COLUMBIA, Mo. — The vibes could’ve been warmer and fuzzier than they were Tuesday around the Missouri football facility.
The No. 25 Tigers are ranked once again after starting the 2025 season outside The Associated Press Top 25. They’re 2-0, fresh off a double-digit win over archrival Kansas. Quarterback Beau Pribula and left guard Dominick Giudice both earned national award recognition for their performances in Week 2. And Mizzou is favored to win its next game, set for 3 p.m. Saturday vs. Louisiana, by upwards of four touchdowns.
Yet MU coach Eli Drinkwitz came off as unsatisfied — even dissatisfied — with all of it during his weekly news conference.
Some of that was perhaps due to the first question he received coming from a student reporter who asked him about his self-professed dorkiness, but there were real football issues that the Tigers’ sixth-year leader wanted to discuss.
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Like the offensive line.
Giudice was named the Southeastern Conference’s co-offensive lineman of the week and the Outland Trophy’s player of the week, which weren’t necessarily undeserved but seemed surprising given a fairly pedestrian showing from the O-line against the Jayhawks.
In his second game with Mizzou, Giudice allowed three pressures, per Pro Football Focus. While Pribula threw for 334 yards, he was sacked twice and under pressure 12 times. Tailbacks Ahmad Hardy and Jamal Roberts both rushed for more than 100 yards, but Hardy only picked up 9 yards before contact.
The Tigers won, and the offensive line was part of that, so it’s not all doom and gloom. But it ain’t sunshine and smiles coming from Drinkwitz, either. His unabridged thoughts on how the O-line has played through two games pack a nuance that’s worth presenting in full.
“I was proud of the improvement that group made from Week 1 to Week 2,†Drinkwitz said. “And there wasn’t as much clear-cut pressure as there was in Week 1, right? We didn’t have just complete busts. I thought we did a decent job at the point of attack.
“But there was too many times on third downs, especially short yardage, where Ahmad and Jamal had to — you want to leave a safety unblocked, not a D-lineman unblocked; there was too many times we left D-linemen unblocked — they had to be their own blocker. That’s just not how we’re going to do it moving forward.
“The pressure is on those guys (the linemen) to improve. I’m not going to shy away from it. Those guys are old enough, veteran enough — we got a fourth-year starting center. All those guys, they got to be on the same page when it’s third and 1. At the end of the game, we’re up four with the ball at midfield, and it’s third and 1, and we run a Day 1 play and can’t get a yard. Ain’t good enough. That ain’t good enough versus anybody. So I’m not going to pretend and pat each other on the back like we’ve got all this stuff figured out. The name of the game is improvement, and those guys know it. They know I didn’t feel good about it.â€
Remember: Mizzou shook up its offensive line late in fall camp, relegating the linemen competing to play left tackle to the bench and moving left guard Cayden Green to the outside. Ensuing moves shifted Giudice from right guard to left and brought Curtis Peagler in at right guard. When it happened, the tweak seemed ripe for growing pains if not outright vulnerability, and that remains true.
Building chemistry, as Giudice put it Tuesday, remains the fix.
“Everyone has to have the same set of eyes, communicating pre-snap, and even some of the non-verbal communication of being able to see the same things, passing off twists, things like that,†the Michigan transfer said. “I think that just continues to work its way out as you practice. The way you get better at playing football is by practicing and playing football, so as we continue going on in the season, it’ll only get better.â€
Odd game situation leads to refs’ suspension
Those who watched Missouri-Kansas with an eye for special teams details might’ve caught something odd after the Tigers’ first touchdown. The kickoff was backed up due to a penalty on the score, and instead of kicking the ball to the Jayhawks, Mizzou punted it.
No flags were thrown by the officials, in part because they’d told the MU coaching staff that punting instead of kicking was OK.
“Just wanted to see if we could,†Drinkwitz said. “It’s like asking your parents if you can do something that you know they shouldn’t let you do.â€
And yes, the officials — who were a crew from the Big 12 Conference — should not have let the Tigers do that. As a result, the Big 12 suspended that crew for one game, pulling them from the Friday night matchup they’d been assigned.
It’s a rare degree of public accountability for a refereeing error, and something Drinkwitz was able to make light of.
“We told them they’d screwed up a lot of stuff,†he joked about the officials.
