Missouri football: 3 reasons to watch Mizzou’s Trajan Jeffcoat
By Jacob Milham
Jeffcoat’s lone season of substance was last year. Could this be the year he breaks out on the national stage for the Missouri football team?
It is hard to think of the 2020 college football season as a full season. Many championships and accolades may have an asterisk in fans’ minds.
However, aside from his freshman year, it was Jeffcoat’s only season with the program 100%.
Jeffcoat did see action in 13 games during his 2018 freshman campaign. This obviously came with the coaching staff’s confidence in the young player, going against the top competition in the SEC.
2019 was a season where all goodwill went away quickly.
For reasons unknown, Jeffcoat was dismissed from the program completely in 2019. This was following him being injured to start the season. This was bookended with Jeffcoat entering the transfer portal following the end of the season. This does not inspire the player’s perceived confidence in the program as a whole.
Former #Mizzou defensive end Trajan Jeffcoat is in the transfer portal, @TheAthleticCFB has learned. He missed the first part of the 2019 season with an injury, then was removed from the team in October before playing a game. He played in ever game as a freshman in 2018.
— Peter Baugh (@Peter_Baugh) February 5, 2020
While he did not leave for another team and was reinstated upon Eliah Drinkwitz’s arrival, Jeffcoat lost out on a pivotal season of development. With the NFL continually coveting younger drat prospects, any lost time can hurt a player’s stock. However, Jeffcoat enters the upcoming season as the clear-cut top DE1, arguably the best defensive player on the Tigers.
This leads to the possibility that after gaining the DE1 position for the Tigers, Jeffcoat can take his development from 2020 and turn it into a banner 2021 campaign.