Pretty sure Miklasz never attended kansas, but this is when we call him a beaker, right? Am I doing this right?
BERNIE BITS Hey, settle in, take your time and read your way through a massive serving of the year-end Bernie Bits. New Year’s weekend has to feature some excess, so I’ve done my part, and what I have to offer is harmless. So let’s get started. FIRST UP … Despite what you may have heard […]
www.scoopswithdannymac.com
Credibility … going, going … almost gone. On Thursday, Mizzou announced that quarterback Brady Cook had surgery on his throwing shoulder and had been playing with a torn labrum since the team’s Sept. 10 game at Kansas State. For the second straight year, head coach Eli Drinkwitz knowingly played an injured quarterback who couldn’t function at a normal capacity. In 2021 we watched QB Conner Bazelak play on one healthy leg and it was painful to watch. In 2022, Cook struggled with his downfield passing accuracy. Trying to do that with a damaged shoulder did not help the cause. Frankly, from a coaching standpoint, this is cuckoo. And really, really awful coaching.
Here’s an on-point summation of the bizarre situation written by my friend Gabe DeArmond of PowerMizzou.com.
“At the end of last season everyone knew Bazelak was injured. And everyone said “I don’t care who plays QB, the QB play can’t be worse next year,’ Gabe wrote. “And then for much of this year, people believed the QB play was actually worse. And now everyone is saying ‘Cook was hurt all year. What was he doing? The alternatives can’t possibly have been worse.’ Except the guy making the call believed the alternatives absolutely were worse. And THAT’S what should worry you, not the fact that he kept playing Brady, but that he did it because he believed it to be his best option.”
Agreed. I don’t understand the folks who defend Drinkwitz by saying that the coach had no choice but to play Cook all season in 2022 – before and after the injury – because Cook was the best quarterback that Mizzou had. So he HAD to play his best option, right? No. Wrong. That’s just baloney. Brady Cook was Coach Drink’s best choice because he happened to be Coach Drink’s ONLY choice … and for the wrong reason. The coach didn’t have a competent, reasonably talented, ready-to-play quarterback to plug in for the injured Cook. And that is 100 percent the fault of Eli Drinkwitz.
For the third consecutive year, Drinkwitz started a QB that had been recruited by previous MU head coach Barry Odom. There are no excuses here. Making it worse, Drinkwitz has thrown wounded quarterbacks to the Bulldogs, Gators, Wildcats, Vols and other SEC predators for two years in a row. That’s brutally unfair to the quarterbacks. The coaching incompetence is stunning.