Eli Drinkwitz on secondary vs. Alabama: ‘We’re going to need blankets’

Missouri is set to travel to No. 15 Alabama this weekend and coach Eli Drinkwitz knows there’s one area in particular his defense must pay extra close attention to.

The Crimson Tide have some tremendous receivers, receivers that can stretch the field deep and take you over the top if you’re not careful.

“Yeah, we’re going to need blankets,” Drinkwitz said with a smile. “We’re going to have to cover them.”

The blankets reference, of course, is a callback to the Texas A&M game, when someone gifted receiver Theo Wease with a Texas A&M blanket and a personalized letter in the team hotel before the game.

The blanket was full Texas A&M colors and the letter featured a message, allegedly from Texas A&M defensive back Will Lee. It read: “Get used to this blanket. It will be real tomorrow.”

Wease went for two catches and 72 yards and a touchdown in that Texas A&M game, a decent showing, but perhaps a push in terms of who won the matchup.

Missouri will be hoping for a more definitive result against Alabama on Saturday.

“We’re going to have to do our jobs,” Drinkwitz said. “I think coach (Corey) Batoon obviously has a pretty good feel of mixing up coverages and I thought we did a really good job of that on Saturday. But we cannot let the deep ball beat us. That’s been an issue for us, we’ve given up way too many deep balls, deep shots.”

Drinkwitz pointed out a couple long touchdowns the team has given up in the past in order to drive home his emphasis on stopping the deep ball.

“Obviously the touchdown that Auburn had in the game, Boston College, Vanderbilt all had deep throws,” Drinkwitz said. “So we’re going to have to keep the ball in front of us and, again, goes back to ‘this play’ philosophy. We’ve got to knock it down and get back up and play this play, and we can’t give up explosives for touchdowns.”