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1) Mizzou had its most fruitful NFL Draft in six years over the weekend. The five Tigers selected was the most since five went in 2015. The last time more than five Missouri players were drafted was 2009. There's a noticeable difference between this class of five and the last two. The 2009 class was coming off the best two-year stretch at Missouri, arguably, in school history. The Tigers won 22 games and played in two Big 12 Championship games in 2007-08. In 2013-14, Missouri won 23 games and played in back to back SEC Championships. In the last two years, Missouri is 11-11. We'll get into a little bit more about what we should take from that below.
2) At the risk of turning this whole thing into a debate about the old coach vs the new one (we've covered that ground a few times in the last 17 months), it's worth talking about what this draft class says about Barry Odom's tenure. The five draftees were all recruited by Odom's staff. Prior to this class, there had only been five total players that played for Odom who were drafted and none of them had been recruited by him (Charles Harris, J'Mon Moore, Terry Beckner, Drew Lock, Albert Okwuegbunam). Debates have raged here for four years: Was Odom a decent recruiter who couldn't get the most out of his talent or did he simply not get enough talent to win enough games to keep his job? As with most questions, to be honest, it's probably some of both. But the fact that he recruited a class which tied for the second-most picks of the common draft era combined with the fact that four of those players combined to have just two Power Five offers outside of Missouri (Iowa State offered Gillespie and Boston College offered Rountree) tell me his staff actually did a decent job of finding underrecruited talent. They didn't land enough of the high-profile guys (stars do still matter, more on that soon), but they did do a good job of seeing something in players that other staffs didn't see. My conclusion is that Odom and his staff clearly didn't recruit enough to win at the highest level, but they recruited well enough to win more than they did. So if we're assigning blame, I'd say their ultimate failure had more to do with what happened on game day than it did with what happened on the recruiting trail. I don't think that's exactly breaking news. Take Kentucky in 2017 (40-34 loss in Lexington), South Carolina in 2018 (37-35 loss), Wyoming and Vanderbilt in 2019 and turn those into wins (at least three of the four should have been wins) and Odom is still here. He landed enough talent to keep his job. He just didn't win enough games to do so. (BTW, three players drafted off a defense that was as bad as last year's was kind of backs up the idea it was time to look for a new defensive coordinator).
3) I want to expand this a little bit to look at the situation that each of the last three Mizzou coaches have stepped into. There are more factors than just the talent on the roster, but the talent on the roster is important.
Gary Pinkel took over in 2001. Missouri did not have a player drafted off Pinkel's first team in 2002. The Tigers had a 5th round pick (Justin Gage) and a 6th rounder (Keith Wright) in 2003 and then did not have a player drafted in 2004. That means Pinkel took over a roster that had only two NFL players in its first three classes. That's an extreme dearth of talent, especially in a Power Five conference. Larry Smith did a lot to resurrect interest in Missouri football, but his last two recruiting classes were disastrous.
Odom's first season was 2016, which means 2017 was his first draft. Charles Harris was a first-round pick that year. Missouri had one and two players drafted in the next two drafts, a second-rounder, a fourth-rounder and a seventh-rounder. So while he inherited more talent than Pinkel, it wasn't a ton. And there was the whole November 2015 situation that he took on as well, which made it tougher. Pinkel took the program to a level it had never seen, but the recruiting had taken a severe hit. Pinkel's last three recruiting classes (2013-15) featured 74 total players. Four of then were NFL Draft picks. A staggering 35 would not finish their careers at Missouri (either never showed up, retired to due injury, transferred or were dismissed).
Eli Drinkwitz took over prior to the 2020 season. His first draft as Missouri's head coach saw five players picked. So in one year, he had almost as many players drafted as Pinkel and Odom combined to have in their first six seasons total. In other words, it's inarguable that Drinkwitz took over a better situation and a more talented roster than either of his two predecessors.
That does not mean Drinkwitz does not get credit. This was not done to make any of the coaches look better or worse. I simply was interested in looking at the talent on the team at the time of each coaching change. It's clear Drinkwitz took over the best situation. Odom took over a better situation than Pinkel simply because Pinkel had proven that you could win at Missouri, but the gap between the rosters the two inherited is much smaller than most people probably believe.
4) That said, again, there hasn't been enough talent in the program to win at the level Missouri fans want. Taking two- and three-stars and turning them into NFL players is a good thing. It's a thing you have to be able to do at Missouri. But doing that alone isn't going to take you beyond slightly better than .500. To do that in a Power Five conference, you're going to have to land some of the big fish.
If we say this draft roughly was comprised of the 2017/2018 recruiting classes, there were 67 total five-stars. Five of them were drafted in the top 12. Seven more were first-round picks last year or this year. That means of the five-stars in those two classes, nearly 20% of them were first-round draft picks (and a significantly higher percentage were or will end up being drafted somewhere).
Here is the list of teams with more total picks in this draft than Mizzou:
- Alabama -- 10
- Ohio State -- 10
- Georgia -- 9
- Notre Dame -- 9
- Florida -- 8
- Michigan -- 8
- LSU -- 7
- Kentucky -- 6
- Penn State -- 6
- Pittsburgh -- 6
The top four have been four of the top six programs in college football the last handful of seasons and Florida isn't that far behind. Michigan hasn't been on that level, but had averaged more than nine wins for five years prior to this one. LSU had perhaps the best team in college football history in 2019, set a record with 13 draft picks a year ago and had seven more this year. Kentucky and Penn State had won 18 and 20 games, respectively, in the two years prior to this season. Only Pitt had more players drafted and hadn't been better on the field than Mizzou over the previous two years.
The shocking conclusion: The more talent you have, the more games you win.
5) Speaking of talent, no league has more than the SEC. There were 65 SEC players drafted, the most ever for a single conference. That broke the record of 64...set two years ago by the SEC. Here's the full breakdown:
- SEC -- 65
- Big Ten -- 44
- ACC -- 42
- Pac-12 -- 28
- Big 12 -- 22
- AAC -- 19
- Independent -- 15
- Conference USA -- 5
- FCS -- 5
- MAC -- 4
- Mountain West -- 3
- Sun Belt -- 3
- Divisions II/III -- 4
