I haven't been able to watch my h Mizzou football or even see who was on the team. So it was surprising for me to see a number 19 jersey with the name Maclin on top. So, I see that he's Jeremy Maclin's cousin. Is he any good? [Reply]
Gamesmanship, weirdness and respect: Arkansas’ Barry Odom returns to Missouri
By Peter Baugh
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When asked 11 months ago about the prospect of coaching against his alma mater — the school that had just fired him as head coach — Barry Odom downplayed its significance. The Arkansas defensive coordinator was still adjusting to his new job: Classes hadn’t started, and a flier of Northwest Arkansas facts rested by his desk.
A game against Missouri, where he spent 2016-19 as head coach, felt distant.
“There’s so much that’s going to happen between now and then,” Odom told The Athletic in January. “It’s going to be another game that we’re both trying to win.”
Odom was right: A lot has happened. The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the college football landscape. The SEC shifted to a 10-game conference-only schedule, and Eliah Drinkwitz, Odom’s replacement at Missouri, energized the Tigers’ fan base with a 4-3 start to the season, including a win against defending national champion LSU. Odom, meanwhile, has helped first-year Arkansas coach Sam Pittman regenerate a program that was historically bad a year ago. Arkansas has a trio of SEC wins on the season — three more than it had the previous two years combined.
But Saturday’s matchup in Columbia, originally scheduled to be played in Kansas City, still isn’t simply another game, and it’s not because of the preposterously large, 180-pound Battle Line Rivalry trophy. Missouri fired Odom a year ago Monday, and now the Tigers’ players will face the coach who recruited them. They’ll be running an offense put in place by his replacement and a defensive scheme started under Odom.
“The way I think of it is, yeah, it’s going to be weird playing against him since he was technically my first college coach,” redshirt freshman quarterback Connor Bazelak said. “But the way I look at it this week is I’m not playing against him, I’m playing against the players that are going to be on the field.”
That’s the message Drinkwitz tried to instill with the Tigers when he brought up Odom’s homecoming on Sunday. He acknowledged many care deeply about their former coach. Linebacker Nick Bolton, who didn’t have an offer from any other SEC school, carries an appreciation for the opportunity Odom gave him. Wide receiver Barrett Banister said he’ll be in touch with his old coach for the rest of his life, and Bazelak chose Missouri partly because the school had recently extended Odom’s contract.
But it’s a player’s game, Drinkwitz stressed, and when the game kicks off Saturday, those in pads control the outcome. Arkansas’ defensive coordinator isn’t going to change Missouri’s desire to win.
“I feel like that’s the best way to show Coach Odom how much I respect him,” safety Martez Manuel said. “To play hard.”
A year ago, as the final seconds ticked off the clock in Missouri’s 24-14 win against Arkansas, Odom began to hug players on the sideline. Uncertainty hung in the air at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, Ark., as dusk began to fall.
The Tigers had salvaged a .500 record with the victory, but after losing five of six games in the second half of the season, speculation about Odom’s job security raged. His overall record was 25-25, and the Tigers had higher expectations for 2019, considering their returning talent and addition of graduate transfer quarterback Kelly Bryant.
The next morning, athletic director Jim Sterk fired Odom — an inharmonious end to his time at Missouri, which started as a player in 1996 and included a season as captain (1999) and 10 years on coach Gary Pinkel’s staff.
“I always dealt in truth and honesty and openness and built a program on accountability and structure,” Odom said in January when reflecting on his tenure. “There’s days (players) needed a hug; I gave them a hug. There’s days they needed to be kicked in the rear, and we did that, too.”
Now, a year later, he’ll be plotting against the school where he spent most of his adult life. And his defensive unit will face off directly with Drinkwitz, who calls offensive plays for the Tigers.
“He has a lot of love for his former players,” Pittman said at an Arkansas news conference last week. “And at the same time, the University of Arkansas is paying him.”
(Arkansas does not make assistant coaches available to speak to reporters during the season.)
The former Missouri coach first met Pittman in either the late 1990s or early 2000s, he said. Both hail from Oklahoma — “Those guys always tend to follow each other a little bit,” Odom said in January — and they nearly overlapped at Missouri; Pittman worked as the Tigers’ offensive line coach in 2000, the year after Odom graduated.
Odom and his family have settled in nicely at Arkansas. His oldest son, JT, is on Shiloh Christian’s high school football team, which plays in the state quarterfinals Friday, and his daughter yelled the “Woo Pig Sooie” hog call to fans after the Razorbacks’ win against Ole Miss on Oct. 17.
Under Odom, the Razorbacks’ defense ranks fourth in the SEC with 5.34 yards allowed per play and leads the conference with 17 takeaways and 13 interceptions. Linebackers Grant Morgan and Bumper Pool are first and second, respectively, among SEC players in tackles per game.
“I’m not shocked at all,” Missouri defensive coordinator Ryan Walters said. “I expected him to do damage there.”
Walters first worked with Odom on Memphis’ staff in 2014, when he was the cornerbacks coach and Odom was the defensive coordinator. The two left for Missouri the next year, with Odom taking the same position on Pinkel’s staff and Walters coaching the safeties. When Missouri hired Odom after Pinkel’s retirement, he kept Walters on staff, eventually promoting him to defensive coordinator.
“Obviously, I worked with Barry for quite some time there, and naturally I’ve got a great deal of respect for him and his family and (am) very appreciative of what he’s done for me and my career,” Walters said Wednesday. “He gave me an opportunity to call plays. Man, I’ll never forget that, and I’ll always be appreciative of that.”
After taking over last December, Drinkwitz retained Walters as Missouri’s defensive coordinator, and he kept secondary coach David Gibbs and defensive line coach Brick Haley. In January, Odom praised the three former assistants who stayed at Missouri, saying they’re good people who are in coaching for the right reasons. The Tigers’ defense has found success for the second consecutive year under Walters, ranking fifth in the SEC with 5.5 yards allowed per play and third with 350.4 yards allowed per game.
But Drinkwitz, who grew up 40 miles south of Fayetteville in Alma, Ark., retaining Walters, Gibbs and Haley also poses tactical questions for the Tigers. Missouri runs the same 4-2-5 base defense as it did in 2019, and Drinkwitz said the team will take “all precautions necessary” to make sure it isn’t compromised on defense.
“That’s a bigger part of the game than most people realize: the gamesmanship of trying to get the other team’s signals,” said Drinkwitz, noting his staff will also be able to contribute scouting reports of Odom’s tendencies. “We would definitely be prepared for that.”
“He’s going to have a little edge on me and the guys he’s coached in the past,” Bazelak said. “But we still have the same defensive staff that was here last year, so we’ll have a bit of an edge on what he does.”
With the Tigers’ geographic proximity to Arkansas, as well as Odom’s familiarity with the state of Missouri, the Razorbacks’ defensive coordinator has found himself going head-to-head with his former team on the recruiting trail. After Odom joined the Arkansas staff, the Razorbacks flipped three Class of 2020 prospects from Missouri: Ray Curry (White Station/Memphis, Tenn.), Jalen St. John (Trinity Catholic/St. Louis) and Dominique Johnson (Crowley, Texas), who took off a Tigers hat on signing day, threw it to the ground and zipped off his jacket to reveal an Arkansas shirt.
In February, Drinkwitz seemingly took a jab at Arkansas’ recruiting tendencies, saying “a school south of us seemed to keep offering every single person that we offered.”
After last season, Odom wasn’t the only Missouri staffer to leave Columbia for Arkansas. Razorbacks offensive line coach Brad Davis spent 2018 and 2019 at Missouri in the same position, and cornerbacks coach Sam Carter spent four years under Odom as a defensive analyst. Hogs quality control coach Michael Scherer played under Odom and spent 2019 as a Tigers graduate assistant.
“Obviously, it’s different, but this isn’t the first place this has happened before,” Banister said. “I think that’s something for all of us to remember.”
But while it might remain a player’s game, as Drinkwitz repeated this week, there’s a human element, too. A bittersweet reunion is on hand.
“We’re looking forward to seeing him Saturday,” Bolton said. “I hope to shake his hand after the game and tell him thank you.”
