Eli Drinkwitz stared down at the lectern and chuckled as the question came down the line. That name, Marcel Reed, landed him in some hot water last year.
He wasn't making the same mistake twice.
Early in the 2024 campaign, before Drinkwitz's Missouri football team went on the road to face Texas A&M, he said that he expected the Aggies to start Reed at quarterback. That, Mizzou fans will recall, was not how it panned out. Texas A&M went with Conner Weigman . And Weigman, in Drinkwitz's on-the-money recollection …
"He killed us," the Mizzou coach said Tuesday.
But, this might be a case of 'not wrong, just early' for the Mizzou coach.
Weigman is now with Houston , where by all accounts he's having a solid season for a Big 12 contender under head coach Willie Fritz.
No. 17/19 Missouri football (6-2, 2-2 SEC) faces No. 3/3 Texas A&M (8-0, 5-0) this upcoming Saturday, Nov. 8, in Columbia for a do-or-die game for the Tigers in the College Football Playoff race, and there's no question about who the quarterback will be this time around.
Drinkwitz will get to see Reed from the start on Faurot Field. By all accounts, the coach was his first believer.
"I believed in Marcel Reed for a long time," Drinkwitz said. "I mean, I was first on the bandwagon."
And that's packed with challenges.
"(Texas A&M offensive coordinator Collin Klein) developed that quarterback and developed the offensive system around Marcel, who's developing into what I think is a Heisman-type season," Drinkwitz said. "He is playing at a really, really high level. Distributes the ball really well, not only vertically, but horizontally. And then, man, his added dimension when he runs is really, really impressive. It's got some Lamar Jackson -esque type qualities to it."
Drinkwitz isn't pulling that out of thin air. Reed is currently fourth in the betting odds for the Heisman Trophy, behind only Ohio State's Julian Sayin, Indiana's Fernando Mendoza and Alabama's Ty Simpson .
And in 2016, when Jackson won a Heisman with Louisville, Drinkwitz was the offensive coordinator at NC State and watched the QB slash the Wolfpack with 431 all-purpose yards in a 54-13 rout.
Now, Jackson is a two-time MVP with the Baltimore Ravens and Reed is in his first year as the undisputed starter. You'd be wise not to take what Drinkwitz said out of context here and start making comparisons between the two.
The point: What Reed does to disrupt a defense shares some characteristics, and ones that will put even Missouri's top-tier defensive front to the test.
Reed is mobile, and does a fair amount of damage scrambling out of the pocket. This isn't an uncommon opponent for the Tigers. Mizzou has faced dual-threats in Kansas' Jalon Daniels , South Carolina's LaNorris Sellers, Auburn's Jackson Arnold and Vanderbilt's Diego Pavia this season. Those four players all reside in the top 40 rushing quarterbacks in the nation this season.
Missouri held them to a combined 31 yards on the ground, or 7.75 yards per game. That's elite.
Reed is most similar stylistically to Arnold, Sellers and Daniels. According to Pro Football Focus, a bulk of his production is on scrambles, where he picks up more than 30 yards on the ground per game. He averages nearly 6 yards per run.
Where he differs from those players is his ability to avoid sacks. He has faced the second-fewest pressures this season, which is a good start. And, when he does take pressure, he is only sacked 7.8% of the time. That is quite comfortably the lowest rate in the SEC and goes down as the seventh-best mark in the nation among QBs with 200+ dropbacks, per PFF.
He's elusive.
More: Missouri football won't 'operate in fear' and stop calling QB run plays, Eli Drinkwitz says
More: When does No. 19 Missouri football face No. 3 Texas A&M this week? Date, time in Columbia
But the QB's true step forward, since he was in and out of the lineup in Mike Elko's first season coaching Texas A&M, has come as a passer.
The Aggies have added two top-tier transfer wideouts in NC State's KC Concepcion and Mississippi State's Mario Craver. Those two have combined for 1,261 yards and 11 touchdowns.
Reed is still good for an off-target throw and interceptable ball each week, but he's thrown 17 touchdown passes to just six picks and is averaging 246.5 passing yards per game. His protection is good, his top receivers are excellent and the Aggies are getting the most out of that.
Credit where it's due: Drinkwitz called it.
"He's got a great quarterbacks coach and an offensive coordinator who sees it through his eyes and calls the game for him, I think," Drinkwitz said. "Which is really fun when you're watching it, not going against it. But fun when you're watching it, because you see that camaraderie.
"So, yeah, I just — I'd like for Marcel to recognize that I was on the bandwagon first."
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Missouri football gets 'Heisman-type' test in Texas A&M QB Marcel Reed
