Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz reveals Auburn’s ‘One Glaring Weakness’

Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze has been a master at stating the obvious during what has turned into a frustrating and losing campaign thus far.

Hearing Freeze’s words being exposed that he needs to get more touches on his running back Jarquez Hunter probably struck a very raw nerve with Tigers fans.

“There’s no question, 27 needs to touch it more,” Freeze lamented during media availability.

Just cast your mind back to the Georgia game to see in technicolor that using Hunter more could have worked wonders. After all, Hunter averaged 7 yards a pop on the 13 carries he was given, and also broke free for a 38-yard touchdown.

Constant glitches in short distance situations could also be circumnavigated if only Freeze hitched his wagon more effectively to the star’s tail, but the sputtering game planning has frustratingly broken that concept.

“That’s the frustrating thing about some of our short-term deals that have been called and not executed at a high enough level where it really comes down to it,” Freeze explained. “We have to correct it.”

Missouri Tigers head coach Eli Drinkwitz likely hopes his coaching counterpart will only opt to use Hunter sparingly this Sunday, because he’s well aware of the threat the Auburn running back poses.

“Yeah, Jarquez Hunter is as good a running back as we’ve faced,” Drinkwitz said during Missouri’s media availability. “I remember going against him a few years ago down there. I think he’s dynamic, he’s got good speed. He’s tough to do. There’s a number of players, whether it’s Georgia or Oklahoma, you know, I think you know the oklahoma linebacker, the very good one, also had trouble in the hole.

“So I think he’s shown that he’s a very, very good player with very good vision, very good quickness, very good speed. We’re going to have to bring our feet with our matchups and we’re going to have to challenge ourselves to face better”.

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

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

Entering the contest, Drinkwitz isn’t taking the injured Auburn Tigers for granted; Mizzou boss knows turnovers have torpedoed talent too often in 2024.

“I’ve had a really tough challenge this week,” admitted Drinkwitz. “I think Auburn is a very dangerous football team. When you look at the stats they have on both sides of the ball, there’s just one glaring weakness they’ve had, and it shows in all of their losses, which is turnovers.”

At 2-4, Freeze throwing the ball to Hunter 20+ times is really a classic case of him having nothing left to lose, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually going to happen this weekend.