Drinkwitz has had one of the most successful early stretches in program history. Can he keep it up?
The headline to this article will likely ruffle some feathers. Go ahead and take a second to preen them.
I’ll be the first to admit that ranking Eli Drinkwitz in the annals of Mizzou Football coaching history is a bit… premature. Honestly, the soul of this article is more interested in what comes next. But what comes next, well, hasn’t happened yet. We can only evaluate what’s in front of us and determine what it means. We can, however, speculate a little bit, and we’ll get to that.
Mizzou just wrapped up its fifth season under the leadership of one Eliah Drinkwitz, the somewhat nerdy, somewhat brash, always goofy man out of Norman, Oklahoma. Drinkwitz came to Mizzou as a bright-eyed newcomer to the head coaching scene, one dream season at Appalachian State under his belt and a tidy new set up at one of the SEC’s also-ran latecomers.
In the half-decade since, we’ve come to know Eli quite well. He’s a big talker, sometimes to his own detriment, who seems to connect well with the young men under his tutelage. He’s an old-school football lover with a twist, combining a possession-dominant running style with intricate zone concepts, often paired with an athletic, aggressive defense. And he’s a demon on the recruiting trail, compiling the three best high school recruiting classes in program history over the last three years… and proving himself to be one of the nation’s very best in the still-developing world of transfer portal recruiting.
More than anything, what Eli Drinkwitz is proven is that he is not, as it turns out, a loser. Drinkwitz managed to do something no coach since Warren Powers in the late 1970s and early 1980s achieved — avoid a losing record, at least in the regular season. And despite muddling at .500 for the first three years of his Mizzou career, Drinkwitz’s recruiting efforts and roster building have come good in the past two. In case you haven’t heard, Mizzou won back-to-back double digit games in 2023 and 2024, only the third time it’s been done in program history.
Overall, Drinkwitz’s first five seasons at the helm of the program have been some of the most successful in program history. Dan Devine might have him beat in a few areas, but considering how different the world of college football is now, there’s a strong case to be made that no one has ever been better in their early years than Drink.
There are some concessions that need to be made, of course. Gary Pinkel’s numbers in that table are pretty pedestrian, but he was also taking over a program that was in a bit of a desert. His remaining career at Missouri is what he’s most known for, and without those seasons, Drinkwitz likely isn’t able to accomplish what he has thus far. We’ll get there, don’t worry.
What intrigues me most about these early seasons under Drinkwitz when compared to his compatriots in Mizzou history is his penchant for putting Mizzou in positions to win. I didn’t put together comparisons for one score games, but Drinkwitz has proven to be a master at getting the Tigers into tight games and winning. You could call it a small sample size, but it doesn’t feel like it after five whole seasons of watching Drink wiggle his way out of tight spots time and again. Indeed, this is the Tao of Eli Drinkwitz, to live on the edge and let some poor 20-something year old try to kick ungodly long field goals. Hey, if it works it works.
No other coach in Mizzou history has been under the spotlight that Drinkwitz has been under. College football is no longer a pride-based sport; it’s an industry that generates revenue, has shareholders (of a sort) and drives markets. Eli Drinkwitz is almost less of a coach and more of an executive. Tell Warren Powers or Don Faurot that they would’ve had to glad hand donors in order to fund the budget for their second-string defensive line and they might’ve socked you in the nose. Drinkwitz has managed navigate a constantly-evolving landscape and come through looking tidy. For that, he’s likely already sitting in a Top Five position all-time.
This, of course, comes with a major caveat. Actually, two caveats. First, it’s not hard to enter that sort of “rarified” air in Columbia, Mo. As much as it pains me to say, Tiger football history isn’t exactly rich with elite winners. If you look at that table above and shift it over five years, you notice why.
When three of your winningest coaches of all time didn’t even make it to season eight, earning a spot on Mizzou’s coaching Mount Rushmore doesn’t feel like that much of a prize. Even so, let’s go ahead and place Drink on the inside track to a top four spot behind Devine, Faurot and Pinkel.
OK, let’s speculate. Obviously the next five years will tell us a lot about where Drinkwitz will end up on the pantheon. Setting aside the three coaches who got the axe after year seven, we start to see a clear pecking order come into play:
- Apologies to classicists, but Don Faurot’s next five years — after his military service, as noted in the table — mark the beginning of the end of his tenure. His record indicates a coach who was over the hill, one who likely wouldn’t make it the full five if he were coaching even a decade later. One Top 25 win and no bowl wins doesn’t inspire confidence. If Drinkwitz even manages one more high level season, he likely surpasses Faurot, at least in the heights that are reached with the program.
- Dan Devine was a pure stat-padder in years six through ten. His winning percentage is really strong at 66.7 percent, but the Tigers only played in eight Top 25 games over those five seasons, winning just one. They also only won one bowl game. Devine redeemed himself in years 11 and 12, though, which will make clearing him a tall task for Drinkwitz.
- Obviously Gary Pinkel’s next five years should be the goal for Drink. It’s probably the best five year run in program history, culminating in five straight bowl appearances, two Top 20 finishes and a winning percentage over 70. It’s the foundation that allowed Drink to build what he has, and asking that of Drinkwitz, even after the past two seasons, seems like pie in the sky. But if he does it, we’re probably starting to talk about whether or not he’s the GOAT… and how we can get him to stick around for life.
So where does Eli Drinkwitz rank in the pantheon of Mizzou head coaches? Surprisingly, it’s pretty easy to say. Probably fourth, if we had to put a fine point on it. At the very least, that’s where he’s tracking as of now. And if he’s around for another five seasons, it likely means the Tigers are keeping pace in the CFP era. And in that case, he’s climbing the ladder.