessarily think that any coach is sitting around looking at the rankings to start November.”

To that point, Drinkwitz is probably smart. His team’s schedule is about to get more difficult in a hurry, starting with a matchup with No. 2 Georgia on Saturday. After that No. 17 Tennessee looms.

Win both of those and things will start to get really, really interesting for Missouri.

Lose and nobody will be talking about the Tigers anymore.

“Obviously it’s just about where you’re at right now,” Eli Drinkwitz said. “We still have a quarter of our season left to play and not really focused on what we’ve accomplished to this point.”

The one thing Missouri has in its favor going into this weekend’s game against Georgia is an offense that can score seemingly at will. Quarterback Brady Cook and company have been quite good in recent weeks.

The Tigers haven’t scored fewer than 30 points in a game since Week 2, when they won 23-19 against MTSU.

Still, it’ll take a near-perfect effort to beat a Georgia team that is among the nation’s most talented. The Bulldogs have been excellent, even with the absence of star tight end Brock Bowers (ankle).

Georgia is coming off a big win over rival Florida, a 43-20 result that was a major step toward clinching the SEC East. But Missouri has just as good a shot at the division title as things currently stand, controlling its own destiny.

Drinkwitz just wants his players staying focused, forget the College Football Playoff rankings and everything else.

“I think the key is to not make any one game bigger than the next,” Eli Drinkwitz said. “This game is important to us but it’s not any more important than the Vanderbilt game was or the Kentucky game was or homecoming versus South Carolina was. They all have a level of significance to them, so we’re just trying to approach it with that mindset and worry about being 1-0 this week.”