Missouri Football Presser Transcript

From Music City Bowl

ELIAH DRINKWITZ: First, I would like to say thank you to the city of Nashville, the TransPerfect Music City Bowl, the hotel here. They've just been a wonderful host for our team, our fans, and our families. We've just had an outstanding experience and appreciate the hospitality.

Bowl games are still a great experience for our student-athletes and for college football, and this is an outstanding bowl game, and we tip our hat to Nashville and everybody who hosted. It's been an awesome thing.

Our football team is excited. One of the things you look forward to is obviously the host city, but also the competition that you get to play against and the opportunity to play against a traditional powerhouse in Iowa. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Kirk Ferentz and what he has done with the Hawkeye football team over the course of his 26-year career.

He is the gold standard of college football and what it takes to build and sustain a program of success and excellence, player development. So it's a real honor to be on the same football field with him and his program, and our team knows that in order for us to have a chance, we're going to have to play a clean football game.

You watch these bowl games. It's going to come down to turnovers and takeaways, tackling, and penalties. We've got to be clean in those areas to give ourselves a chance. One of the Hallmarks of Coach Ferentz' football teams is they just don't beat themselves. They force the other team into mistakes, and we're going to have to do a nice job of playing sound football.

Excited about the opportunity. We have a lot of seniors that this is going to be their final football game for the Missouri Tigers and what a wonderful legacy that they leave to have an opportunity to finish out their careers the right way. So we're excited about that.

With that, I'll open it up for questions.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. You mentioned those seniors. What are the last few days and the weeks since the regular season been like taking in the final moments with this group?

ELIAH DRINKWITZ: You know, there's a ton of construction going on in Faurot Field right now, and right before we left they had already tore down all the bricks in the north end zone. It was just a reminder of all the hard work that this senior class has done.

I told those guys before we left that none of this would be possible if it wasn't for them, their resiliency, their toughness, their commitment to seeing it through. So I have a lot of appreciation for all of them, whether it's guys who have been here the whole time, whether it's Drake Heismeyer, Mitch, Will Norris, Brady Cook, or whether it's the transfers who believed in us, Joseph Charles to Kristian Williams, Johnny Walker, who was here the whole time. All of those guys. Nate Noel, coming this year. All of those guys hold a special place in Mizzou football history.

Q. You have talked about before with the era of changing rosters, and personnel is going to change every single year, but being able to commit yourself to really building a sustainable program that won't change throughout. Can you expand a little bit more on what those steps look like for you day in and day out and what gives you confidence that this is something that is not just a flash in the pan, but continued success?

ELIAH DRINKWITZ: Oh, wow. Well, I think in order to have the sustained culture you have to have a foundation. Each year you have to relay that foundation.

I think as long as we are consistent in who we are with development an elite edge in the strength and conditioning program, as long as we continue to focus on our core values and understand what the goal for our program is, it's front and center in everything we do.

We want to chase two dreams. That's a life of football. That's a life outside of the game. We want to make sure that we play for championships, and obviously playing in a bowl game is an opportunity to play for a championship.

We want to develop an elite EDGE, which is energy, details, grit, and emotional consistency, in everything we do. Combine that with our four core values... always compete. We want to have a competitive culture that's always pushing to be the very best we can be.

We want to build trust is and respect, which is the foundation of any relationship, and that's what you are going to have to have with your players when they come in. If you are bringing in transfers, freshmen, or the current guys, there has to be a foundation of trust and respect to build a brotherhood so those guys will go out and compete and finish.

I was talking to Coach Ferentz last night. When you look across college football, I think our two programs have done a really good job. We've had two opt-outs I think on both sides because of potential NFL futures and careers, and we totally understand that, but the rest of the senior classes are wanting to play, and they want to play together for the brotherhood.

That was something that D-Rob and Kris Abrams-Draine and those guys, J.C., started last year, and I think it's something that Johnny Walker and Brady Cook want to continue. I know those guys' leadership will continue to exist with the next generation coming, the next group of players.

College football is changing, and you can't predict the future. We just got rocked last week with new rules for junior college. Every day there's a new change, but I think you have to be adaptable, and you have to have a core mission of what you believe in.

For us we believe in chasing two dreams. We believe in developing elite EDGE, and we believe in playing for championships. That's the mission. If you want to come to the University of Missouri, you have to believe in those things, and you have to be willing to abide by the core values that we have. If you do that, it's a great fit for us.

Q. Coach, speaking of the JUCO ruling, what do you feel about that, and how does that unpack someone like Triston Newson who we know did the JUCO route?

ELIAH DRINKWITZ: I've come to the point that I realize my opinion really doesn't matter. Until there's somebody actually in charge of college football, our opinions are just a wasted breath, and people take those opinions and twist them and turn them however they want to.

They either use it against a coach, or they use it to prove their point on social media. It's really a waste of time. I think for me and for our program it's about utilizing the new rule change to try to benefit your program to the best way possible and be adaptable, like I said. I'm not going to get caught up in making bold statements and all that. I think at the end of the day for me it's just about whatever the rules are.

I said this in COVID. There's a scene in Apollo 13 where they're trying to figure out how to get the three-man crew into the shuttle, and they take this bag of stuff and they dump it out. All right, guys, you have to figure out how to get this filter to fix this.

That's kind of what we're doing with the NCAA. Right now we just take a bag and stuff and say, Here are the rules, and we have to figure it out. We do that.

We take conversations with Triston. It's up to him. We would love to have him back. We welcome him back with open arms. Obviously it affects a lot of different people. It affects our roster count. You know, to do that after the portal has been open and after people have signed and all that is a little bit tricky, but he's one of us. So if he is one of us, he is always welcome.

Q. Coach, talking about the program you're building, what would it mean to get across the ten-win threshold for back-to-back years?

ELIAH DRINKWITZ: I'm not really caught up in the outcome of that. I think obviously for us it's an opportunity to play for a championship, and that's the single focus for us. It's an opportunity to play for the TransPerfect Music City Bowl Championship.

The long-term effects besides that I'm not caught up in SEC versus Big Ten. I'm not caught up in any of that. This is really a stand-alone game. It's really different than what you had at the end of the season because of the free agency period that occurs. So for us -- I hate to be like this, but it's really an exhibition game. For us it's an opportunity to go take our players and play one last time together.

If you are fortunate enough to win, it catapults you into next year. If you don't, then you came up short and you fly back home and celebrate the new year, and you start all over. I don't know that it carries more significance than that.

Q. When it comes to exhibition game, as you just mentioned, there was a lot of younger guys here that have been looking for an opportunity to play and have this develop into these 15 practices. Just how has that gone? What have you seen from these guys because knowing that the transfer portal does exist and some guys might leave, that you might have thought, Oh, this is going to be a great time to develop them. They're gone. How much of your energy and focus goes into the guys that are still there and trying to be part of Mizzou next year going forward after this game?

ELIAH DRINKWITZ: That is a good question. We are a developmental program we always have been. We played Monday Night Football with our underclassmen to try to consistently get them better. That's part of the process. The only way to get better at football is to practice, and you have to have a mindset that always improves, right?

So for us what a great opportunity for some of our underclassmen. Marquis and Josh Manning are going to step up into bigger roles this game. With the injury to Brett Norfleet, it allows Jordon and Tyler and potentially Jude James to have a bigger role.

On the defensive side of the ball there are some younger guys. Nick Rodriguez and Jeremiah Beasley should get more reps.

We're excited about that opportunity. As far as, I've said this before, we had an unbelievable event last night. I appreciate the Music City Bowl hosting an event at the Gaylord Opry and being able to listen to some songwriters talk about a few different things.

One of the songwriters had moved to Nashville. She had been here for nine years. When she first got here, she had no idea what it would take to become a professional writer. You don't just walk up and get hired. You have to work, and you have to survive. You have to sustain, and you have to go through some tough times.

She actually started a dog sitting business. I'm not going to use the word, but she had this dog sitting business. She would go and babysit dogs of famous country music city artists, and she would follow them and pick up their business in the grass. She's, like, I'm chasing my dream doing this, right?

She's a wildly successful writer who has had three No. 1s in the last two years, and it was just for me a reminder that I wish my players could hear that story because there's no such thing as an instant success. Whether or not you are recruited based off your potential, no matter where you go, you have to develop. You've got to get better.

You see all these guys jumping in the portal after six months of being on campus, and that's just not real life. That's like a country music writer or star. You drive up and down Broadway, and there's people playing in every single bar, and they're extremely, extremely talented. There's 132 Division I football teams, and everybody has talent. Talent is not enough. You have to work hard. You have to face the tough stuff and keep pressing forward.

So I hope that our players will continue to embrace that and learn from it and understand that just because you don't hit -- just because you're not where you want to be right now doesn't mean that door is closed. It just means you have to keep knocking.

Q. Looking at Iowa's defense, what do you think has allowed them to be so successful, not just this season, but have them to be as successful as they have been for many years in recent memory?

ELIAH DRINKWITZ: Obviously continuity, right? They do an outstanding job with their defensive scheme. I will say this. They do have nuanced change. Whether you go back and watch them from five years ago, ten years ago, they have developed and made changes each and every year.

But there's a consistency to what they do. You know fundamentally they're going to be really good. You know the front six is a veteran group. They've played a lot of football together. Their two safeties know exactly where they're at in the fits. They can play man-to-man out there on the corner positions. They're going to win one-on-ones. They make you earn every inch.

It's a really challenging scheme to go against. It's why they've been wildly successful, but they have program alignment. Their offense complements their defense. Their defense complements their special teams. You know what they're trying to do in order to win the game.

It's a real challenge. You have to beat the whole team. You can't just beat one person. You can't just beat one matchup. You have to beat the whole team in order to have a chance to win.

Q. Can you speak to quarterback Cook's leadership, his skills in weathering some tough injuries, and what he's meant to your program?

ELIAH DRINKWITZ: Yeah, what a wonderful example of sticking to it, right, of fighting through adversity, ignoring the outside noise, and just focusing on getting better?

He's a young man who from day one wanted to be here and has had to endure, whether it's been injuries from shoulder, whether it's been injuries this season, he's always put the team first. He's always tried to improve. He's always tried to be a leader.

I think back to the South Carolina game. X-rays his wrist. It still shows a break. It's his call. It's 100% his call. Can you play? It's up to you. We would never put you in jeopardy. As long as it was his call, he was going to play.

That's rare these days. For him to be out there this week with so much bright future ahead of him, he wouldn't miss it because it means something to play with his teammates. It means something to put that Missouri Tiger uniform on. That's the college football that we all know and love and believe in and are excited about.

He drives a really nice Ford Bronco. He's benefitting from NIL. So there's no negatives to it. He's doing it the right way. He's earning every bit of the money he's gotten for all the crap he's had to take over the years. It's been awesome.

Obviously 20-5 in the last two seasons. He's got a chance -- I think he's tied for second in all-time career wins as the starting quarterback at the University of Missouri. So he's had an outstanding career, and he's a guy that's going to be remembered at the university.

Q. You talk about this free agency period. A dozen guys, more than that, have chosen to come to the University of Missouri, play for you. What's your message there and why they decided to come here?

ELIAH DRINKWITZ: Yeah, I think the first thing is they're not really playing for me. They're playing for us, and they're playing with our brotherhood. It's never going to be about me. It's going to be about our university, our brotherhood, the environment that we create, and the opportunity that we have.

I think we're not for everybody. We're very selective in how we approach the recruiting process, the transfer portal. We recruit a specific style and a specific player. We were able to get the right guys.

Very appreciative to Laird and Marcy and the board and several key boosters for being very active and helping us raise the money that we needed in order to be an attractive place. People can like me all they want, but if I don't pay them, they ain't coming.

I don't mean that like that. If they don't have NIL opportunities, then they're not coming. So you have to have the competitive NIL market. Sorry, Marcy. I know that's going to get me in trouble, but tell the other GC I'm sorry.

Q. Speaking of quarterback, you just brought one in in Beau Pribula. What does he bring to the team?

ELIAH DRINKWITZ: I want to focus on the bowl game. We'll talk about that when those guys get on campus.

This is really about this group of young men. This is about this game, this opportunity.

We're excited about those signees, but this is about the Music City Bowl. This is about the group of men that are here, and this is about Brady Cook and his opportunity to lead this football team one last time.

Q. Can you talk about Kris Williams' leadership on the D-line and what he has meant for this team this year?

ELIAH DRINKWITZ: Yeah, Kristian, as a transfer from Memphis, went out to Oregon. Wasn't the right fit for him. Comes back. When you talk about a guy with an elite EDGE, he's got the same energy every day. He focuses on details. He takes notes. Every meeting he's going to have his notebook out writing notes.

Grit... during fall camp he sleeps in the building, and he's gotten other defensive linemen to do the same thing. He wears his shoulder pads to the team meeting. He comes fully taped to every team meeting so that he's prepared to go straight to practice from meetings.

It's just his mindset, his edge, and he's consistent every single day. I'm very proud of -- you can talk about Brady and Johnny and Mitch and Drake, but man, there was this influx of transfers who bought into the culture.

Kristian Williams is one of those guys. Joseph Charleston is one of those guys. Tre'Vez Johnson is one of those guys. Cam Johnson is one of those guys. Champ Flagg this year is one of those guys.

Sometimes you bring in transfers, and it's so new and maybe they don't quite fit. Man, these guys sacrificed their egos and said, Hey, look, let's just be a part of the brotherhood. It's not about my role. It's about our role as a team. How do we become better as a team? Kristian kind of has personified that throughout our program for the last three seasons.

Q. Sticking with the defense, tomorrow will wrap up Coach Batoon's first season as defensive coordinator with the team. How has he grown more comfortable with the program as a whole throughout the season?

ELIAH DRINKWITZ: You know, this is going to be one of those great deals where you get a chance to visit with Kirby and Corey. You get to ask them those questions.

I don't want to speak for him on what he has gotten more comfortable with, but I will say this. It's been a great working relationship. I think the defensive staff has grown with more and more synergy and understanding of each other in what we're trying to do.

We have a saying. Low ego, high output within our coaching staff and preference versus performance. I think Corey has done an outstanding job of being exactly that, low ego, high output. What's best for our defense? What's best to put our players in a position of success? It's not about what anybody prefers. It's about how do we get the best performance out of this group of men that we have?

We've had some deficiencies throughout the year, and I think our defensive staff has done a really good job of masking those deficiencies, playing to our strengths, and getting the best out of our guys to put us in a position to play in this bowl game.

THE MODERATOR: We have defensive Coordinator Corey Batoon and offensive coordinator Kirby Moore. Questions, please.

Q. Coaches, for both of you, coming out of bowl practices here, curious who maybe some young stand-outs have been on both sides of the ball and who has been impressive the last few weeks?

KIRBY MOORE: Yeah, I think there's a ton of opportunity in this game for our guys on offense. Some senior guys too. Up front Mitch Walters. Drake has done a great job down the stretch.

Within the tight end group Tyler Stephens, Jordon Harris, and then at receiver Marquis Johnson, Josh Manning, Daniel Blood. James Madison is going to get some time out there, and Logan Muckey. Really excited to see those guys go out there and compete.

COREY BATOON: It's an awesome opportunity. You kind of get a bonus spring ball. We had 15 practices in I think, 14 or 15. You get a chance to really see some of those young guys back up on the varsity. We work some good on good early on. It kind of kick-starts you in terms of spring practice. It's been awesome for those guys.

Q. Coach Moore, how would you evaluate year two, and then for you, Coach Batoon, how did year one go, and what went well, and what didn't? What would you want to improve on?

KIRBY MOORE: I'm very appreciative of our guys' consistency, doing the work, having belief, working through adversity, the offensive staff being very collaborative, solution-oriented. There were a couple of games there we didn't play our best, but then adapting, adjusting, and improvising and finding ways to win.

Coach Drink talks about having grit. That's one of the things the last few weeks I believe the stat -- someone brought it to my attention -- we've been in 11 one-score games, and won ten of them. Part of that is having belief that you can get it done.

COREY BATOON: Yeah, I spoke to some of the seniors the last true meeting we had, and was so appreciative of through the transition their buy-in. I think that that really helped us not fall back in a transition year. Super appreciative of those guys, the work they put in.

Things that I was really happy about this past fall. I thought, again, like Kirby said, the amount of close games that you play, one-score games. You talk about the camaraderie and the brotherhood, the belief in one to the other. Those are things that I'll cherish as I look back on this season.

Being able to win those tough games, and really you're one possession away from being in a great situation, but super appreciative of those seniors and what they mean to us and our program.

Q. You talked about the opportunities that are going to be created in this team. For you, Kirby, can you just talk a little bit more about kind of the trio of sophomore wide receivers that might be given more opportunities? Then, Corey, Nick Rodriguez and Jeremiah Beasley.

KIRBY MOORE: Yeah, first, Josh Manning from the start of the season to where he is at right now has done a tremendous job of growing, playing faster. A huge part of our offense when Mookie went down, Daniel Blood is a glue guy. We can move him around at different positions throughout the offense.

James Madison has grown with the extra practices going with the first and second group, rotating in. Then Logan Muckey, a guy who has played a ton on special teams, who we will use within the offense in this game. It's going to be a challenge, right?

Iowa has set the standard for defense and college football, and they don't give you anything easy.

COREY BATOON: Those two freshmen you mentioned, Nick, both of those guys, and Beasley, again, those 15 practices have an opportunity to be up inside run, going against the ones. Both those guys, you know, will springboard into bigger opportunities with the after amount of seniors that we have walking out the door at that position.

Every opportunity, every practice, every inside drill, every skelly, buying in and really trying to bonus those reps is going to help with their momentum going into spring as they compete for a different role in next fall's team.

Q. Kirby, with Luther and Armand having played their final game as Tigers, can you speak on what they've meant not just to your offense, but to the program as a whole too?

KIRBY MOORE: Yeah, very appreciative of those guys buying into the offense. Consistency I know overall as an offense that's one thing that really grew throughout the season last year, carried into this season whereby.

Then overall everyone, the emotional consistency that they showed. It's hard within the realm of college football right now. There's a ton of ups and downs, and they stayed the course and continued to work and were a huge part of our success.

Q. For Coach Moore, I'm curious what the last couple of weeks looked like for you working with a quarterback who is about to be in his last game and also going out and signing a pretty big quarterback for next year. What does that balance have to be?

KIRBY MOORE: Yeah, that's the calendar in college football. Building for next season while finishing this season with the bowl game. Really want to finish the right way for Brady Cook. Just extremely appreciative of what he has done for me. His wife watches our kids, so on a daily basis helping out my wife. He's a winner. He has been consistent, emotional consistency. Just his ability to win 20 games in the last two years.

Q. For both of you guys, what has this senior class meant to you? Corey, in your first year and Kirby obviously with a bit more experience. What have they meant to this program?

COREY BATOON: I think the continuity that they bring, there's a couple of new staff members. There's always change in the locker room, especially with the portal, but those veteran dudes have been a bridge for us from what's expected to what becomes in terms of the transition piece.

Their ability to come in to work every day regardless of situation, good, bad, coming off a win, coming off a loss. Every day is the same day, and I think that consistency is huge. That's what we're going to miss, right.

As this next group transitions in, high school transfers, that's going to be another opportunity for the rising seniors to establish that role. It's always cool to see that, right? There's that void that it's neat to organically see those guys fall into those roles, but the guys leaving, just so thankful for the type of work and mindset that they carry in that building.

Q. Coach, you talked about the seniors, you but how is Kris Williams grown as a leader, and what has he meant to this defense as a captain?

COREY BATOON: Who are you speaking of?

Q. Kris Williams. Kristian Williams.

COREY BATOON: Oh, Kristian. We don't call him Kris in the building. Kristian is awesome. He is different. He sets the tone on our defense in regards to attention to detail. He's the first dude in the building. He's down in treatment, a model of how to do things the right way and be a pro about your business.

I think he's helped these younger guys transition-wise, what it's supposed to look like, being able to model those things. Tremendous leader. Tremendous in regards to just being able to actualize those things that as a coach you try to hold them to a standard, but the peer leadership that he demands I think has been awesome for him.