Eli Drinkwitz | Head Coach
Opening statement: “All right, excited to get the season started. Got a couple of updates here. Just want to share with everybody. First off, Jason King will represent and wear number 25 as we honor the legacy of Aaron O’Neal on the 20th anniversary of his tragic passing, and understand the significance of his life and story to our university and the significance of the changes that were brought about with the NCAA and sickle cell testing. So Jason is excited to wear that. He’s from St Louis and he is a linebacker,
so it was awesome for that to occur. Logan Reichert suffered a lower body injury two days ago that will keep him out six to eight weeks. So that’s going to be the first, hopefully only, injury that will keep somebody out of the game. We are monitoring a couple other situations, but feel good. Quarterbacks, we have a plan in place and have discussed with the team, and feel prepared to execute that plan, and don’t feel the need to share that plan with you. As far as University of Central Arkansas — playing the purple bears, famous alumni, Anna Drinkwitz, proud graduate, I don’t remember the year, but my sister graduated from there. Have a lot of respect for their program and their head coach, Nathan Brown. He had a storied career there as a quarterback and player, and now obviously a very successful coach and has done a tremendous job building and maintaining the success of that program through a lot of different head coaches. I think he’s been there since ‘04 as a player, his entire career has been there. Have great relationship, in a long term relationship, with their tight ends coach, Brooks Hollingsworth. Brooks used to recruit the area when I was a high school football coach, and I have a lot of respect for him and his career as a football coach. You know, UCA is used to winning and has an established program. Last year, played a very difficult, tough game with Arkansas State, scored 21 in the fourth quarter and plays a very detailed style of brand of football. Always going to be a physical football team. Their defensive coordinator comes back. He’s been there for a long time with the Southern Mississippi and now is back. I know that they’re going to be really prepared. Really exciting opportunity for me personally, Malachi Henry their sophomore wide receiver, I coached with his dad, Mo, at Springdale for several years, and so awesome to see his career develop. We’ll be excited to to face him and to watch him chase his dream as a division one football player. So pretty cool moment there. So, you know, really important for us this week as a football team to establish and bring our identity to life. We want to be a tough football team and a team that plays well under pressure and executes in tough moments. And so that’s going to be really important for us. That’s our message to our team this week, is make our identity come to life. You get one shot at a first impression. And what impression are we going to have as team 136 in this brotherhood?”
On the reasoning behind the QB decision: “I felt like both quarterbacks played really well, really since the spring. I think they both established the leadership with the team, as evidenced by both being voted captains. Just didn’t feel like I could make a decision without a little bit more information, and I didn’t want to rush the decision. I think the decision of the starting quarterback, for me personally, is something that I’m going to have a lot of conviction about. And I felt like both of those guys, like I said, played winning football throughout camp, and I have a lot of confidence that both can execute at a high level. So really the only other thing to measure was to put them in live competition. Nowadays, I’m never going to do that in practice, just because of the nature of college football now and the investments that we have in those positions. So, the ability to play live football on Thursday night, the ability to watch these guys prepare, to see how they handle the preparation, I felt like was the best course of action, and that was the decision. I’ve done that before and it worked out pretty good.”
On what he needs to see specifically to determine a starter: “Yeah, I don’t feel the need to share that with anybody. I just feel like both of them need to play football. I think they both demonstrate the ability of toughness, preparation, decision making, accuracy and leadership in a practice setting. But that doesn’t mean they’ve done a game setting for us. And I know both of them have played college football before, but they haven’t played it in this situation before, and so they’ll get to demonstrate that this week.”
On if there’s a scenario where this carries into next week: “No.”
On the importance of finding a pregame rhythm for the game: “I think it’s important for everybody. We’ve talked a lot throughout the fall camp about establishing a process, and whether you’re a senior, you’re a freshman, you gotta establish a process for how you prepare for the game. And so, you know, it’s going to be an opportunity for everybody, outside of just the quarterbacks. I know there’s a lot of focus on that, which is awesome, but it’s important for everybody to establish a rhythm and a routine in the process. I think you look back at the success that we’ve had, whether it’s here, App State, or NC State, the best players that we’ve coached have had a game week rhythm and routine that they could rely on. It was able to keep them steady through the ups and downs of the season. I think about Brett Rypien, Ryan Finley, I think about Cody Schrader, Darius Robinson, Kris Abrams-Draine, those guys, Brady [Cook], they all had routines that were unique to them, that they were able to establish and maintain.”
On what UCA does well offensively: “Yeah, you know, it’s a challenge obviously, to figure that out to some extent, because they do have new coordinators. From a calling it standpoint, obviously, Coach Brown has taken back over the play calling duties. He hasn’t done that, I don’t believe, since he was the coordinator under Steve Campbell. So, you know, we can watch last year’s scheme. It’s always been a little bit similar to the scheme that he played for when he was played for Coach Conque. So they’re always going to establish the run. They’ve got a big, big running back, I think the Chambers kid played quite a bit for him last year. They’ve got two really good guards that will allow them to try to establish the line of scrimmage. They’ve always been a gap scheme, and something Coach Hollingsworth has always believed in when he was the O-Line coach, but now is the tight ends coach. Obviously. Malachi was a freshman All-American wide receiver, so they’ve got unique skill set there. You know, Nathan threw the ball around a lot as a quarterback, so I’m assuming he’s going to want to get back into that. I feel like the comments that were made was maybe they didn’t have enough variety or explosiveness on offense, but I look for them to try to bring back some explosive style of offense. The quarterback, I think Austin Myers, from Vilonia was a really good high school football player in the state. Big, tall, got great arm size. Not a ton of film, I think he’s got less than 100 snaps, so that’s a little bit of a challenge to know exactly what the offensive identity is going to be. Defensively, coach comes back from Southern Miss, but he had been there before. I think it’s going to be a similar style defense to what they’ve been running, but they do have variations to what they do, both in the coverage aspects and in the front. They play multiple fronts, four down high, and we’ll play some bear. So you know that gives you a unique thing for your offense to have to prepare for all three different fronts, to know how to block them and protect them. So you know that’s going to be a challenge. Special Teams wise, they’ve made some changes on their operations, and even talked about getting back to be a more aggressive style special team. So, we haven’t seen that on tape, we don’t know exactly what that looks like. So we’re going to have to be prepared for a lot of different things, but at the end of the day, it’s about us. It’s about us establishing our identity. It’s about us establishing the brand of football that we want to play, and I look forward to seeing that this week.”
On the preparation when there’s an unknown factor of the first opponent: “The challenges are, there’s not quite as much film that you’re going to be able to dial in and say, ‘okay, this is, this is what they do’. But it really comes back down to our preparation, our fundamentals and techniques, our execution. On the offensive side of the ball, you have base rules that you understand versus four down front, odd front or bear front. We got to be able to execute that regardless of what front they’re in. We have sound DNA plays that we can execute versus anything we got to be able to do that. Quarterbacks are going to have to go through progression readings and understand what the progression is, gonna have to identify coverage and understand how that changes their progression, which is a good challenge, and so that that’ll be what that is on the defensive side of the ball, it’s going to be all about reading your keys. You’re not going to be able to have run pass tips going into the game because you don’t see those on tape. So you’re going to have to go out and trust on your keys and make sure the secondary we have our eyes in the right spot, in the front seven, that we physical dominate our block, and we’ll dominate the blocker. We have to read and react based off of the type of block that we’re getting. So, you know, it’s really a good challenge, it’s a good test, and it’s something that I think our team looks forward to.”
On the punt return depth chart: “Well, as far as the punt return standpoint, obviously, Kevin’s done at a high level in this league. So that was, you know, Daniel Blood did it, shared some of that responsibility last year. But we’ve really been proud of the DaMarion Fowlkes and his ability to catch kicks and be explosive. We haven’t obviously done that phase live, but it’s been something that I think we’ve done quite a bit, and he’s been the most explosive in that so that’s been fun to watch and develop. As far as the kickoff return, you know, I think Tavorus has been here for a long time, and he’s done a lot of different things on special teams, but he’s really had an explosive camp, both as a ball carrier and, you know, we try to evaluate what’s going to be the best opportunity for us on the kickoff return squad. We want a big, physical guy who can run through tackles, blow through smoke, and still have the ability to make people miss. And I just felt like through evaluating ball camp, he gives us the best chance. Obviously, Jamal has always been an off returner for us, and he’s done a really good job on the other side of that. So he can be an off returner, he can also be a returner. He gives one of our playmakers an opportunity to touch the ball.”
On Ahmad Hardy: “You know, Ahmad’s been really remarkable in his ability to assimilate to our team. He’s just got an infectious personality with his teammates. But make no mistake about it, he’s an invisible presence, playing, running football. He’s got the right kind of mentality, mindset on his hands. I think that combination has been really good. You know, he’s got the ‘I ride horses’ cowboy, and takes people with him to do that. But, man, when he puts his helmet on and wants to get after it gets after, he gets after it. He talks a lot of trash to the defense. He has a lot of fun. It’s just got one of those. He’s one of those guys you love to have in the locker because he’s about his business when he needs to be but he’s also about enjoying the journey. And I’ve been really impressed and pleased with him, and look forward to seeing him play.”
On the walk-ons over the years: “Logan [Muckey], man, what an awesome young man. And Coach Russ says this really proudly that that when you look at the evolution of our team and the establishment of our culture. Those guys as walk ons have had as much to do with the transformation of that locker room and establishment of a wheeze culture as anybody and I think Logan is a really, really strong representation of that guy who just shows up every day with the right kind of energy and attitude and effort makes plays no jobs too big or too small for him. And he’s willing to hold people accountable. We talk about being accountable to the standard, or responsible for the standard. He’s one of those guys that feels responsible for the standard that’s been established and set. He holds people to that. He’s willing to call people out, and you can only do that if your life and your actions are are, you know, if you’re accountable to the standard. So I think he’s done a really, really good job, and we’re just proud of him.”
On what stood out about Muckey when offering him a spot: “Yeah, purse desperation. No, you know, I think we do a really good job in the walk on category, from establishing the high school players early on who can play, who we think can help us. We first got here, that wide receiver position was the position that we really need to flip that room, and whether that was through transfer or whether that was through scholarship or walk ons, and Logan had all the right things about him, and obviously, you know, he was coming from a really good high school that we wanted to recruit some players from, too.”
On what he wants to see go well: “I mean, it all starts with a stop of the run. I think we want to see if we can rush the passer without having to be too exotic in our pressures. Want to see if we can establish the ability to affect the pastor. I think we want to see what kind of coverage ability we have. Are we going to have to be a team that, can we be a team that denies the ball, or do we have to be a team that has a touchdown proof defense and just try to keep everything in front of us? Can we force takeaways? Do we tackle? Well, so there’s a lot of things to figure out. I think we know going into it what we want to try to establish. But you know, everybody goes in with a plan. You’re gonna have to react to the different things that occur.”
On the new SEC schedule: “I changed my mind. I don’t know if I said this at media days, and I still believe that the two most important factors in making decisions, my opinion, from a conference standpoint, for college football, is the fans and the players and everything else is really secondary. I don’t think we should weigh in conference affiliation or finances or all that different stuff. That is my opinion, really caused a lot of the issues we have in college football right now, because it’s really been more about anyway. So I think from a fan standpoint, it’s awesome. I really do. I think adding those games are great for the fans. I think it’s going to be a challenge, obviously, I think there’s going to be unintended consequences from increasing the schedule difficulties. I think there’s going to be unintended consequences with having a four and five game rotation, where you only have four conference home games and there’s going to be five conference road games, which now makes scheduling even more challenging, because you just told us that we have to have one power four outside of that, which you know you could be looking at a six home game six road game schedule, which would make no sense when you spent $250 million building a North End Zone project. So I think there’s a lot of challenges there that we have to you have to figure out get right so, you know, it’s not exactly like they’re giving us a lot of time to do that. We don’t even know who our three permanents are. We don’t know what the schedule looks like, and we got to do it here in the next nine months, so, or really, six months, and you have to buy out some stuff. So we figured it out before, but I do think there’s a lot of unintended consequences that, hopefully that everybody was aware of on that stuff. We’ll go from there, but I will say this: I just hope we get through this season first, because there’s no guarantee anything for next year, right? So focus on being 1-0 this week, and then we’ll figure out next year’s challenges next year.”
Chris McClellan | Defensive Tackle
On what he wants to do in this first game: “I just want to see us, you know, start fast, go out there, attack, you know, play with knock back, play physical, and just kind of start to see my dominant, dominant presence in it.”
On what he’s learned about the defense this fall camp: “We have a bunch of talented players. So it’s like, you know, we got a lot of, I like to call them spark plugs. So, like, those are guys that, at any moment to, you know, make something big happen at all three level. You know, the front seven is great. Our backing guys are also great. So it’s just got a bunch of spark plugs. It’s like, it’s hard to tell who’s gonna make a play, because everybody’s so capable of doing so. So I’m excited to see everything we practice throughout the spring.”
On Marquis Gracial: “Marquis has been locked in focus, and, like, we work together a lot, and he’s taking some huge steps, you know, since last season, you know, he’s probably been, you know, probably one of the most improved players on his team. I’ve been super impressed with Marquis.”
On if Marquis sees the game slowing down: “Yeah, I would have to agree with that, you know, just from talking and being, you know, in the foot on the field together, like, you know, he’ll call stuff out. He sees the game, you know, it’s just knowledge of the just game stuff has grown. And I think it’s development from like, like I said in the last season, like, just how He’s changed his body. You know, everything that he’s done is phenomenal.
On if ‘generating pressure without having to do anything exotic’ is a goal for the season: “Of course, you know, like we want to go out there and be able to use our natural abilities to just, you know, dominate the opponent. So that’s a big thing for us. Is always one of our goals, of the defense and the tackles is to confuse the quarterback. So being able to go out there and kind of just, just rush the passer without a bunch of fancy twist games or anything like that, is going to be like, it’s really fun for us this year.”
On advice he offers to the freshman in a non conference game: “For me, I would just say it’s important, just, you know, so they can see that the work that they’ve done for, you know, the guys we’ve been there since January, translate to the field. So to get a feel for a game, and I would say for young guys, we each have to trust your training, you know. And know that the coaches have prepared us for the moments that we will be in in those games. You know, the highs and the lows, no matter who we play. So that’s what I would say.”
On adjustments he remembers having to make as a freshman: “For me my freshman year, like, I started off hot, like, that’s when I was at the University of Florida, and we played Utah for our first game. So they were, like the highly ranked opponent. So I kind of stunned the fire and had to just, you know, deal with it. But I would say the biggest thing is just, you know, keep yourself calm, stay grounded. And you got to have to learn to adjust to the speed of the game. But as soon as you can overcome that. It’s just football, you know, the game most people have been playing for, you know, their whole lives. So that’s, that’s my thing. Is just trying to, you know, calm down and, like I said, trust your training, and just slow the game down as much as you can.”
On if anyone is looking past week one: “No, not really. Our mindset is, you know, we want to go 1-0 each week, 1-0 every day. So it’s like we have to take it day by day. We can’t think about who we have to go against week two. You know, we got to win week one first. So that’s our main focus right now, is just beating UCA.”
On Curtis Peagler: “Yeah, no Big Man Curt, he’s definitely gotten much better with his technique and his steps. I feel like the game I’ve seen for him kind of slow down. He’s been able to just pick up on certain things we do on defense better. And, you know, just the communication that I hear from, you know, that side of the ball when we line up against each other and go on good periods of practice. So I think he’s gotten, you know, much better since the time I’ve been here.”
On watching the team grow: “I’m a big team guy, so, like, I always love when I can see guys get better, because at the end of the day, you know, if he gets better, this is going to make the team better. So it makes me excited, you know, that we have such good players and good depth at that as well. So yeah. And then, like I said, the stuff I used to do didn’t work. I mean, I got to get better too. So it keep that same thing, like iron sharpens iron.”
On Ahmad Hardy: “”He’s strong and he’s fast and he’s low to the ground, but he has a good base, a good center of gravity, so it is very hard to tackle him. His contact balance is really impressive to me. You know, even in the scrimmage, we have to definitely wrap them up, two, three guys minimum.“
Ahmad Hardy | Running Back
On what UCA does defensively: “I don’t know too much. I know they’re got something like we do. So probably coming to game and trying to win. So we got to do what we can do, whatever it takes to win.”
On tips he has given to the freshman: “I mean, it’s gonna be different for me as an SEC game, so I don’t know what to expect, but just work hard, do everything that we’ve been doing. Trust the process.”
On what feels different in year two: “I was kind of jittery when I first played my first college game, and then after that, I didn’t know what to expect. But now I feel like I got it kind of down back, and I can just play my game.”
On what’s helped him transition to Mizzou: “I just keep everything the same. Keep my work ethic the same, put in work day in and day out. I just keep the same process, and hopefully it’ll work out.”
On Jamal Roberts: “A lot of guys say he’s probably the smartest guy on the team. So I just take whatever, whatever you give me, I take in. I mean, he knows defenses, he know the plays, you know, everything. He’s just helped me and I try to help him, or whatever. Just do what you do.”
On what makes Robert’s the smartest guy: “He played fast, like, so when you know what you do, you play really fast, like, really fast. And he played real fast. If a blitz is coming, he’s picking them up before they get to the line, and things like that.”
On goals for the season: “It’s really not the accolades. It’s just to be 1-0 every week and trying to be 1-0 every single week. And that’s the plan.”
On the growth of the O-line: “I just see it like no matter what’s going on, what we’re doing, no matter what positions change, and we ‘re all working together, trying to accomplish our goals. So I mean them moving around. Guys move around in front. We all helping each other. We all trying to be one of them each and every week.”
On what the feeling is going to be like on the first carry: “I mean, it’s going to be the same. Try to make them miss.”
