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Ultimately, Drinkwitz got there by finding ways to win close games rather than lose them. His game management got better as he delegated more authority to his coordinators.

Missouri’s key players came through in the clutch and Truman finally caught some well-earned breaks.

All that is great. Many coaches come and go from the Southeastern Conference without making that progress.

But the SEC is still the SEC and the operating margin for success for Drinkwitz has been narrow throughout his breakthrough seasons. That was reflected in the SEC preseason media poll, which ranked the Tigers 12^th -– ahead of only Vanderbilt, Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi State.

Name brand schools like Oklahoma, Auburn and Florida got more love despite suffering some real pain during the past few seasons in this hypercompetitive conference.

In the first coaches poll of the season, nine SEC teams made the Top 25 and Missouri missed the cut. The Tigers finished 27th in the voting, behind 10 other conference schools.

Writing , data-driven analyst Bill Connelly made note of Mizzou narrow escapes while ranking the Tigers back in the conference pack:

If you have sturdy quarterback play, you can properly execute a good two- or four-minute drill, and with a strong kicker who can bomb in clutch field goals, you're probably going to win more close games than you lose. Missouri had all those things in 2023 (while ranking 10th in SP+) and 2024 (19th) but winning 21 combined games required a 10-1 record in one-score finishes. With solid QB play, the Tigers could be a top-25 team again on paper, and the schedule is friendly by SEC standards. But no one wins 90% of their close games forever.

On the other hand, Connelly noted that Coach Drink worked the portal like a champion:

Drinkwitz did a nice job of basically adding a transfer for every starter lost. Either Penn State transfer Beau Pribula or former blue-chipper Sam Horn will fill Brady Cook's shoes at quarterback. As Drew Allar 's backup at Penn State, Pribula threw mostly short, smart passes and kept PSU on schedule with his feet, but he never really had to show off his arm or make big plays in crunch time. We'll see how that goes.

Drinkwitz also added Louisiana-Monroe running back Ahmad Hardy. Among 32 backs with 200-plus carries, Hardy ranked sixth in yards per carry after contact (3.7) and first in forced missed tackles per touch (0.33), and he was a freshman playing on an outmanned team.

Speaking of Pribula, the Athletic ranked him as the nation’s No. 38 quarterback despite his thin track record:

The Penn State transfer hit the portal when Drew Allar decided to return for one more year and was a coveted prospect. Pribula looked plenty capable in relief of Allar, especially in the second half of a road win over Wisconsin. He doesn’t have the biggest arm, but his mobility, accuracy, poise and command are encouraging. And he’s a real run threat, scoring four touchdowns as a change-of-pace option last season.

Tipsheet believes Pribula has a chance to become a Brady Cook-like quarterback in this system. He’ll have to hit enough deep throws to make it work, but Drinkwitz will design game plans that give him a few good looks each game.

Sam Horn provides an intriguing 1B pure passing option if Drinkwitz wants to sprinkle aerial packages into his mix. Since Mizzou’s schedule is backloaded, the Tigers will have an opportunity to sort all this before the weather starts to turn.

Here is what folks have been writing about college football:

Scott Dochterman, The Athletic: “The Big Ten hasn’t enjoyed a collection of depth like this in years, perhaps decades. Traditional powers like Michigan and USC could vault back into CFP consideration, Iowa and Nebraska might battle for a spot on Black Friday, Illinois and Indiana face off in a critical mid-September blockbuster, Washington eyes a return to its 2022-23 form and Minnesota has high expectations. Two factors likely will separate the teams: quarterback play and schedules. Of this group, Illinois has by far the most experienced Big Ten starter in Luke Altmyer. Michigan snagged the nation’s No. 1 recruit in true freshman Bryce Underwood, who will face a ton of pressure to make an early impact. Jayden Maiava returns as USC’s starter, but five-star true freshman Husan Longstreet will push him. Indiana and Iowa grabbed highly touted transfers Fernando Mendoza and Mark Gronowski, respectively, while Minnesota redshirt freshman Drake Lindsey beat out multiple transfers this spring. Sophomores Dylan Raiola (Nebraska) and Demond Williams (Washington) have sky-high potential.�

Blake Toppmeyer, USA Today: “I kept waiting for a besotted, hoodwinked boyfriend to show up at ACC Media Days. All I saw was a football coach. If you’re like me, you followed the breathless offseason coverage of NFL legend turned North Carolina coach Bill Belichick, his relationship with 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson, and her apparent sway over the veteran coach. Some even suggested Belichick’s self-described ‘muse’ put him under her spell, like she’s some sort of Svengali who bamboozles her 73-year-old boyfriend. If you’re like me, you see this situation as a molehill, built into a mountain during the slow news portion of the college football calendar. When Belichick spoke Thursday at his conference’s media days, he looked and sounded like a college football coach. He spoke to how he spent the offseason ‘reinforcing the roster.’ North Carolina’s transfer haul that 247ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ ranks as the third-best in the ACC supports this. He explained his excitement for coaching college players, because they're more receptive to coaching and have formed fewer bad habits than their older NFL counterparts.â€�

Pat Forde, : “The Sooners are trying to reverse the worst three-year performance since the regrettable John Blake era from 1996–98. After getting their teeth kicked in as SEC newbies, they’ve changed the scenery around Venables in hopes of salvaging his tenure. Oklahoma hired former Senior Bowl exec Jim Nagy as its general manager, and Nagy in turn hired a six-man front office staff to assist him. There is a new offensive coordinator (Ben Arbuckle), a new special teams coordinator (Doug Deakin) and new linebacker coaches on the inside (Nate Dreiling) and outside (Wes Goodwin). The Sooners also have a new quarterback in Washington State transfer John Mateer, new lead running back in Jaydn Ott from California and new havoc-raising linebacker in Kendal Daniels from Oklahoma State.  The schedule is brutal, but there is hope for a fast start with just one road game in the first six, and that’s at lightweight Temple. The final seven games are all against teams that could be Top 25 caliber: Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri and LSU. After a pair of 6–7 seasons sandwiched around a 10–3 mark, it feels like Venables has to win at least eight games to restore faith.”

Connor O’Gara, Saturday Down South: “Clemson could start as the No. 1 team in the country like it did in 2019-20. At the very least, Clemson is going to start as a top-3 team with bookended games vs. SEC contenders. We’ve got the battle for Death Valley with LSU at Clemson in Week 1, and South Carolina will look to beat Clemson in consecutive years for the first time since the Steve Spurrier era. Those games could have a major say in whether multiple SEC contenders have a Playoff argument, and if the Tigers somehow fail to win the ACC and are vying for an at-large berth, you can bet that SEC teams will want to poke holes in the résumé there, too.Once upon a time, Clemson was seemingly the only thing that could get in the SEC’s way during the 2010s. An 0-3 mark against the SEC in 2024 would hardly suggest that’s the case heading into the latter half of the 2020s. But if there was ever a time for that to revert back to the way things were in the 2010s, Clemson fans know that this it.�

Megaphone

“The great thing about working with the college players is just the growth and the development that we’ve seen . . . To see how much the players improve from the spring to the start of training camp and this year of course we haven’t started training camp but through the course of the spring the amount of improvement our players made in those 15 days — most of which were in pads — was something that you never saw in the NFL because you could never wear pads in the offseason.�

North Carolina coach Bill Belichick.