Eli Drinkwitz compares Taylen Green to Arkansas legend Matt Jones

The Missouri Tigers are looking to finish the season on a high note by knocking off the Arkansas Razorbacks. In their way, head coach Eli Drinkwitz knows, is a major test at quarterback in Taylen Green, who Drinkwitz even recently compared to Matt Jones.

Ahead of the game, Drinkwitz was praising Green. In particular, for how he’s developed in Bobby Petrino‘s offensive system, making him a major threat to the Missouri defense.

“Yeah, he’s a really difficult test for our defense,” Eli Drinkwitz said. “Does an excellent job, I think, of understanding the system. Two years in Coach Petrino’s offensive system. You always see a jump at the quarterback position. I think it’s the effectiveness of which coach Petrino teaches. They start thinking like him. You know, Coach Petrino has been awesome to me. I was a high school football coach in Arkansas, got a chance to go down to Arkansas and spend time with their staff, watch practice, work camp. When he was here, we had him come speak at our clinic. I went down and spent an afternoon down there just learning. I mean, he does an unbelievable job with his offensive system. And I think when a quarterback knows, hey, if they do this, then we’re going to do this. These are the plays that attack this coverage.”

Part of what makes Green such a special player is his dual-threat capability. That’s caught Drinkwitz’s attention and is directly what leads him to compare Green with Jones, a legendary player at Arkansas in his own right.

“And then the issue with Green is that when you play man-to-man, his scramble ability is as good as anybody in the country. He has, a reminder of me, growing up as an Arkansas fan. He reminds me a lot of Matt Jones. You know, Matt Jones was this big, could really throw,” Drinkwitz said. “But you always didn’t know how fast he was, and then he would take off running, nobody would catch him. And it’s very similar to Green.”

Matt Jones, of course, played quarterback at Arkansas from 2001 to 2004. In 46 career games, he completed 55.2 percent of passes for 5,857 yards and 53 touchdowns to 30 interceptions. He was an excellent runner on top of that, going for 2,535 career yards and 24 more touchdowns on the ground. That was good for the SEC record for career rushing yards as a quarterback at the time. In 2004, he would earn All-SEC Second Team honors.

Similarly, Taylen Green has played 24 games during his time at Arkansas. He has completed 60.8 percent of his passes for 5,809 yards and 34 touchdowns to 20 interceptions during that time. On the ground, he has 1,375 rushing yards and another 16 touchdowns.

Regardless of how the season has gone, Green will provide problems for Missouri on Saturday. Kickoff is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. EST.