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Every now and then, we'll catch you guys up on all the latest.
Here's the tracker in and out.
This morning @JHamilton23 posted a story ranking the needs for the Tigers in the portal
Keep up with everything nationally here
-Mizzou's sending four coaches to Missouri City, TX today to visit Florida DB Avery Helm. The Tigers visited him last week. He took an official over the weekend. Sure seems like he'll be a Missouri commitment sooner rather than later.
-A couple targets are off the board. Texas A&M Commerce WR Andrew Armstrong is headed to Arkansas, East Carolina OL Avery Jones is going to Illinois. Texas A&M DL Tunmise Adeleye is down to four schools and Mizzou is not among them.
-The newest potential target to emerge is South Carolina RB MarShawn Lloyd. Target may be a little too aggressive a word right now. Eli Drinkwitz is following him on Twitter. That may mean something, it may not. But the Tigers are likely in the market for a running back because we still expect some attrition at the position. It seems like that won't happen until after the bowl game at this point, but there are at least a couple guys that it would surprise us not to see head elsewhere and we don't see any way Nate Peat is sticking around for another year. Lloyd was basically South Carolina's offense for about half the season. He'd be a good one to go after, but there will likely be plenty of suitors.
-Another target to keep an eye on is Arizona State defensive lineman Joe Moore. Moore had a Missouri offer in the Class of 2020 out of Cardinal Ritter, but never really seemed to give the Tigers a serious look. Yes, his father is Mizzou alum Joe Moore, who ended his career as Missouri's single season and career leading rusher and then went on to play in the NFL. With the recent addition of Ritter product Marvin Burks and the presence of de facto recruiting coordinator Luther Burden, who started his career at Ritter before moving to East St. Louis, it seems the Tigers are making some inroads at a place that they've traditionally not done well. Our information is that Moore will be in for a visit to Mizzou this weekend. So far as we know, he did not visit anywhere last weekend. But Moore is definitely one to keep your eye on the next few days.
-The quarterback situation is this:
Kedon Slovis, who was connected to Missouri early, appears not to be a target at all. Slovis is hearing mostly from schools out West and appears headed that way. The information that Missouri was interested was coming from sources at Pitt and appears to have been incorrect. We do not believe Missouri has ever been involved with Slovis at this point.
Devin Leary, the top portal QB according to Rivals and most others, is visiting Kentucky this weekend. Notre Dame, Auburn, South Carolina, UCLA and Oregon were also mentioned in a story from 247 yesterday. We do believe Missouri is at least intrigued, but the pursuit doesn't seem to be heavy at this point. Or maybe Mizzou already knows the pursuit wouldn't be worth the effort because Leary is looking elsewhere. We've been told the price tag is high and Leary is looking for a place with a strong offensive line. Missouri doesn't necessarily fit that profile right now (but honestly, Kentucky's OL was worse than Mizzou's last year, so that part of the equation may be overstated). Anyway, the upshot is that unless something changes, there's no real reason to believe Missouri and Leary are a match.
There was a report yesterday that Mizzou had reached out to Malik Hornsby from Arkansas. That may not be as a quarterback. It seems some schools are looking at his potential as an athlete/receiver more than a QB.
The upshot at QB is this: We believe Missouri is looking. We believe the Tigers will take a quarterback. We do not think it will happen immediately. Because of that, our current belief is that Mizzou may be waiting until after the bowl game to get a little more serious about quarterback. That could mean some of the top guys are off the board, but our feeling is that Brady Cook and Sam Horn are both going to be a part of any competition at QB. If the Tigers were to go after one of those top guys in the portal, you're risking losing Cook to the portal. Our feeling is they don't want to do that. And Horn is definitely in the conversation to start next year. The job isn't going to be handed to him, but he's going to get every opportunity to win it.
We've said since the beginning that because of the way things went last year with the QB pursuits playing out very, very publicly, we do not believe that's going to be repeated. We think Mizzou is making efforts to keep any quarterback chase pretty quiet this year and, again, we think it will be on a little bit of a delayed time table. Remember the portal stays open for another five weeks. There are going to be quarterbacks in the portal after bowl games that aren't in there right now. So there will be options even if you don't jump into the pool with both feet right away.
-We do expect there will be more visitors this weekend. We do not yet know who those are. We will continue to monitor and investigate throughout the week and will pass along any information we can uncover.
