Lindsey Scott Jr. more mature, humble after roundabout journey to Missouri
In 2015, as a senior at Zachary High School, Lindsey Scott Jr. won just about every athletic award possible. After leading the team to a state championship, he was named the Gatorade Louisiana Player of the Year, the Division 5A Player of the Year, and the state’s Mr. Football. Even more impressive, the mayor of Zachary presented Scott with the key to the city. Zachary head coach David Brewerton believes it’s the only time in the 70 or so years that the school has fielded a football team that a high school player has been presented the honor.
Clearly, as Brewerton said, Scott was “the guy” in high school. But his situation has changed drastically since. He began his college career at nearby LSU, where he found himself buried on the depth chart behind the likes of Brandon Harris and Danny Etling. Scott struggled to adjust to life as a backup, and after redshirting the 2016 season, he opted to leave the school for a year of junior college at East Mississippi Community College. Now, Scott is one of four quarterbacks on the Missouri roster fighting for the No. 2 spot on the depth chart behind starter Drew Lock.
Scott believes his journey since leaving Zachary has humbled and matured him, and he’s better prepared to spend a season this season backing up starter Drew Lock as a result.
Brewerton joined the Zachary coaching staff prior to the 2014 season, Scott’s junior year, and he quickly became enamored with both Scott’s talent and his leadership ability. Brewerton gushed about Scott during a phone interview last week, saying high school coaches “hope to be able to coach two guys like that in your career.”
“He possesses the tangibles to play the position at a high level, and then he also possesses the intangibles where he leads a locker room, he leads a team, when he speaks, the team listens and everybody rallies around him,” Brewerton said.
“If it was halftime and I was getting ready to chew on the team a little bit, Lindsey was probably already chewing on them. If it was a deal where I felt like I needed to go in and settle the troops down a little bit and re-group at halftime, then he was already in there talking to them about that kind of stuff as well.”
But once Scott made the leap to LSU, success no longer came as naturally. He went from being a star on the field and leader off of it to a 17-year-old, 5-foot-10 freshman on a roster loaded with talent. The prospect of watching from the sidelines for multiple seasons frustrated him. After head coach Les Miles was fired midway through the year and replaced by Ed Orgeron, Scott made up his mind to transfer.
“I was a 17-year-old kid starting college, and at first the competitor in me always wanted to push forward so I could be that guy,” Scott said of his time at LSU. “But in reality there were things I needed to learn.”
Scott said he probably could have just transferred to another Division I program, but instead of sitting on the sidelines for a second consecutive season, he wanted to play. So, he transferred to East Mississippi Community College. As Brewerton tells it, Scott arrived in Scooba, Miss. on a Monday, and by Thursday he had already seized the starting job. It may not have exactly happened that quickly, but just 17 days after arriving on campus, Scott started EMCC’s season opener and threw for 429 yards and four touchdowns, while also rushing for another 62 yards.
As he showed at EMCC, learning offenses quickly has never been a problem for Scott, who is now playing in his fourth different scheme in the past four years. In fact, he said that his exposure to so many different systems in such a short period helped when he arrived on Missouri’s campus.
“Some things you kind of notice about offenses: They all kind of have the same similarities,” Scott said. “So learning these different offenses is going to help because I see some similarities in all of them.”
Scott led EMCC to an 11-1 record and a junior college national championship last season. Afterward, as he embarked upon the recruiting process for a second time, he said he had different priorities than as a high school senior. He looked for the school where he meshed best with the coaches and players. The fact that Lock clearly occupied the starting spot for the 2018 season, which might have tested his patience as a 17-year-old, didn’t deter Scott from choosing Missouri.
“The second time, you look for the things that really matter to you,” Scott said. “A coaching staff that cares about you, your personal interests on and off the field, as a football player and then later on as someone outside of this facility.”
For the most part, since he arrived on the Missouri campus in January, Scott has impressed his teammates and coaches. Lock called Scott a “good self-manager,” saying he knows what he needs to improve on and is willing to put in the work to do it. Barry Odom said Scott has already become a leader in the locker room.
But it hasn’t all been rosy for Scott since he arrived in Columbia. During the team’s Black and Gold game in April, Scott’s first time donning the Missouri uniform and playing in front of the fan base, he struggled mightily. He completed just one of seven passes and threw two interceptions. Brewerton said it’s the only time he’s ever seen Scott “look bad playing quarterback.”
The high school version of Scott might not have known how to handle the outing, but he said he analyzed the game film, identifying where he made mistakes without dwelling on the disappointment. He framed his offseason training around the weaknesses he saw on the game film.
“I sat down, I watched it, I watched what I did, mechanically reading and the things that I did poorly, and I wrote those down, and that was something I really worked on throughout the summer,” Scott said. “… If I see myself really struggling with something, I look back on those notes and I get back to fixing it. So you learn from it and then you move on.”
On Missouri’s first depth chart of the preseason, Scott was listed as a co-backup to Lock, alongside sophomore Jack Lowary. Even though he probably won’t play a meaningful snap this season, winning the backup job during camp would be valuable in that it could give Scott the inside track to starting in 2019, once Lock graduates. Brewerton speculates that a part of Scott still chafes at the idea of being a backup, but he’s learned to “respect the hierarchy” established before he joined the Tiger roster.
Scott said he views this season as a chance to educate himself. It’s taken him two years and three schools to learn the necessary humility, but Scott now realizes that as a backup, he can learn from a future NFL quarterback and improve his game so that, when the chance to be “the guy” for an SEC program finally arrives, he'll be equipped to make the most of the opportunity.
“It’s something that, out of high school, you’re kind of like really excited, you want to be the guy, and I think maturity comes the second time around in terms of saying, there’s things to learn and this guy can teach me,” Scott said. “If it ultimately makes me a better quarterback at the end of the day, then so be it.”