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Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz knows exactly what his team is walking into this weekend. “It’s a really, really good football team and a very difficult test for us,” he said of Alabama. “Coach DeBoer has his team playing at an elite level…you can see why he’s one of the elite coaches within college football.”
Drinkwitz credited the Tide’s offensive creativity, pointing to the way they manipulate defensive looks. “He really does a great job of utilizing formation into the boundary early in the game to dictate what you’re going to be in,” he said. “It’s his ability to do that which gets his quarterback (Ty Simspon) into some really good comfortable situations.”
He added that Alabama’s growth since Week 1 has been dramatic. “It’s really not even the same team,” he said. “Getting the big man back in the middle, Tim Keenan, he’s a complete difference-maker for them.”
Missouri, coming off its first bye week, used the extra days for what Drinkwitz called “three goals, sharpening our edge, improvement, and recovery.” He acknowledged the fine line between rest and rust. “You’ve got to guard against the rust,” he said. “That’s why the first thing we said about our goal was to sharpen our edge.”
His message carried a dose of his trademark practicality. “We want to be tough, but we don’t want to be dumb tough,” Drinkwitz said. “Fresh horses run fast races. We’ve got to make sure our guys are ready for what lies ahead with this next seven-game SEC schedule.”
Kickoff at Faurot Field is set for 11 a.m. Saturday.
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