‘Tank of gas mentality’: How Mizzou’s Casey Woods is establishing recruiting might

Missouri football recruiting coordinator and tight ends coach Casey Woods sat inside Memorial Stadium’s South End Zone facility fielding questions from reporters Wednesday, chatting about recruiting strategy like a scientist meticulously explaining their research methods.

Brought onto the coaching staff shortly after head coach Eliah Drinkwitz (who he previously worked with at Auburn and Arkansas State) was hired in December 2019, Woods had plenty on his plate: convincing talent to play for a new coach, recruiting sanctions from the NCAA, and eventually, COVID-19 revamping recruiting entirely.

The details are precise and go well beyond just picking a prospect to scout and hoping he chooses to play for the Tigers. It’s a science. And whatever Woods has boiled it down to has worked so far.

Take one look at MU’s 2021 class — ranked No. 20 nationally by Rivals, the Tigers’ highest ranking ever — and how 2022 is going thus far: No. 26 overall as of this week, with eight of 12 pledges either from Missouri or the Kansas side of the Kansas City metro area. Drinkwitz certainly plays a part in getting players to Columbia, but Woods helps in pulling the strings.

“We’re going to start in-state, and all 419 schools that we identify as in-state,” Woods said. “We’re going to go with that tank of gas mentality outside of that … and we’ve got three direct flights that come out of Columbia, and potentially a fourth that sounds like in November, which will help us there. That’s where we’re going to start: in our border, tank of gas, those three flights.”

Columbia Regional Airport currently services direct flights from Chicago, Denver and Dallas/Fort Worth, with flights to Charlotte, North Carolina coming soon. Dallas is especially relevant with the eventual move of Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference, and Woods wants to “get in the mix” for recruits from those states.

Texas is historically a Tigers recruiting hotspot: several Missouri alums in the NFL, including Chase Daniel and Mitch Morse, hail from the Lone Star State, as do 18 players on the current roster.

Not only that, the Tigers could start new connections in the Sooner State, too.

“We’re as fearless now as we’ve ever been,” Woods said, “and we’ve got to continue to push that envelope and understand that man, everybody wants to come to the SEC. … I do think that a player or a prospect in Oklahoma now views us maybe a little differently than potentially than they had in the past, which is good.”

Though new programs to the SEC may help, longtime relationships and trust are key to nabbing recruits, as is just simply winning games.

Despite having a top-20 recruiting class last season for the first time in the Rivals era (since 2002), Missouri still ranked ninth of 14 SEC teams, with Alabama, LSU, Georgia, Texas A&M occupying the top six national spots. It comes as no surprise that those teams have combined in the last five seasons to go a combined 205-56 (.851 win %) with six national title game appearances, while Missouri has gone 30-30 (.500).

Getting up to such an echelon is a mighty task that takes years of work and sustained success, but Woods believes that it starts at the roots of the game: keeping relationships with coaches, winning the in-state battles and getting Missouri on recruits’ minds early — even in elementary school.

If it’s the recruiting signals Drinkwitz posts on social media and the esteemed recruit announcements that bring the short-term excitement, it’s the long-term links at the underlying levels that help it stay there.

“There was a quote by a guy we were recruiting early on, and (he) said something about him when he was in third grade at a book fair, picked up a Missouri poster and hung it in his room,” Woods said. “And you can imagine (us thinking), ‘Hell, we gotta get posters in kids’ rooms,’ you know what I mean? That’s so they make sure that five, 10 years from now that they understand where it is they want to play.”