COLUMBIA, Mo. – The Missouri Tigers suffered their third loss of the season at the hands of Texas A&M. Matt Zollers struggled, and Missouri's defense had a strong first half before imploding in the second half. 

Here's everything head coach Eli Drinkwitz had to say following the loss. 

Opening statement

"Ultimately, I'm really appreciative of our fans for selling out the game and showing up awesome environment to start. You know, I felt like our players laid it on the line. I thought they fought and fought, kept giving ourselves chances. But ultimately, you know, poor coaching about me at the end of the day, poor coaching about me to put us in a position to give up the fumble for half of that should be a seven nothing game. And then, you know, to cut it to 14, have a chance right there and give up a fake punt again on me. I got to be a I got to be in. I got to be better there. And so, you know, players fought and fought and fought and gave us every chance in the world. And, you know, just poorly done by me."

On Mizzou struggling against top SEC teams in recent seasons

"They're good teams, they're good teams, and I don't do a good enough job coaching.

On Ahmad Hardy's absence for much of the first half

"I mean, he finished with 13 carries for 114 yards. So there's other players out there. There's things that Jamal does really well. He's a really good player."

On Matt Zollers' play

"I mean, you got off to a really slow start. You know, we didn't do a good enough job getting comfortable throwing the football. You know, completions were tough. They were challenging every throw, but I thought he did a nice job of, you know, trying the deep ball, which created some pass interference calls. Donovan had a couple of big catches, but ultimately, we got to do a better job with the freshman quarterback for technique. There can't be free runners on internet. That happened too many times in third downs, obviously, one of the serious momentum changes of the game."

"Yeah, watch the tape and see. I mean, it's hard for me to assess it. It's hard for me to assess right now. I mean, he didn't I didn't think he made bad decisions in the past games. It's not like he was throwing the ball up for Jeopardy and putting us in terrible spots. We let him down as coaches tonight with the protection plan."

On the end of the first half

 "I mean, we were trying just to make sure they had three timeouts, so we wanted to get the first first down. And then once we got the first first down, we tried to see we get points when we got to third, and nine right there. You know, we tried to go to a Max Protection flood concept, but, you know, ultimately they had a blitz on to and they were able to swing the mic to the field and had a free hitter. So that's my fault for scheme. I gave the okay to try to get the first down there. I should have, should have said the throw screen instead."

On what he meant by "do better" in the fake punt coverage

"Third quarter, we're up 14 balls somewhere middle of the field, right? Momentum, it kind of switched in our favor. We had Max return called because we thought we were going to be able to generate some space for Kevin. And when you have Max return call, you're not really in a great position to defend the fake. We had one guy over there, but that wasn't going to be enough. And so hopefully that's on me. I gave the okay. I said, Hey, we can be a max return here. So that's that's on me as the head football coach, you know, I approve those calls, and I gotta do better."

On Texas A&M's third down defense

"When we were running our seven man protection, they were dropping the field in and overloading the weak side, so you got a four man slide. They were forcing the tail back to go to the field, to pick up the double metal linebacker, and then bringing the boundary safety, which would make it a four man side. So we tried to counter that by going Max Pro. And they were dropping in the zone. And then we went into that 12 p full slide, which was effective the first time. And then the second time, he went odd, brought somebody from the outside, put somebody in C gap, and then swung the mic to split the D GAP and C gap area

On the scene of the locker room

"Devastated? Yeah, that's one of the toughest locker rooms I've been in, because we all believed that we were going to win. We all believed we were going to win. They fought like they were going to win. You know, there's just a couple of really big plays on defense and a big play on offense that changes it, you know. I mean, we give up the tunnel screen, gel break screen, we give up the long run, and offensively, we give up the turnover that, you know, ultimately, I think we get beat by 21 that's 21 points, right there, but our guys have pulled it together. Next week, Senior Week, you know, it's okay to be devastating. It really is, like I told them, the only way you're ever going to achieve your dreams and goals is to put everything you have into it, everything you got to work your ass off, and you got to believe, and no matter what obstacle you face, you got to believe that you're going to overcome it. And our guys did. They kept fighting and fighting and fighting, and then you get the wrong end of the result. And so now you got to pick yourself back up. You got to put your guts back in, and you got to find something else to fight for. And our team will. Our team is going to fight for each other next week, for the seniors, we're going to fight to finish strong. We were in this situation last year after South Carolina, and we found a way, a way to just keep fighting and believing, and that's ultimately what we're gonna do. This team has a lot of strong leaders on it, and we're not going out like that."

On the defensive success in first half

"Yeah, I thought they kept us in it as long as they could, you know, ultimately, the time of possession kind of put us in a bad spot, you know, and then, you know, some, a couple of bad spots, right? Fake punt when we had the momentum. And really, that's kind of when the wheels fell off for us defensively, I think we had given up the tunnel screen, but then we'd get, gotten stops offensive, got a little bit of something going with the big return from polls and fade pump. We held them to a field goal there, but after that, you know, we weren't able to stop the run. You know, really that last drive. I mean, just that's a kick. They're growing just because you got it to 14, you got seven minutes left, you got three timeouts, you know, you just need to stop. We'd really stuff the run most game, but just didn't have enough left in the tank."