Mizzou will turn the page in 2025 from two incredible classes of player leaders, led by Brady Cook. Finding replacements will be critical to continue the winning ways.
For Mizzou football, 2025 is going to be a transition season on the field and in the locker room.
Brady Cook and Luther Burden, the defining on-field personnel of the past two ten win campaigns, have moved on, as have other veterans. A wave of young recruits transferred out, and a new batch, along with veterans from the portal, arrive as reinforcements. While the coaching staff remains mostly intact, the players on the field are changing en masse. New faces are arriving to fill in their roles on the field, but a bigger void to fill will be replacing the locker room leadership of these exiting core veterans.
Succession plans have always been the name of the game in college football: like Brad Smith to Chase Daniel to Blaine Gabbert to James Franklin, or Michael Sam + Kony Ealy departing to make way for Markus Golden and Shane Ray. This is magnified in the transfer portal era of intense roster turnover. A Dominic Lovett leaves and is replaced by Theo Wease, a defensive line is fixed in one year, or singular talent infusions like a Jalen Catalon.
We turn to content like off-season blogs, message board threads, returning production formulas, and evaluation services like On3 and 247 to dream up future depth charts. But these habits can not capture the intangible effects of roster turnover, and the need to build and maintain a winning culture even as the individuals in the room change each year.
Any Mizzou fan can see the talent lost in these last two cycles, simply by perusing NFL rosters. But this core was also a special group of player leaders, something that is a lot harder to find than a 4.5 40-yard dash wide receiver or a 1,000-yard running back.
Darius Robinson was a one-of-kind personality, a magnetic figure and a magnificent locker room presence. Cody Schrader was likewise a one-of-kind worker, someone whose desire and practice habits are tales of legend. Kris Abrams-Draine and Ennis Rakestraw set a tone for toughness and physicality in the secondary, and Theo Wease did the same in the wide receiver room. And Brady Cook was one of the best player leaders in school history: a tentpole figure who rallied an entire roster around him with his grit and desire. His name will ring out in the annals not for the strength of his passes or the speed of his rushes, but for his toughness and will to win.
Look at that paragraph again, and consider further the names not even mentioned — Kristian Williams, Javon Foster, Johnny Walker, Chuck Hicks, Harrison Mevis, Mookie Cooper, and on. Eli Drinkwitz and his staff have the unenviable task of replacing a generation’s worth of winning culture. While there are actual football, X’s-and-O’s type reasons the Tigers went 21-5 over the past two seasons, and ran a 10-1 record in one-score games, you can not ignore the player leadership, connected culture, and the desire of those leaders as a factor in the winning margins.
So 2025 turns the page on this era. New leaders from the roster will need to emerge, as every team captain from the past two seasons are gone. Returning veteran starters like Connor Tollison, Chris McClellan, Daylan Carnell, Dreyden Norwood and Zion Young feel like obvious choices. Maybe some young guys are ready to blossom into a more vocal role, like Jamal Roberts, Speedy Johnson, Marvin Burks, Brett Norfleet or Cayden Green.
But Eli Drinkwitz was sharp in the transfer class he accumulated, not just in taking productive players, or those brimming with potential. When you read about the players in this class, the high character leadership theme emerges. Beau Pribula earned rave reviews for his clubhouse presence at Penn State, and might have that innate Brady Cook “guys would crawl over broken glass to go to war with him” quality. Josiah Trotter has been around the game his whole life, with a razor-sharp father and brother in the NFL. Cornerback Stephen Hall was a team captain at Wazzu, Mikai Gbayor was a three-time “all citizen team” at Nebraska, and Jalen Catalon was a team captain at Arkansas. Young guys like Ahmad Hardy, Santana Banner, Langdon Kitchen, and Nate Johnson have done the work early to earn the “promotion” to SEC football.
There were a lot of ingredients that went into Mizzou football’s winning recipe during the “let Brady Cook” era. As the time comes for heavy roster turnover, Drinkwitz and his staff hit the portal not just to replace yards, touchdowns, and tackles, but team leaders, culture figures, and tone-setters as well.