ATLANTA, GA—For three years, Drew Lock played the part of an SEC starting quarterback. Buttoned-up, borderline robotic in front of the media, revealing little, inciting no one. That Drew Lock is gone. He’s been replaced by one that says whatever pops into his head and he doesn’t much care who he pisses off in the process.
“I think it’s just my last go round,” Missouri’s senior QB said. “Might as well say the things I’ve been thinking for the last three years here.”
And say them he did. As Lock met with the league’s media on Wednesday, he was coming off an SEC record 44 touchdown passes and first-team all-SEC honors. He’ll quite likely be tabbed as the best signal caller in the league by the media this week in the pre-season poll. He took Mizzou to a bowl game for the first time in three years and has his sights set higher this season. In other words, Lock is in exactly the spot that most people thought he would be four years ago. It just took a little longer to get here than most would have thought.
“A lot of people called me out early and ratted me out, said he’s not going to be who everyone thought he would be,” Lock said. “You just kind of take those with a grain of salt. I’m going to be happy to be able to tweet those people back, I’m sure a lot of people have the archives of everything that was said about me and my family and my aunt and my uncle.”
Lock insists he does not have that archive of insults.
“I do not waste my time with that junk. I’m excited for all that to take place one day.”
And that is a window into what drives Lock. Yes, he was a four-star Elite 11 quarterback. Yes, many have forecast an NFL career for years. But Lock has always looked for those who doubt what he can do.
“That’s kind of how I’ve been my whole life,” he said. “Lee’s Summit, the high school I was so grateful to be at, wasn’t the top Lee’s Summit team. We sat behind Lee’s Summit West, we came in my senior year and went 7-0 against all Lee’s Summit teams in all sports, didn’t lose to anyone in the city which was really cool.”
Lock is like his head coach. Doubters? Bring them on. That’s fuel.
“He’s mentioned some things to me about his competitive drive and the reasons why and there’s some similarities there,” Barry Odom said. “I think we both have issues a little bit with that.
“We probably need a little help.”
“We definitely have issues,” Lock agreed. “Whenever we play well it’s because the other team didn’t play well. It’s not because the Missouri Tigers are a good football team. Whenever someone’s throwing a touchdown or catching a pass, it’s because they were wide open. It wasn’t because we made a great play on the ball or it was a good throw. When Damarea (Crockett) busts a 30-yard run or Larry (Rountree) busts a 50-yard run, it’s not because they’re good backs. it’s because the gaps fit wrong and the O-Line got lucky. I think that’s the chip we have on our shoulder. People talk about our comebacks and how the teams that we played weren’t as good as some of the other SEC teams. Well they had better records than us. They were technically, in the media’s eyes and in football’s eyes, in rankings’ eyes, they were better football teams than us and we beat them, so…”
The 2018 Drew Lock Redemption Tour begins now. Perhaps it really began last December, when Texas was busy administering a 33-16 Texas Bowl beatdown, holding Lock to 18-for-34 and just one touchdown pass. In the midst of that game, Longhorns coach Tom Herman mocked Lock’s “secure the bag” celebration, the final icing on a week that was filled with more than a mid-level bowl game’s share of chippiness. Asked if he looks back and thinks perhaps he contributed to the feud, Lock does not hesitate.
“No sir. I had been doing that all year,” he said. “I got to do it almost 44 times in that season. So someone just got a little butthurt about it. They probably got to do it like ten times that year if they were doing a dance. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
That last game put a damper on Mizzou’s second half of the season surge. The Tigers won six straight after a 1-and-5 start, probably saving Odom’s job and launching Lock into the dark horse Heisman conversation. But Lock is convinced he and his team will bounce back because they’ve stared down adversity before.
“We’ve been through some stuff,” he said.
Lock was the heir apparent to Maty Mauk, a four-star in-state stud who stayed home, the third generation of his family to don the black and gold. He was supposed to play a few series as a freshman, get some mop-up duty. Optimistically, maybe he could push Mauk for the starting job in 2016. Then Mauk was suspended—and ultimately dismissed—throwing Lock into the fray as a wide-eyed freshman who had little idea what he was doing and less idea what he was getting into.
“I just half a year ago was playing basketball against Suburban Big Six conference in Lee’s Summit, Missouri and then you go play those guys that are trying to do nothing but take your head off because they want to go make millions of dollars,” Lock said. “I was a little ignorant back then in thinking I could just go out there and be the athlete I was in high school. I learned really quick that’s not how it works around here.”
As a sophomore, Lock threw for 3,399 yards and 23 touchdowns, but his quarterback rating was dismal and the Tigers were 4-and-8. The shine was off the golden boy. And the doubts weren’t limited to those on the outside.
“Man, he’s out here tripping on the field. We need somebody else in there,” Mizzou linebacker Terez Hall said. “But, man, that’s called me maturing. You’ve got to give everybody a shot. You’ve got to give him a legitimate shot. He got it. Everything was chaos, we had the whole protest deal, you got to tie everything together. We were confused on the field, everybody was playing for themselves. Now he got a legitimate shot.”
The junior season brought nearly 4,000 yards and the 44 touchdowns. It brought more wins. It was the first time Lock had played consecutive seasons under the same offensive coordinator.
“When (Josh) Heupel got here, he kind of got my swagger back, talked to me about what happened with Sam (Bradford) and Landry (Jones) and just past experiences,” Lock said. “Even with coach Heupel. He went to the juco, he had to figure a lot of things out about himself. I think he had a lot to do with my success.”
All the trials have led Lock here: The face of the program, a Heisman hopeful, possibly the first quarterback taken in next year’s NFL Draft. And he believes he’s here because of all of those things, not in spite of them.
“Looking back on it people ask is it worth it, are you glad that you played, are you glad that you went through all that or do you wish you would have redshirted?” Lock said. “I say I would go through it all again just to learn what I did to be able to take it to the end of my career. I’d rather be off to a rough start than a rough finish.”
And for that finish, Lock is letting it all hang out. He was asked about his days as a prep basketball standout, good enough to garner offers from Oklahoma, Wichita State, Missouri and others. He was asked what he most missed about playing hoops. He said it was the one-on-one, face-to-face battles in the game.
“I’ve realized focusing on your job is way more important than talking shit,” he said. “So that’s kind of gotten me away from that. That’s what I miss most about basketball.”
But make no mistake, Lock can still dish it out.
“There is an occasional trash talk and that’s just probably because someone probably said something to me earlier in the game,” he said. “I’ve always been the guy, I’m trying to be the best to beat you but if you talk a little something to me, it’s going to get me riled up. In a good way. In a super good way. So don’t do it to me.”
The trash isn’t limited to his opponents. Hall hears it daily.
“I’ve been talking since day one. He was like all kind of quiet at first. But now, since the spring, he’s been talking up, speaking up,” Hall said. “It’s been fun recently him talking trash. And he’s been more competitive out on the field.”
Hall said Lock challenged him to a race this summer. Hall said “I’d smoke him, man.” Lock says his teammate is dodging the challenge.
“He said he had turf toe, so we couldn’t race,” Lock said. “We haven’t even raced. When it happens, I am going to beat him. He thinks he’s the man. Actually, I’m surprised he hasn’t talked about picking me off our freshman year.”
Oh, but he did.
“I remember when I first picked him off,” Hall had said a few hours earlier. “I threw it in his face.”
“He loves bragging about that. It’s the one time he’s picked me off,” Lock said. “He will go to the grave bragging about that, I think.”
So this is the new Drew Lock. Doubt him if you will. He wants you to. He wants to prove you wrong. And when he does, he wants to tell you about it.
“It’s not going to change the way I play,” Lock said. “It’s not going to change the way people play us. Talk is talk, but once the ball gets snapped, nobody is thinking about the shit that was talked, no one’s thinking about any of that. Just thinking about, I’m going to do my job and play the best game of football I can.”
