The 100-Yard Journey

by Gary Pinkel

  It was back to Texas for our bowl game, this time to the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio to play Northwestern. It would be Chase Daniel’s final game, and we had a few more players who were thinking about entering the NFL draft. We were fortunate to make just enough plays to rally and win in overtime. We must have had a thing for overtime. That made us 6–1 in overtime games at Missouri.

  It was still a great year. We won 10 games, which had only been done once before in team history—in 2007. But we had so many players back from that 12-win team. I just wish we could have done more. We were too talented to lose four games.

  Along with a talented senior class that changed Mizzou football forever, it was Jeremy Maclin’s final game with us. He entered the NFL draft that offseason, but not without a lot of thought and discussion. Just like Justin Smith eight years earlier, I told J-Mac that if he were my son, I’d advise him to make the move—as long as he wanted to make the move. He went to the Eagles with the 19th pick overall. We had six players drafted that year, the most for Mizzou in 28 years. That was another sign that our program was developing talent and earning respect.

  That offseason was unique because both our coordinators left for other jobs. To that point, I hadn’t lost an assistant coach in our first eight years at Missouri, a string of staff cohesion that was unmatched around the country. It was so critical for the success and continuity we had in our program. My staff was a group of great teachers and great recruiters who loved training and helping our kids grow and mature. Dave Christensen, our offensive coordinator and offensive line coach, had been named the head coach at Wyoming before our bowl game. It didn’t come up very often for me, but when you’re the head coach, you’re always looking at your staff and trying to map out plans if one of your assistants leaves, especially if it’s a coordinator. My philosophy was heavily influenced by Don James. If you have an internal candidate on your staff ready to promote, that’s the ideal situation. But you have to be honest with yourself. Is he ready for the promotion? If not, you’ve got to look outside. I felt really good about David Yost taking over as coordinator. He had been our quarterbacks coach at Toledo and for our first eight years at Missouri. He had helped develop Brad Smith and Chase Daniel into all-time greats at Mizzou. Christensen thought Yost was ready. I did, too. It was similar to years earlier when Bob Stull left Washington’s staff and Coach James promoted me to run the offense.

  A lot of head coaches like to look for high-profile names to fill coordinator jobs. They want to capture some buzz. That was never important to me. I was never concerned with perception because that first impression with a hire doesn’t last, good or bad. It’s all about results.

  When you bring in older, established assistants who have worked with other head coaches, they tend to struggle with this system and this process. They can be set in their ways. We have specific ways of teaching and coaching and communicating. There’s no compromise. That’s why I valued experience and familiarity with me and our system. If you can hire young guys that are dying to be great coaches and they understand your program, they become soldiers of the program. That was my vision. That’s why I always looked internally first.

  Then after signing day in February, Matt Eberflus, our defensive coordinator, left for a job with the Cleveland Browns. He came to me and said he was contacted by the Browns. Eric Mangini was the head coach, and Rob Ryan was running the defense. They wanted Matt to coach linebackers. Matt told me he’d really like to coach in the NFL. I was surprised by that. I never had that urge to coach in the NFL. So I talked to one of the coaches in Cleveland about Matt. I thought he was absolutely qualified, but I was honest with Matt.

  “If you take this job and decide you want to get back into college coaching, you’ll be able to do that,” I told him. “But I don’t think it’s a good move if you want to become a college head coach. Because more head coaches come from the college game than they do the NFL. You have to be aware of that.” He’d be giving up a coordinator position to be a position coach. But he put a lot of thought into it and it turned out to be a good move for him. He later went to the Dallas Cowboys and has been a valuable part of their staff. He’s a really sharp coach and has a great future.

  I had to do some soul searching before deciding on what to do with the staff. We had three position coaches on the defensive side that had been with me for a long time and were outstanding coaches. I went with Dave Steckel, our linebackers coach, and that was a very good move for our program. He did such a great job for us.

  Back at Toledo, Dean Pees was our defensive coordinator in the early years. He had worked with Stec earlier in their careers, so on Dean’s advice we brought in Stec to coach our defensive line and later our linebackers. He had great energy. He’d served in the Marines and he came from great bloodlines. His older brother, Les, had coached in college and the NFL for a long time.

  Like Yost, even though I decided to promote Stec from the staff, it wasn’t an automatic decision. I really had to think about these moves. Were they our best options? I believed they were.

  We had to make a few staff additions. I promoted Barry Odom from director of operations to safeties coach. Barry had played at Missouri and spent a couple years as the head coach at Rock Bridge High School in Columbia. We needed an offensive line coach to replace Christensen, and Barry had a connection to a coach at LSU, Josh Henson, an offensive assistant under Les Miles. We brought him in to coach our O-line.

  A few years later, Barry left the staff to become the defensive coordinator at Memphis. Immediately, I had three coaches in my office urging me to hire Alex Grinch, a former grad assistant from our staff who was out with Christensen in Wyoming coaching defense.

  He was a good young coach, but there was one issue—he was my nephew, the son of my sister Kathy. I had one rule when it came to hiring staff: never hire your friends. It’s a tough business and you never want to have conflicts with a close friend. There’s a line there you don’t want to cross—even more when it comes to family. I’d never been in position to hire a family member as a full-time assistant, so I had serious reservations when the opportunity came up.

  One of my coaches told me, “I know you don’t hire family or friends, but Alex is the right guy for this job.” Five minutes later another coach came to my office, “Coach, I’m just telling you, your nephew is a damn good coach. Go get him.”

  Alex was similar to Eberflus and Odom. Young, intense, really sharp. I was tempted to make the move, and my staff finally convinced me it was the right decision. I’m sure there was a perception out there that I was only doing my nephew a favor, but I was the guy in our building who needed to be persuaded this was the right move—not the other coaches. It turned out to be a great move, and Alex’s work with us was rewarded in 2015 when he landed the coordinator job at Washington State, where he’s done great work.

  I intentionally created some separation between me and my coaches. I didn’t hang out with them socially. I always wanted to have caring relationships with my staff, but there was a professional line I didn’t want to cross. I wanted family to be important to my coaches. At Washington, we’d coach from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm most nights, which left you very little time to see your family. That’s why I changed our schedule when I became a head coach. I wanted our coaches home with their family by seven in the evening. I thought that would help us have success. You could have a healthy family life and still coach to win football games. It helped that technology advanced so much we didn’t have to spend as much time crunching numbers by hand. But I’d say all the time, if you could guarantee me that we’d win games by staying at the office until 2 in the morning, I’d stay until four in the morning. But I thought it was just as healthy for our coaches to get out of the office and come home to their wives and kids. I believe that factored into why we had such continuity on our staff. Our coaches would go to the annual coaching convention and talk to guys from other staffs who complained about never being
home, never seeing their kids grow up. Our coaches didn’t experience that in our environment.

  With our reshuffled staff in place, we stepped into 2009 with new pieces on the field, most notably at quarterback.

  Mizzou vs. Kansas

  November 26, 2011 Kansas City, Missouri

  It was our final Big 12 regular-season game and our last game against Kansas for the foreseeable future. It had already been a difficult year for me personally, but another win would bolster our bowl credentials.

  Team Meeting Thursday, November 24, 3:30 pm

  “When I arrived on campus I learned about the Kansas game. You inherited this rivalry. The respon­sibility was given to you and me. They don’t like us and we don’t like them. If you see a KU T-shirt or license plate, it should piss you off, even for just a moment. If that doesn’t happen to you, you have not figured it out.

  “You will remember every KU game that you were a part of for the rest of your life. This is my 11th as head coach and I vividly remember each one. Often we talk about how we play for each other. We do. In a Kansas game we play for a lot more. You play it for every Missouri Tiger that has ever worn the uniform. The rivalry game is bigger than you and me. The first meeting you had as freshmen I said to every one of you: ‘This will leave your mark at Mizzou. You will leave with a win-loss record, a bowl record, a championship game record, and your KU record.’ And this game has huge ramifications on them all. This is a big game and you’ve been trained for a big game. This game is different. You and I must take it personal. The bottom line, it’s your responsibility and mine to do everything in our power to play our best, bring our ‘A’ game, and win. Kick their ass!”

  Final: Missouri 24, Kansas 10

  In our final Big 12 regular-season game, the Jayhawks were no match. James Franklin recovered after three first-half interceptions, and we clinched our third straight win to end the regular season. The Arrowhead Stadium crowd chanted “SEC! SEC!” as we closed out our final win in what soon became our former conference.

  7. Mizzou: Reload & Redeem

  You always want to have a quarterback on deck. You won’t always have that, but we were fortunate with quarterbacks. After Chase Daniel, we had Blaine Gabbert next in line. Blaine was everything you looked for in a quarterback, and that’s why so many programs recruited him out of Parkway West High School in St. Louis. He was first committed to Nebraska, but we convinced him to change his mind. He joined the program in 2008, and we played him some as a freshman behind Chase. Our whole philosophy was to have at least one quarterback ready to take over. We did the same thing at Washington year after year. Blaine was very athletic for his size. He could run for a big guy. He was the prototype quarterback with the big, strong arm. But he was hurt a lot in high school, so he was relatively inexperienced when he came to us.

  Blaine had played some as a freshman, but just like Brad Smith and Jeremy Maclin, his breakout game came in St. Louis against Illinois. Blaine was impressive in his first start: 319 passing yards and three touchdowns in a 28-point win. It was cool to see him play that well in his hometown. (We were fortunate in those NFL stadiums on both sides of the state, St. Louis and Kansas City. I always thought those games were good for the state and the whole region.)

  Coming off 2007 and 2008, we continued to have high expectations. We had lost a lot of players to the NFL—six players were drafted in 2009, and Chase made the NFL as an undrafted free agent—but at this point we weren’t calling it a rebuilding year. I’d go into every year thinking we’d win all of our games. I’d never start the season, count up the games I thought we’d win and lose, and put a note in my desk that read, “We’re going 7–5 this year.” I just couldn’t bring myself to set expectations that we’d lose a game—even when we were not very good. I’d never do that. Maybe I would have emotionally handled the losses better if I had set myself up for some disappointment, but I wasn’t wired that way.

  I was concerned about Blaine feeling like he had to be the next Chase Daniel but also concerned because we lost a lot of great players from the 2008 team, including three of our best receivers in J-Mac, Tommy Saunders, and Chase Coffman, our All-American tight end. We still had some good young receivers on the team and had no idea Danario Alexander would become an All-American as a senior. Every quarterback is different. You just try to call plays that you believe work best for him.

  Blaine had a strong first few weeks—then Nebraska came to town for a Thursday night game. It was a nasty, rainy night. There had been flash flooding around the state that week. A power outage took out our new scoreboard in the north end zone. On the field, Nebraska defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh controlled the line of scrimmage. Blaine badly sprained his ankle on one of Suh’s sacks, an injury that affected him for most of the season. He was a tough kid, though. Blaine was so determined to play through that injury. He was such a team player.

  I was conflicted. Ultimately, the team’s medical staff always made the final decision if a player can play, but we had to make sure Blaine was functional. He gutted through the middle part of that season on one leg. It was hard to be playing with a hobbled quarterback during a brutal stretch of games. Nebraska, Oklahoma State, and Texas. He was stubborn when it came to that ankle—but a good stubborn. He would barely acknowledge the injury to the reporters who covered the team. He refused to make any excuses. I really admired that. Blaine was a lot tougher than I thought he was before I got to know him. At one point I brought him in my office to talk. “Blaine, I’m not sure you can play,” I told him. He was on the verge of tears. “Coach, I can play.” Maybe if we kept him out one game he would have been better for the next three, but you never know.

  He was adamant on staying on the field. We won a lot of games those two previous seasons and lost a lot of players from those teams, so we faced both high expectations but also the reality that our players weren’t as experienced as the guys who led us to all those wins in 2007 and 2008.

  After three straight losses, we were sitting at 4–3 and then we bounced back nicely with a win at Colorado. Then Baylor came to Columbia and ran all over us—with a backup quarterback, not even their future Heisman winner Robert Griffin III, who was hurt. Now we were 5–4 headed to Kansas State. We had never beaten Kansas State with Bill Snyder as coach. Danario was having a great year for us, but he took it to another extreme in that game with 10 catches for 200 yards and three touchdowns.

  I remember talking to Bill after the game. “Where did 81 come from?” he asked me.

  That was my first win over Coach Snyder, and that was significant for me. I really admired him and the way he built his program. He and Coach James had a great relationship. I probably never talked about it publicly, but when you’re fortunate to beat a great coach who you really respect, you savor that experience. His teams were always so well-coached.

  Danario was such a unique athlete. He had that tremendously long stride and could really accelerate for a bigger guy. If his knee had stayed healthy, he would have been a first-round draft pick. With better knees he would have played 10 years instead of three. You can put him right up there with J-Mac as the best receivers we had at Missouri.

  So much of football is confidence, and losing streaks were so damaging. We had to address the adversity. We got some of that back with some late wins over Iowa State and a walk-off field goal win over Kansas back at Arrowhead.

  Against Kansas, we were down a point in the final minutes but had the ball in the red zone. I told our running back, Derrick Washington, not to score when he touched the ball. We didn’t want Todd Reesing back on the field. The Kansas quarterback had already thrown for almost 500 yards. We would play for the field goal. I told our staff on the headset, “We’re playing for a field goal here. I don’t want to score a touchdown.”

  They couldn’t believe me. “What do you mean you don’t want to score a touchdown?”

  “I don’t want Reesing back on the fie
ld. If we miss this field goal, it’s on me. I’ll take the heat.”

  You learn over the years there are certain guys who are so good you don’t want the ball in their hands with the chance to beat you. Fortunately, Grant Ressel made the field goal as time expired.

  We won the game to push our record to 8–4. That was better than some other Big 12 teams that were in the mix for the same tier of bowl games. Some people were disappointed we got picked for the Texas Bowl in Houston. Iowa State was 6–6 and went to Phoenix for the Insight Bowl, which was perceived as a better bowl. I tried to reinforce a positive angle. You shouldn’t be disappointed about going to a bowl. At the same time you want to make sure your administration is being proactive with the process. You weren’t allowed to lobby the bowl committee members, but just a few years earlier we suspected Kansas had done some negotiating to get into the Orange Bowl ahead of us.

  Bottom line, we still had to show up for our game and we played terribly against Navy. When the matchup was announced I knew this was going to be a huge game for Navy, a chance to play a power conference team in an NFL stadium. For our team, this had the makings of a letdown game. But it was my responsibility to make sure that didn’t happen. That game was on me. If you don’t play your best, a team as good as Navy can beat you. And that’s just what they did. It’s a difficult game defensively because Navy’s triple option was unlike anything we’d seen during the regular season. But that was no excuse. We were a much better offensive team all season than we were that day. We scored a touchdown on the game’s first possession, a little bubble screen to Danario that went for 58 yards. But sometimes that’s not good enough. Maybe we got overconfident. Navy whipped us the rest of the day 35–13. I never made too much out of bowl losses. It was a transition year for our program. We played with a banged-up first-year starting quarterback and still managed to win eight games.