Missouri Football: Tigers are in for rough SEC-only 2020 season

Missouri football confident with the staff they have built but they will have to endure a potentially rough 2020 season with an SEC-only schedule.

Several teams are looking to make a serious push for the SEC East. While the Missouri Tigers are not quite in the best shape with their new first-year head coach in Elijah Drinkwitz, they have a chance to drive some momentum.

The Tigers are on their second head coach since 2015 after they released Barry Odom after some up-and-down seasons. In the four years with Odom as head coach, the Tigers accounted for a 25-25 record including a 13-19 record in SEC play.

The most successful season under Odom was their 2018 season where they accounted for an 8-5 record including a 4-4 record in SEC play. The Tigers also found themselves in some off-field issues with a postseason ban and scholarship reductions due to academic misconduct.

The program expects more from their football team as they had two 11-win seasons in their first three years in the SEC in 2013 and 2014. In those seasons, the Tigers won the SEC East but lost to the winners of the West.

Now Missouri is looking for a chance to not only reload but rebuild back into the Gary Pinkel years. They will do under Drinkwitz, who spent his only season as a head coach with the Sun Belt champion Appalachian State as it went 11-1 in the regular season.

Drinkwitz will take on his biggest role this upcoming season as a second-year head coach with his first in a Power Five program. The Tigers are looking to get back into the highly-productive years of Pinkel as head coach on the field. They will also look to keep themselves from troubles off the field.

As a student of Gus Malzahn, Drinkwitz has been a product of efficient offenses through multiple positions at Arkansas State, Boise State and Appalachian State. Now he looks to bring that kind of offense again to Missouri.