Bring your Tigers football, basketball and recruiting questions, and talk to Eli Hoff in a live chat at 11 a.m. Thursday.
Transcript
Eli Ǵڴ:Hi all, and welcome to another Mizzou chat. Feel free to drop any questions you've got about preseason camp, takes you want out in the world, or whatever else is on your mind. One programming note for today's chat: A handful of player interviews are scheduled for noon, so I'll be ducking over to the stadium and back around that time. Rest assured that I'll get questions answered, though, so drop them in at any time. I'll keep the chat open 'til about 2 p.m. today because of that gap.
I do want to make sure one story is on your radar: This morning, my projections for Mizzou's full two-deep (plus some) depth chart went online. It's 3,000 words of what I've seen and heard during camp, so I think it's worth your time if you want to get the full picture of how this year's Missouri team is stacking up.
People are also reading…
Also, I'll tease a story that will be coming your way tomorrow: I sat down with Brad Larrondo, who's the new CEO of Every True Tiger Brands — Mizzou's NIL agency. I know a lot of y'all have questions about how NIL works, and we talked a lot about both MU's current model and where things could be headed. Keep an eye out for that tomorrow.
ѳ:How does Mizzou's NIL risk compare to other SEC institutions? Are they more or less aggressive?
Ǵڴ:Risk is tough to evaluate. There's inherent risk in investing significant chunks of money into young people whose brains aren't fully developed yet. It's even true of pro athletes. Things happen. I don't think Mizzou is overly or underly risky when it comes to being willing to compensate players. One thing you'll see in tomorrow's Q&A is that they're diligent about making sure players uphold their end of NIL bargains. The idea of "legitimate NIL" vs. "pay to play" is emerging more often, and Mizzou wants to be sure it can fall in the former and avoid suggestions of the latter. That's the safe route. But in general, MU's model to shift from reliance on a collective and instead create a branding agency is quite progressive in the NIL space and one of the like paths forward for a lot of schools.
bigron: Eli, appreciate your keeping us up to date on what's happening at Mizzou...where is the men's Bball team as far as what's going on with the pre-season workouts?
Ǵڴ:The men's basketball team has had some time off recently between the end of summer practices and the start of school (classes start Monday, which you can tell by the platoons of U-Hauls driving around Columbia today). That's not to say there haven't been players in the gym, but organized practices have taken a break. They'll start ramping back up soon. I count 11 and a half weeks until the first game of the season.
:I'm devastated for Darris Smith. I was really looking forward to watching him play. Two questions, will he be able to retain his eligibility for this year via medical redshirt? Does this open a pathway for Nwaneri to have a more significant role than expected?
Thanks for your work, Eli. The articles leading up to the season have really gotten me excited. Especially loved the piece on Toriano Pride
Ǵڴ:Thanks, Lu. Pride is a fun guy to talk to, so I enjoyed writing that piece.
Preseason injuries are just horrible. Doesn't matter the team, the player, the sport. You're talking to a Vikings fan who's still grappling with the potential franchise QB of the future missing his entire rookie season after just a few drives in a preseason game... but I won't bog y'all down with my Minnesotan misery.
Yes, this should allow Darris Smith to get another year of eligibility, since he won't play a snap this year. If he has NFL ambitions, his goal might not be to use that and instead return next year and parlay that into a decent draft spot, but 2026 will be on the table for him.
It does technically open the pathway for Williams Nwaneri to get more action. There's one fewer player ahead of the freshman in the rotation. That said, I don't think it changes the coaching staff's view of how they want to handle Nwaneri this season. If they're dictating his role off his readiness, they still have that luxury. Johnny Walker Jr., Zion Young, Joe Moore III and Eddie Kelly Jr. can be the four-man rotation, Jahkai Lang can be the reserve (or replace one of those), and then Nwaneri can slot in when they want him to. It's not a need. I go back and forth with how much I think Nwaneri will see the field this year, but I feel confident in saying Smith's injury doesn't actually do a ton to change that probability.
Ҷ:You think Burden gets in Heisman talk this year?
Ǵڴ:Yes, but not seriously. In 2020, Alabama's DeVonta Smith was the first wideout to win the Heisman in a looooong time. Desmond Howard in 1991 had been the last to do it. Smith's season-long stats were 117 catches for 1,856 yards and 23 touchdowns. Not that it was a factor in the Heisman, but Alabama won the CFP that year — they were the No. 1 seed, so that was clear when the award was handed out.
Can Luther Burden III do that? Probably, but I don't see that happening in reality. I mean, 23 touchdowns is just a wild statistic. That's just under two per game. He's the betting favorite for the Belitnikoff, which goes to the top wide receiver, but it's just difficult for a wideout to win the Heisman. Again, I could see some buzz, but his position diminishes real chances of taking home the big one.
Mizzou Fan: Eli - There is a lot of talk, as there should be, about our receivers being the strength of this team. However, we don't seem to mention Brett Norfleet and the upside he has to be an all SEC tight end. Is it because our talent at wide outs and of course Luther Burden? Thank You.
Hoff: The breadth of talented wideouts is certainly part of it. Mizzou doesn't necessarily need to have much in the way of a pass-catching tight end with how many other receiving options there are. Of the 352 passes MU threw last season, just 33 of them targeted a tight end. That's 9.4%. The Tigers are bringing back those wideouts, and you assume running backs will remain involved in the passing game, so the math doesn't need to change a whole lot. Every target given to someone is a target taken from, like, four or five other players who you could make the case to get them. That's the challenge facing Kirby Moore this season.
It's going to take Norfleet demanding more targets for him to really get them, I think. And I don't mean pounding his fists in Moore's offense, but showing a reason for him to get them. That's absolutely possible for him to do, and his ceiling remains very high. You just also have to put him in the context of the rest of the talent in this offense.
It's kind of like when people debate who's a top 5 or 7 or 10 quarterback in the NFL. It always seems like people will readily say 9 different guys are a top 7 QB, and that's just not how it works. Mizzou is going to leave talented receiver options without as many targets/touches as they/fans/etc might like to have. That's the nature of this depth, and the definition of a good problem to have.
Ed from Idaho: Greetings from Idaho. Do you think our FB defense is good and deep enough to deliver a two loss or less season?
Ǵڴ:Hello to Idaho! I have been there twice in my life and had both a magical huckleberry milkshake several summers ago and some surprisingly tasty pizza when I was there for a wedding this summer, so I trust you're dining well up there.
I'm going to say I don't know the answer here, which is kind of a cop out, but I'll justify it by saying nobody knows, and anybody who thinks they know doesn't. There are too many newcomers and players in new roles to really know what Missouri is working with defensively, plus a new coordinator. It's not even like watching a scrimmage in preseason camp (which I haven't been able to do, to be clear) would show that much. A fully respectable defense might get beat often by this Mizzou offense just because of the O's talent.
And, to be honest, I don't know when the answer will be clear. Maybe Boston College and a mobile QB test it a little bit, but if Mizzou has learned anything about its defense through those first four games of the season (Murray St., Buffalo, BC, Vanderbilt), it's probably not anything positive. So buckle up for the kind of start to the semester where you don't actually learn anything until October...
:Hi Eli, thank you for your response to my email a few weeks back. I felt like last year, Missouri was a better team than Old Miss. Considering Missouri has a more experienced and more accomplished QB, along with so many key starters returning, why is Mississippi ranked higher and frankly held in higher regard by more publications over Missouri? And if we're being honest, if Lane Kiffin's last name was Smith, he wouldn't have received so many opportunities after he flopped so hard earlier in his career. Missouri has a big edge on coaching. What am I missing?
Ǵڴ:The Mizzou-Ole Miss parallels fascinate me. I wrote about that at SEC media days, and it's kind of uncanny in some regards. Brady Cook and Jaxson Dart had remarkably similar stats last year, both teams had the same record, there are even some similarities between the coaching styles of Eli Drinkwitz and Lane Kiffin.
That said, I don't really know why the Rebels get buzz that the Tigers don't. My current hypothesis is that it has to do with Missouri having some higher profile losses in Cody Schrader, Darius Robinson and other defensive players. Maybe seeing so much talent depart catches the eye of national folks who gravitate toward the additions that Ole Miss picked up — though again, even those have similarities to Mizzou. So I don't think you're really missing anything, it's just a byproduct of talking season being what it is. Sometimes the hype train picks up on things it should or shouldn't or gives weight to the wrong ones. Frankly, Drinkwitz and co. might be happier to be in this position. Keeping the "something to prove" motto is a lot easier to do in an underdog role...
:If you were going to rewrite the conferences to make sense geographically, and for rivalries and other factors I should be considering, who would Missouri be in a conference with and would you have divisions in each conference? And, should there be conference championship games? And would you return the Thanksgiving tradition of Nebraska vs. Oklahoma or is that traditional dead and buried?
Hoff: If you're prioritizing rivalries, you're pretty much prioritizing history, which would mean the Big 12. Or really, the Big Eight. If you had Mizzou play those seven schools — Kansas, K-State, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Iowa State and Colorado — I think people would get their rivalry itch good and scratched. That conference would be too small to make divisions worthwhile and you could easily have every team play every other team, so you might not need a championship game. I think all traditional games should be on the table.
You could make the Big 8 a division in a 16-team conference with a Big 12-type footprint that mixes in some SEC/Southwest/Big 12 members for geography's sake — like Texas, Texas A&M, Arkansas, Tech, Baylor, SMU, Rice, TCU — and then have a few divisional cross-over games to maximize rivalries. That allows Texas-OU to take place, and you could keep Mizzou-Arkansas, if you fancy it.
If you're willing to toss aside rivalries, I (and my dad) would love to see Mizzou in the Big Ten (not this new transcontinental version), but I know that won't be a popular take. I just want to see the Tigers play the teams I grew up watching.
-
-