What is the story about?
Eli
Drinkwitz and Mike Kelly returned to Harpo’s for Tiger Talk Tuesday night ahead of Mizzou’s top-15 matchup against Vanderbilt in Nashville – a game that will be preceded by College GameDay.
Here’s what Drinkwitz, alongside edge rusher Zion Young and wide receiver Joshua Manning, had to say:
Eli Drinkwitz
- On his viral postgame celebration on top of a pillar surrounding the field with Truman the Tiger: “I know there was a lot of people worried about me. I’m a heck of an athlete; I mean, I work out every day.”
- On his premature celebration after Robert Meyer narrowly missed the field goal in the first OT: “My wife told me after the game she was so mad at me – I had multiple people tell me I was fixed to be a meme for a long time. But thank God Zion Young had different plans.”
- On returning to Auburn (where he was once on staff) and getting the win: “There’s a lot of guys on our staff that were told that they couldn’t coach well enough to stay at Auburn, and for us to go back in there and find a way to deliver a heartbreaker like that was special for a lot of people…It’s always good to ride back into town – you know, it’s like The Magnificent Seven. Nobody throws me my own guns and tells me to leave, you know? And so we got to ride back in.”
- On Zion Young’s hot mic moment at the overtime coin toss: “The thing that I think our fans love about him, and I know our team loves and respects about him, is he’s authentic. He wasn’t trying to talk trash. All he was doing was making sure our football team what ready to go in overtime. And guess what? He was ready to go, and our guys fed off that energy.”
- On the offense’s game-tying drive in the fourth quarter: “We just gathered up the offense and we said, ‘Hey, forget about everything that’s going on. Right here, right now, this play, let’s get it done.‘ And they went right down the field and scored. That was pretty impressive.”
- On the final play of the game: “There’s not a better pass rusher in the country in a known passing situation than Dame Wilson, that’s been proven time and time again. He got held, and they told me that it wasn’t a holding because he still got to the quarterback. So the only disappointing thing is, because [Arnold] threw the ball to the o-lineman, it didn’t credit as a sack.”
- On Marquis Gracial’s breakout season: “Marquis has been a young man who has had a lot of different challenges in life, and it’s been challenging here, too: highly recruited, developmental ups and downs, maybe not meeting the expectation or the outside noise. But when we went to Harmons, there was a perspective change, and there was a shift change of, ‘Hey, this is what I need to do to grow and to develop into the person I want to be. And maybe those things that made my perspective wrong have shifted.’ And so I think now he’s got an attitude of gratitude; he believes in our culture, he believes in our standard, he believes in Zion Young, and it’s really helped him grow. It’s been awesome to watch.”
- On Diego Pavia: “He has a relentless approach to how he plays; he’s unafraid to take chances, he’s unafraid to run around. The play is never over. It’s like you’re playing a backyard football game all the time.” … “Most people within the play, they take a three-step drop, 1-2-3, read; he don’t do that. It’s, let’s take a drop and then see who rushes me, and then start making some stuff happen. So that’s a real challenge.”
- On Joshua Manning nearly committing to K-State: “Me and [coach Jacob] Peeler got on the phone with his mom, with his dad, with his coaches, with everybody; I think we tried to call his girlfriend too. And we just said, ‘You’re rushing it – slow down, slow down.‘ And he did, and he thought about it, thought about it, thought about it, and they were pressuring the crap out of him, and we just kept fighting. And that’s why we were so excited when he called to commit – I mean, it was a big time, big time, big time thing for us, and [I’m] super proud of him.”
Zion Young
- On what he was looking for in the portal: “A new home – somewhere where guys were gonna treat me like family. That’s what I got from Mizzou.”
- On working toward his best possible game: “Just keep working. You just keep working. Just keep working, and hopefully it comes alive this week, and next week, and so on and so on.”
- On last year’s Oklahoma scoop and score: “I feel like that’s my best play of my football career. I scooped the ball, I feel like I wanted us to get in and score. It was just a surreal moment for me, and I couldn’t believe it.”
- On where he got his personality: “My dad, especially, and also my siblings. Me being the youngest – I’ve got 10 siblings. Growing up, I always wanted to be heard. My dad was always yelling, and I’m the same way. I yell, same thing exactly.”
- On the edge rushers room: “I feel like everybody thinks I’m the firecracker in the room. Like, nah, Coach [Brian] Early is really the firecracker in the room – he gets us going. The stuff he’s taught me over these two years has been very beneficial to [me].”
- On the Mizzou fanbase: “It feels pretty good, to know that the community and my environment, they love me and they’re pushing for me as much as I’m pushing for myself.”
- Young’s video game of choice: Call of Duty. He said he’s pretty good, and that Ahmad Hardy and Kevin Coleman, Jr., could back him up on that.
Joshua Manning
- On his decision to commit to Mizzou: “When I was being recruited by them, they were 6-6. I feel like I wanted to take a chance on the hometown team and be someone that makes a difference.”
- On playing in a tough road environment: “I ain’t gonna lie, it was a very loud place, and it was tough. But just putting yourself into that villain role, just being able to break peoples’ hearts, that was huge for us that whole week.”
- On being the youngest child in his family: “I feel like it builds toughness, just always getting pushed around and all that.”
- The first thing he (and Zion Young) got after signing NIL deals? A car. I’d guess that’s the case for a lot of college football players in the NIL era.
- On his ‘welcome to the SEC’ moment: “Going against Ennis [Rakestraw] and [Kris Abrams-Draine] my first day, it was brutal.”
- Manning said he likes to play basketball at the rec – and he’s dunked on Zion Young before. There probably aren’t a lot of guys out there who can say that.
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