Drew Lock threw the ball 51 times on Saturday afternoon in Morgantown. On more than 40% of those attempts, redshirt junior J'Mon Moore was his intended target. Lock said after the game that was part game plan and part just the way things shook out. After watching the film, Lock said he was comfortable with that number of targets.
"I was actually. I really was. Maybe a little bit more to our inside guys, but in the flow of the game, you’re never really thinking about that," Lock said. "Everyone was excited we actually threw it to him that much."
Especially J'Mon Moore.
"I expected some things. We talked about it in game plan," he said. "I really did appreciate coach Heupel giving me the looks like that."
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Moore caught eight passes--most of anyone in the SEC in week one with Ole Miss still to play tonight--for 102 yards, second on the team in the loss. But he wasn't satisfied with the performance, especially considering he dropped at least two or three other balls.
"Can’t be happy when you lose," he said. "This game that we play, you can do everything right and have that missing piece and it just messes up the whole play. We had plays where it was good, but either the ball’s overthrown or the ball wasn’t caught. It was just always something. That’s the good thing about this sport. Everything has to go right for it to work."
Moore led Missouri in receiving last year, but the numbers were just 29 catches for 350 yards. As the Tigers tried to renovate an offense that was one of the worst in America last year, teammates and coaches said Moore has matured, both on and off the field.
"His practice habits are so much better," head coach Barry Odom said. "He showed some things (this week) that were impressive, but also I expect more out of him."
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The maturation process was something that Moore says he has tried consciously to work on.
"I came in here, I was the young buck, I had the old heads and I was kind of able to be the young pup, doing stuff still being able to be a little kid," Moore said. "As time went by, and them guys went away, I started to notice my role, I’m starting to get older so I got to set an example. Once I realized that I got to set an example for the guys underneath me and I’m noticing that the guys are doing what I’m doing, I’m like, ‘Okay, I can’t be doing like these little kid things. I got to grow up.’
"When I’m off the field, I can’t be outside of the MATC doing silly stuff, I got to lay low and have a clean slate, set an example for them."
A fellow "old head" is graduate transfer Chris Black. He lives with Moore and tries to take some of the credit for the redshirt junior growing up.
"I kind of try to play the big brother role with him. He don't like it when I say that," Black said with a smile. "Every time we come to the sideline we talk about what we see. If he has a bad play or I have a bad play, we pick each other up. I think those kind of things are vital to being able to play the next play and play a great game."
Like Moore, Black topped the 100-yard mark on Saturday in Morgantown. Last year, no Mizzou receiver had more than 79 yards in any game.
"I feel like we took a step forward as an offense," Moore said. "I really feel like we took a step forward. We just need to score. We moved the ball, but we didn’t put no points on the board. I feel like we took a step forward. Looking at the film, I saw a lot of good things, but we’ve got to capitalize, we’ve got to score points and win."
"Like the coaches preached to us, there’s a lot of great things, a lot of things to be proud of on that film," Black said. "We’ll continue to get better."
If that is to happen, the two experience wideouts might play a big part in it, along with a quarterback they see growing up right before their eyes.
"I like seeing Drew grow, seeing him out there and seeing him look a little bit more relaxed," Moore said. "He looked kind of panicked last year. He just had this look in his eyes, he had this little boy look in his helmet. Just seeing him out there last week, he just looked more poised, he looked more comfortable. I liked seeing that."
Moore was clearly a security blanket for Lock on Saturday, seeing the ball about three times as much as any other receiver. It was the result of an offseason spent together, trying to drag a dreadful offense up to respectability.
"You a wide receiver and that’s your quarterback, you got to do that or it ain’t going to work," Moore said. "We both knew. He was the guy and I’m trying to be the guy. When you’re trying to be the guy you’ve got to have a partner in crime."
