The Missouri Tigers will wrap up their fifth spring practice on Monday morning and it didn’t take long for Dorial Green-Beckham to realize and admit, college ball is a lot different than high school. However, DGB says he’s learning the playbook and trying to soak in as much as he can this fall camp. How much he contributes this year to Mizzou’s offense is still up in the air.
The pace at which the college game is played and the number of plays DGB needs to learn has taken its toll early on the highly touted recruit from Springfield-Hillcrest. He’s dropped quite a few passes during 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 drills, which could be attributed to thinking too much on routes and technique and not concentrating on catching the ball. DGB says it takes up to three hours a day of studying formations, learning which routes he needs to run and then walking through those routes on his own.
AUDIO Dorial Green-Beckham’s first and only media appearance during fall camp (2:50)
Head coach Gary Pinkel has made no guarantees about starting or even how much playing time DGB will get. Pinkel says he told DGB on recruiting visits, this is how he runs his program–each freshman starts at the bottom of the depth chart and needs to work his way up to gain playing time. There are no guarantees. When I spoke with captain T.J. Moe, he says there is no doubt DGB’s size and speed will help Mizzou, but getting playing time will be difficult, because Moe says there are a lot of talented receivers ahead of DGB on this team.