Missouri's Coach Eli Drinkwitz Reveals Auburn's 'One Glaring Weakness'

Missouri Tigers head coach Eli Drinkwitz is wary of the wounded Auburn Tigers who show one glaring weakness despite their 2-4 record.

Auburn Tigers running back Jarquez Hunter has been under-utilized and could help with the Tigers' interception problem. / Photo by Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers

Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze has been a master of stating the obvious during what's turned into a frustrating-losing campaign thus far.

Hearing the words spill out from Freeze that he needs to get his play-making running back Jarquez Hunter more touches has very likely touched a very raw nerve with Tigers fans.

"There's no question, 27 needs to touch it more," Freeze lamented this during media availability.

You need only cast your mind back to the Georgia game to see in technicolor that utilizing Hunter more could have worked wonders. After all, Hunter was averaging a hefty 7-yards a pop on the 13 carries he was given, and he also broke away for a 38-yard touchdown.

Constant misfires in short yardage situations could also be circumnavigated if only Freeze hitched his wagon more effectively to his star tail back, but the spluttering game planning has frustratingly shot that concept to pieces.

"That's the frustrating thing with some of our short-yardage deals that have been called and not executed at a high enough level where he actually touches it," Freeze explained. "We've got to get that corrected."

Missouri Tigers head coach Eli Drinkwitz is probably hoping that his coaching counterpart only opts to sparingly use Hunter this Sunday, because he's well aware of the threat the Auburn runner carries.

"Yeah, Jarquez Hunter is as good a running back as we've gone against," Drinkwitz said during Missouri media availability."I remember going against him several years ago down there. I think he's dynamic, got good speed. He's hard to bring down in the hole. Several players, whether it's Georgia or Oklahoma, you know, I think you know the linebacker from Oklahoma, the really good one, had trouble in the hole with him too. 

“So, I think he's proven he's a really, really good player with really good vision, really good quickness, really good speed. We're going to have to bring our feet with our tackling, and we have to challenge ourselves to tackle better."

You figure that getting Hunter a lot more involved in the game plan has to happen sooner rather than later, but playing complimentary football has stubbornly failed to materialize so far this season.

Hunter has had 20 or more carries only-once in his Auburn career - a 20 rushes for 152-yards effort earlier this year against New Mexico.

Entering the contest, Drinkwitz is certainly not taking the wounded Auburn Tigers for granted; the Mizzou boss knows turnovers have torpedoed talent all too frequently in 2024.

"Got a very difficult challenge this week," Drinkwitz admitted. "I think Auburn is a very dangerous football team. When you look at the statistics that they have on both sides of the ball, there's really only one glaring weakness that they've had, and it shows up in all their losses, which is turnovers."

Standing at 2-4, Freeze tossing the ball to Hunter 20+ times really is a classic case of him having nothing left to lose, but it doesn't mean it will actually happen this weekend.