COLUMBIA, Mo. — From his office overlooking Faurot Field, Eli Drinkwitz leans back in his chair as he explains how Missouri landed transfer stars Beau Pribula and Ahmad Hardy last December, supercharging the critical roster retool his program executed this offseason.
On a shelf over the 42-year-old coach’s right shoulder, a program motto — “Why Stop Now?” — is emblazoned in gold lettering onto the front of a bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon.
Those three words effectively sum up the way Missouri approached its winter rebuild. After a 10-3 finish in Drinkwitz’s fifth season last fall, the Tigers were staring down significant roster turnover in 2025. All told, Missouri lost 15 starters, including quarterback Brady Cook and NFL draft picks in offensive linemen Armand Membou and Marcus Bryant, and receiver Luther Burden, from a roster that had delivered consecutive double-digit win campaigns for only the third time in program history.
The exodus could have triggered a backslide. Instead, the Tigers saw an opportunity to reinforce.
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“I think the challenge for everybody is to try to continue to get better when outside noise and perception thinks you’re going to take a step back,” Drinkwitz told ESPN. “Internally we had a lot of optimism. We knew that the schedule had the ability to set [us] up and build confidence. And I think we knew that we were going to be able to attract some talent with some NIL.”
Missouri ultimately added 21 transfers before the 2025 season. It’s hard to argue any have been as important as Pribula and Hardy, the QB/RB transfer duo motoring the nation’s fourth-ranked offense (547.6 YPG) and stoking legit College Football Playoff aspirations.
Both came to the Tigers’ 2025 revamp for different reasons. A career backup quarterback at Penn State from 2022-24, Pribula left the Nittany Lions in the middle of a postseason run for a chance to become a starter. Hardy, the tackle-shedding, shock-absorbing sophomore running back from UL Monroe, leapt to Missouri to find his next, best stage.
The question now, as the 5-0, No. 14, Tigers host No. 8 Alabama in Week 7 (noon ET, ABC), is can Pribula and Hardy raise the ceiling enough to lift Missouri to its first CFP appearance? “I kind of expected it to be good,” Drinkwitz said. “But we’ll find out a lot more about ourselves in the next seven games. I’m not ready to crown anything yet.”
NAVIGATING THE CHAOS of the winter portal window becomes easier once you figure out what it is you really want. As it turned out, Pribula and Hardy were each looking for the same thing when their names landed in the portal last December.
“It was no different from when I went to ULM,” Hardy said. “I wanted a chance to prove myself.”
After exploding for 1,351 yards in his freshman All-American campaign in 2024, Hardy has recorded five consecutive 100-plus rushing yard performances to open his Missouri career. As of Thursday morning, he’s college football’s rusher leader (730 yards) and sits second nationally in touchdowns (9), yards after contact (460) and broken tackles (26).
Last month, Drinkwitz compared the 5-foot-10, 210-pound rusher — who owns three horses (Chaotic, Coco and Jet) back home in Mississippi — to “a Clydesdale among a bunch of fillies.” Former NFL head coach John Gruden recently described Hardy as “a combination between… Marshall Faulk and God.” Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer is another new admirer.
“Statistically, he has a missed tackle — and it shows up on film — every other carry,” the Crimson Tide coach said of Hardy this week. “He just keeps plays alive. People think they’ve got him down and he’s still running. The yards after contact just blow your mind.”
Raised by a single mother with his three siblings inside a two-bedroom trailer in Oma, Mississippi, Hardy grew up living a country lifestyle. Hunting. Fishing. Four-wheeling. When Hardy moved to Missouri in January, his horses came with him and stayed through fall camp.
“He’s always talking about horses and racing,” said Tigers linebacker Josiah Trotter. “I sit right next to him in the locker room. Most of the time I don’t even know what he’s talking about.”
Football emerged as another passion for Hardy. Jesse Anderson, who coached Hardy at Lawrence County High School, first spotted him playing in a Pee Wee football title game. Years later, when Hardy arrived as a freshman at Lawrence County, Anderson decided to ease him in at outside linebacker. But when Hardy went for 200-something yards and three scores in his varsity debut, Anderson never let him leave the field again. Soon, Hardy was bowling over opposing defenses on a weekly basis. Even teammates stopped trying to tackle him in practice.
“That wasn’t something that I was proud of,” Anderson said. “But I could understand it because he would lean into people, he would go find people. Ahmad just always had that for ferocity.”
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Hardy ran for 2,442 yards and 27 scores in his senior season. But despite nibbles from programs across the state that fall, ULM ultimately represented his only FBS scholarship out of high school. Hardy took his chance with the War Hawks and ran with it, emerging as one of the nation’s most dynamic and difficult-to-tackle rushers last fall.
Per ESPN research, only Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty, Arizona State’s Cam Skattebo and Auburn’s Jarquez Hunter recorded more broken tackles in 2024 than Hardy (42). When Hardy hit the portal. Drinkwitz marveled at how smoothly Hardy ran outside zone, called up ULM head coach Brian Vincent, an old friend, and came in strong to land ESPN’s No. 36 overall transfer.
“That made it really easy,” Drinkwitz said of Hardy’s fit in the Tigers’ scheme. “Like, ‘Hey, that guy’s going to be able to come in and get it.’ We’ve missed on some running backs in the past who the outside zone was so different for them.”
That same month, for very different reasons, Drinkwitz identified Pribula as another ideal fit.
BEFORE MISSOURI AND Pribula sealed their football marriage last December, each had a condition.
“The biggest thing about Beau was he was willing to come in and compete for the job,” Drinkwitz said. “I was unwilling to tell any transfer that you were going to be the starting quarterback here.”
For Pribula, who hadn’t started a game since high school, that wasn’t an inherent deal-breaker. But, as the 6-foot-2 passer booked campus visits in the busy days after his Penn State exit, Pribula made it clear that he didn’t have any patience in the bells and whistles of recruiting.
“I really didn’t have any interest in anything else other than just the offensive scheme,” Pribula said.
By December, Pribula had already shown plenty of capacity for patience. A four-star from York, Pennsylvania, he redshirted as a freshman in 2022, then carved a relatively high-usage role as gadget quarterback in the Nittany Lions’ offense. Leveraging his running ability, Pribula appeared in 24 games and totaled 19 touchdowns across the 2023 and 2024 seasons.
As Pribula made the most of his limited opportunities in those years, offers to play elsewhere emerged each offseason. But Pribula was adamant about getting his Penn State degree and competing for the starting job at the school situated just two hours from his hometown.
“I would have other college coaches reach out to me and ask to keep them in mind if he decided to go somewhere else,” said Gerry Yonchiuk, Pribula’s coach at York Central High School. “He wasn’t going to go anywhere. He was just so driven and, finally, he was going to be the starter.”
Indeed, with NFL scouts buzzing over Penn State quarterback Drew Allar last fall, Pribula’s opportunity appeared to be on the horizon in 2025. But when Allar announced his decision to return for another season last December, six days before the program’s first round playoff game against SMU, Pribula figured it might be time to move on after the season. As he watched the portal quarterback market accelerate, Pribula quickly realized he couldn’t wait that long.
“It was rough,” Pribula said of his decision to leave the Nittany Lions in the middle of the playoff on the “Next Up” podcast earlier this year. “Like it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, making that decision and leaving the team before the playoffs…It was just horrible timing.”
Days after he informed Penn State’s James Franklin of his departure, Pribula found himself in another coach’s office.
Drinkwitz and Tigers offensive coordinator Kirby Moore were in the middle of game prep for the Music City Bowl when Pribula visited Missouri. The meeting gave the quarterback a chance to break down tape and discuss the Tigers’ scheme, but also offered a window into how Drinkwitz and Moore approached the lead-in to a game. Pribula still had scheduled visits to Iowa, UCF and Ole Miss. But walking out of Missouri’s team facility, Pribula’s decision felt clear.
“I was kind of blown away by coach Drinkwitz and coach Moore,” Pribula said. “I had to go see some other schools to compare it all. But it was pretty obvious that Mizzou was the right fit.”
TO ACCELERATE COHESION within a team of fresh newcomers and veterans returners, Drinkwitz and his staff organized a mission trip to Harmons, Jamaica, in late May.
Roughly 50 players and a dozen or so members of the staff made the trip to the rural mountain community situated an hour west of Kingston. For seven days, the Tigers repaired homes, stayed in bunk houses, remained limited to one, two-minute cold shower each day and experienced a daily life very different from the program’s $98 million team facility.
“It was eye-opening,” Pribula said. “As a team, it was like you put all of our relationships in a microwave and kind of just sped it all up. We had 20 offensive guys, 20 defensive guys, all in the same room staying in bunk beds. That was so important for this group.”
A refreshed Missouri roster has meshed rapidly, fueling an unbeaten start this fall highlighted with wins over Kansas and South Carolina. For that, Drinkwitz credits the week he and his team spent in Jamaica and the foundation of continuity the Tigers’ 21 transfers stepped into.
Despite the long list of offseason departures, Missouri still brought back a veteran core in 2025. Seniors like Chris McClellan, Daylen Carnell and Zion Young on defense; 40-game starter Connor Tollison on the offensive line. A seasoned personnel department, Drinkwitz believes, has gotten better at identifying cultural fits and “walking away from guys who aren’t right for us.”
Another season with Moore — the third-year offensive coordinator — and a mostly unchanged offensive staff, has helped, too, especially in the speedy acclimations of Pribula and Hardy.
“I think the difference is the understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish,” Drinkwitz said. “We kind of know how Kirby thinks, how he wants it set up. And so we just present ideas and they either take ’em or leave him and can keep it moving.”
This is not the first time Drinkwitz has successfully leaned on the portal at a key inflection point of his Missouri tenure. Truman State running back transfer Cody Schrader, for instance, became an All-American and an integral piece of Drinkwitz’s first winning season in 2023.
But between Hardy and Pribula, the Tigers — who went 10-1 in one-score games over the past two seasons — might have more firepower than ever before under Drinkwitz.
Led by Hardy and redshirt sophomore Jamal Roberts, Missouri begins Week 7 with the nation’s No. 3 rushing offense (292 YPG), averaging nearly 10 more carries per game than in any other season since 2020. Pribula’s arm has been a pleasant surprise, too. Through five games, he ranks fourth nationally in completion percentage (75.9%)with 1,203 yards and nine touchdowns. “When he got here and we saw him throw the ball as well as he does, it was like, ‘Wow, this can really open up the offense the way we really envision it being,'” Drinkwitz said.
Alabama will provide the best litmus test yet. But behind Pribula and Hardy, the Tigers and their sixth-year coach appear to have gotten their offseason rebuild right. With seven games remaining, Missouri holds the nation’s 12th-best playoff odds (34.5%), per ESPN’s Football Power Index, perhaps closer to history than the program has ever been.
“So far so good,” said Drinkwitz. “The real tests are ahead.”
