Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz didn’t sugarcoat a thing after the Tigers’ 38-17 loss to Texas A&M. Though the head coach called it “poor coaching by me,” admitting the strip sack before halftime and giving up a fake punt in the third quarter, he didn’t really take all the blame. Playing against a top-ranked team has its drawbacks, and Eli understands that. But there was this one moment when the Mizzou head coach didn’t fail to blame Mike Elko’s brilliant playcalling.

People call Mike Elko a defensive mastermind because he’s built a deep playbook full of defensive packages he’s fine-tuned through years of experience. He unleashed a tough one against the Tigers. That’s why, during the post-game press conference, when the reporter asked him about that play, Drinkwitz asked if he had time to fully understand it. It was that complex! “So, when we were running our seven-man protection, they were dropping the field in and overloading the weak side,” Eli started to explain.

“So, you got a four-man slide. They were forcing the tailback to go to the field and pick up the double mug linebacker and then bring in the boundary safety, which would make it a four-man slide.” Eli continued, “So we tried to counter that by going max pro, and they were dropping in the zone, and then we went into that 12p full slide. Which was effective the first time, and then the second time, he went odd. Brought somebody from the outside, put somebody in the C gap, and then swung the mike to split the D gap and C gap area. So he got us.” Yeah, fundamental concept, coach!

Missouri, fighting hard, needed a big conversion to keep its hopes alive. On third down, Tigers’ backup QB Matt Zollers looked left for a receiver. But before he could get the throw off, Daymion Sanford pounded on him right past tight end Jordon Harris and slammed into Zollers’ shoulder. The hit made the ball fly out of Zollers’ hands, and safety Dalton Brooks scooped it up and took it all the way back to Missouri’s 2-yard line. According to Eli Drinkwitz, they attempted to switch things up with the protection and even adopted a 12-personnel full-slide look. It sure worked the first time.

They handled the blitz and gave Zollers plenty of time to throw. But the second time wasn’t that lucky, as Elko caught on and adjusted. The Aggies’ secondary effectively shut down Mizzou’s passing game. Matt Zollers struggled mightily, completing just 7 of 22 passes with a 32% completion rate and fumbling at crucial moments. By early in the fourth, Zoller had only four completions and had already been sacked twice.

Poor coaching calls that flipped the script

Eli Drinkwitz didn’t really shy away from capitalizing on his mistake during the third-quarter fake punt that was just given away. “Third quarter, we’re up 14. Balls somewhere in the middle of the field, right? Momentum had kind of switched in our favor,” Drinkwitz explained. “We had max return call because we thought we were going to be able to generate some space for Kevin, and when you have max return call, you’re not really in a great position to defend the fake. We had one guy over there, but that wasn’t going to be enough.”

Drinkwitz admits, “And so ultimately that’s on me. I gave the okay.” Let’s get to it. Heading into that moment, the Tigers were trying to claw their way back, down by just 14 points. But then came the snap that shocked everyone. The punt was faked, and instead of the usual wave of Tigers ready to block or tackle, the special teams were caught flat-footed. The reason? Missouri went with “max protect” on the punt return. That meant they focused all their energy on blocking to spring their return man, Kevin Coleman Jr., loose.

Unfortunately, this strategy left almost no defenders near the line of scrimmage to defend against this sneaky move. That’s when Dalton Brooks saw his chance and took off. That play flipped a potential momentum boost for Missouri into a crushing blow, putting the Aggies deep in Tiger territory. And that sincerely led to a touchdown. This one’s a major coaching error.