COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz returned to the Southeastern Conference last year after a decade spent in the Sun Belt, the ACC and the Mountain West, prompting a question he heard endlessly this offseason.
“What did I learn in the SEC last year?” he shared recently.
Answer: “For me, it was you got to win at the line of scrimmage.”
That hardly registers as earth-shattering news, but the Tigers’ 2020 season underscored one of the great platitudes of SEC football. When Mizzou struggled to control the line of scrimmage last fall — against Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia most notably — they lost.