Eli Drinkwitz reveals bye week plan to focus on accentuating top Mizzou players

Missouri is out to a 4-0 start and all things are, by most accounts, going pretty well for Eli Drinkwitz and Co. going into an off weekend. But that doesn’t mean he’s not striving for something more.

Despite the unblemished record, Drinkwitz has seen plenty of rough spots of play on the field, both on defense and offense, despite averaging 38.5 points per game. The solution? Get the ball to the best players on the field more often.

“Bye week one isn’t so much about getting healthy, although there’s a couple of guys that we need to do that for, it’s really about continuing to eliminate bad football and continuing to improve as a team,” Drinkwitz said on “The Paul Finebaum Show” on Wednesday. “We clearly identified some of the strengths of our players and some of the strengths of our team and so making sure that our play design on both sides of the ball accentuates the strength of our team.

“Obviously that’s Luther Burden, that’s Brady Cook running, that’s Nate Noel, that’s Theo Wease. So making sure the plays that we have are designed specifically to take advantage of those guys’ talents. Same thing on the defensive side of the ball. Our defensive tackle room’s really played at an elite level, so making sure we’re keeping those guys on the field to have as much success as possible.”

And while the Tigers have gutted out some wins and been able to grind out others in more comfortable fashion, Drinkwitz sees plenty of areas that need cleaning up as the season progresses.

“I think the strength of our team is obviously the gritty nature that we have, the ability to sustain punches and still fight back and find a way to win, obviously down 14-3 to BC, down 17-14 at halftime versus Vanderbilt,” Drinkwitz said. “But, on the offensive side of the ball, we’re not executing at a high enough clip in the red zone. We’re 3-for-10 in the last two games on third down plays in the red area. Defensively, we missed 22 tackles in that last game. We’ve got four explosive pass plays over 25 yards for touchdowns, it has to be taken off the tape. And then on special teams we’re inconsistent.”

With the problems clear, and a desired plan of attack to solve them, Drinkwitz and his team now just have one challenge: Getting down the hard work of getting better.

“So, we’ve been able to identify the problems,” Drinkwitz said. “It’s really from now on about, as coaches, are we attacking those problems in practice and giving our guys a chance to get better? And as players are we taking ownership of those issues and trying to improve?”