Eli Drinkwitz keeps receipts and he’s going to tell you all about them

Every week, Eliah Drinkwitz tells us his team needs to ignore the noise. Block out the critics, don’t worry about the haters, all we got is us. Every coach says it. Some of them mean it. A few follow through.

Eli Drinkwitz keeps receipts.

In an ESPN.com story on August 30, former Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops was discussing the Sooners’ move from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference. It was a move Mizzou had made 12 years before, in large part because of Oklahoma’s attitude. The Tigers and Sooners hadn’t played since then. Stoops hasn’t coached in Norman, or anywhere else in college football, for seven seasons. But his word still carries weight. So Jake Trotter wanted to know whether Oklahoma should be wary that the move to the biggest and baddest conference in the country could be tough for the team that had dominated the Big 12 even before it became a watered down version of its former self.

“We beat the hell out of Missouri, all of a sudden now we’re supposed to be afraid of them?” Stoops said before going on to insult Texas A&M in his next breath.

Back to Drinkwitz and his receipts. After a 30-23 win over Oklahoma that moved Mizzou to 7-2 and kept hope alive, at least mathematically, for an SEC title and a College Football Playoff appearance and sunk the Sooners to 5-5 with games against LSU and Alabama remaining, the Missouri coach gave his shortest postgame opening statement of the season.

“This will be real disappointing to Bob Stoops, but OU doesn’t always whip Missouri’s ass anymore,” he said. “With that, I’ll open it up for questions.”

Oh, so you heard that Eli?

There’s no doubt Drinkwitz speaks his mind. And there’s no doubt he reads and hears what is written and said about him, his team and his players. He’s shown up at a postgame press conference with a light saber to troll Dan Mullen. He’s told Josh Heupel that the Tigers “stand on business” at midfield. He’s now delivered a public message to one of the best college football coaches of the last quarter century. And that’s just the stuff we see on camera.

There’s also his Twitter account, which was rolling after Saturday’s win.

????? https://t.co/HdQD5yjGh1

— Eliah Drinkwitz (@CoachDrinkwitz) November 10, 2024

We’d left Drinkwitz after he said he’d open it up for questions. He did. The first question was whether he’d been a part of a game that flipped as violently as Saturday’s did when Missouri went from up seven to down seven to up seven all in the span of 168 seconds. To his credit, he answered the question, saying “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

He then launched into an aside that lasted two minutes and 19 seconds. The coach clearly wanted the stage, so we’re going to give it to him. Here’s the entire stump speech:

“I just can’t say how proud I am of Drew Pine. For all the crap he’s taken, you know, I feel like I’m up here all the time having to defend my quarterback, which is not great, but for all the crap he’s taken on Twitter and X, for him to come out here, ignore the noise, some of it from y’all in this room. He goes out there and just and y’all can raise up and look at me like it’s not (you), but it is okay. He goes out there and delivers in the keyest moments in the fourth quarter, after fans been doing he just goes out there and delivers. That’s the thing I love about this team, is we love y’all when you’re cheering for us and when you’re not, we just, we just keep on rolling. We’re gritty. We’re really, really gritty.

“And atmosphere was amazing. It was unbelievable, amazing. But for the team just to stick together the way they did, you know, shoot, ball’s on 25 yard line. It looks like it’s mine. You know, there’s no way we’re going to get it down there. It’s a slant, you know, get up, get a penalty, throws a little play to Lu and then to throw the game tying touchdown to Theo was pretty awesome. So extremely proud of our guys, extremely proud of Drew Pyne, extremely proud of our defense, for, you know, them to continue to go out there, you know, the first nine points of the game, fake punt, the fourth down, and then a penalty on special teams. You know, otherwise, they don’t, they don’t give up anything, and they never even flinched. They just kept going out there, kept going out there. And it’s the, it’s the brotherhood of this team that is so, so special, so so special. And you know, when you have a backup, you know, you have the injuries and you have your backup quarterback and your center goes down. I mean, that’s another thing. Drake Heismeyer goes in for the you know, was in there the whole time in the after Theo’ touchdown on the screen. We didn’t miss a beat.

“So, extremely proud of everybody on that team for just doing their job and doing it as well as they possibly could, no matter the circumstance, both coordinators, I thought, did excellent job. You know, six or nine to three at halftime. I can’t wait for that mini movie to come out. I mean, we all knew we were exactly where we wanted to be. We hadn’t turned the ball over. We had established the run game. We knew it was going to turn our way, and it took a little bit, but we got there.”

Drinkwitz was asked a question about Pyne and his ability to bounce back from a three-interception performance in a 34-0 loss to Alabama in his last appearance. Hop back up on that soapbox, Eli.

“I see him in practice every day. I’ve seen his game tape. He’s played a lot of college football. He’s won a lot of college football games as a starter, and one bad outing doesn’t define a player. We have to, we have to quit reacting to every single play…Man, there’s a lot of quarterbacks in the NFL with three interceptions. They don’t go to the bench. You don’t shoot them and get another one. You let them play through it. Okay? And Drew is a competitor. He had a great two weeks of practice. He was in here grinding on tape. We had a game plan that we knew exactly who he was. I mean, he was excellent, 11 for 19 on third downs. I mean, just excellent, pushing up in the pocket, making big time throws to Luther Burden. So it wasn’t, there wasn’t a shadow of doubt within this building. Within this building, there’s no doubt. There was no doubt.”

To the victor go the spoils. Eli Drinkwitz was the victor Saturday night. When he’s the victor and he gets a microphone in front of him—or a keyboard—he talks. It’s who he is. You may like it and you may not. Other teams absolutely don’t. For Mizzou fans, it probably depends mostly on the result of the last game. There’s been some frustration from fans when he’s begged them to buy tickets, asked them if they really wanted to be seen as an SEC fanbase. There’s been pushback when he’s chastised them for booing the starting quarterback (some will say that never happened) or tweeting angrily about the backup.

You don’t have to like it. You can think it’s beneath the office. You can tell him that’s what the nine million a year is for is to put up with this crap. You can tell him fans are fans everywhere. You can tell him if he wants the complete and total buy in of a lunatic SEC fanbase he better be ready to deal with the over the top insanity of a lunatic SEC fanbase.

But you do need to accept it. It’s who he is. And it’s working. Missouri is 18-4 in its last 22 games. It finished last season eighth in the country, it’s been in the top 25 every single week this season and it’s one of seven SEC teams and 20 power conference teams with fewer than three losses. Whether you like his delivery or his message doesn’t matter. His players have bought into it. That’s what matters.

“I’ve been through a lot of my career. So, you know, I’ve never had any confidence issues with myself,” Pyne said. “I’d say for me, confidence is never an issue.”

Drinkwitz has a lot of bluster and bravado. On the field, so do some of his players. By the time they step behind the podium in the postgame interview, they manage to suppress it. None of the four Missouri players who spoke after Saturday’s game had messages nearly as bold as the of their head coach.

“I’ve been off the grid,” Pyne said. “Nothing against you guys. You guys are great. But I’ve been off the grid, and you know, I’ve just really leaned on my brothers in the locker room.”

Drinkwitz tells his team to ignore the noise. But when he wins, he doesn’t just admit he listens to the noise. He responds to it. So I asked a couple of Missouri players if they use it as motivation.

“My motivation is the guys in the locker room,” Pyne said. “Theo Wease, he scored two touchdowns against his old team today. You know those guys in the locker room, and you know Brady Cook, he’s my best friend here. You know, he’s been dying to play in this game his whole life. In the off season, it was his (phone) background for a long time. And you know, I told him I’d do everything I could to go win that game for him. This team, this locker room, I’m so thankful to be a part of this.”

“My old teammates were happy to see me,” Wease said. “The fans booed me when they did the starting lineup.

“At the end of the day, the people tweeting, they’re not playing, you know, they’re not doing what we’re doing. So that’s the way we block it out. But as far as people just talking about us, I we got the same motto from last year: Something to Prove. Nobody respects us. We don’t care. We’re gonna go back to work.”

They may get beat again. The doubt will return. It will fuel them again. And when they win, they’re gonna tell you about it. And the loudest voice will be that of the brazen, never bashful head coach who has taken a program that has perennially been pushed to the back seat back into the national conversation over the last 15 months.

“Felt pretty good,” Drinkwitz said. “I thought Coach Stoops did a nice job starting it up this summer, you know. And I thought their coaches did some stuff this summer that felt like they then, you know, started up a little bit with some tweets and different things. The guys were ready.”

And with that he was off. Until the next time. And you better believe, there will be a next time.