Wallace-Simms' personality blooming as play improves
Following the Missouri football team’s practice on Thursday, Dec. 20, most of the Tiger players hustled off the field. A blustery wind and overcast skies made the roughly 40 degree temperature feel even colder, and players were eager to reach the warmth of the locker room. But junior guard Tre’Vour Wallace-Simms walked slowly, chatting with offensive line coach Brad Davis. Before reaching the sidelines, Wallace-Simms grasped Davis in a headlock. Davis smiled as he tried to wriggle free, and several other linemen laughed.
Typically, offensive linemen crave anonymity. Outside of the Missouri locker room, Wallace-Simms achieved just that during the regular season. Wallace-Simms has played 904 snaps this year, second-most among offensive linemen, and he didn’t record a single penalty. One of the few times his name surfaced came on Dec. 5, when the Associated Press voted Wallace-Simms to the all-SEC first team. He also split the Iron Man Award, presented by the coaching staff to the offensive lineman who demonstrates the most durability, with right tackle Paul Adams.
But among Missouri’s players and coaches, Wallace-Simm’s personality stands out. Adams, who has lined up next to Wallace-Simms for every game the past two seasons, said he draws laughs from the offensive line room without trying to be funny. Fellow guard Kevin Pendleton described Wallace-Simms as a “goofball.” Wallace-Simms expresses that personality through a unique hobby: He writes and raps his own songs, producing them in a makeshift studio in his house.
“He’s actually pretty talented,” Pendleton said. “It’s funny, when he played us his first song, we were giving him stuff, but then we sat down and listened to it, and we were like, he’s creative as hell.”
Both Adams and Pendleton said that Wallace-Simms’ personality hasn’t always been on display, but as Wallace-Simms has gotten more comfortable with college football and his teammates, he’s opened up more. Meanwhile, his play on the field has improved.
Wallace-Simms grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois, and landed at Missouri in the fall of 2016 after a roller-coaster recruiting process that saw him commit to Illinois, flip his commitment to Missouri, flip back to Illinois, then finally choose Missouri again on National Signing Day. When he arrived on Missouri’s campus, Wallace-Simms struggled to adjust to the conditioning demands on the field. Off it, his teammates said, he isolated himself. Left tackle Yasir Durant, who arrived on campus a year after Wallace-Simms, even said Wallace-Simms first struck him as “annoying.”
“He came in here as a young kid, really had a shell on him,” Pendleton said. “Would still just stay to himself and do it, you know, try to do it by himself.”
Wallace-Simms saw the field as a true freshman, but only as a member of the field goal protection unit or with the second-string offense when games became out of reach. He said he essentially spent that year learning through trial and error.
“I feel like you can never be ready for the transition from high school to college,” Wallace-SImms said. “You just have to get thrown in there and make mistakes and learn off your mistakes to become ready.”
It wasn’t until midway through his second season that “the game started slowing down.” Wallace-Simms started all 12 games as a sophomore.
“The game just got easier for me,” Wallace-Simms said. “The more film you watch, the more it slows down, and you get to anticipating things.”
Following the regular season, Wallace-Simms lost his position coach, as Glen Elarbee followed former offensive coordinator Josh Heupel to Central Florida. But what might initially have looked like a speed bump in Wallace-Simms’ development turned into a positive, at least in Wallace-Simms’ mind. He points to the arrival of Davis, who declined to be interviewed, as key to his growth. On the field, Wallace-Simms said Davis studied Wallace-Simms’ game alongside him, highlighting his weaknesses and finding ways to improve upon them. He said the biggest area Davis sought to address was his body control, and he attributes his penalty-free season to improvement in that area.
“I respect the fact that when he came in, he pretty much broke my game down, like this is what I feel like you need to improve on,” Wallace-Simms said of Davis.
Perhaps just as important, Wallace-Simms and Davis developed a special rapport off the field, as evidenced by the headlock after practice. Adams said that, even during a bad practice, Wallace-Simms always seems to know what to say to get Davis to laugh. Pendleton characterized their relationship as “big brother, little brother.”
“He’ll say some things, he’ll get coach Davis laughing, or him and Coach Davis will kind of poke at each other a little bit,” Adams said. “It’s really fun to be with him.”
In speaking with Wallace-Simms’ teammates, that was a theme: During the last season and a half, as Wallace-Simms has matured, he’s gotten increasingly comfortable around his coaches and teammates. Nothing illustrates that comfortability more than his music.
Wallace-Simms said he’s been writing poetry and rap lyrics since high school, and it wasn’t like he tried to hide the hobby from his teammates when he got to Missouri. He let some close friends listen to his songs. But in the past couple years, Pendleton said, Wallace-Simms has been more open with his music, even inviting teammates to help him make beats for his songs or rap guest verses alongside him. Pendleton pointed to that as evidence of Wallace-Simms’ growth.
“When he first got here, he barely talked,” Pendleton said. “Now, he raps. ... He’s a creative kid. He’s very, I don’t want to say artsy, he doesn’t draw and stuff like that, but he knows how to express himself now.”
Wallace-Simms’ personality still has its limits. He’s clearly hesitant to discuss his rap music in an interview, dismissing it as “not serious” and “just something to do in my leisure time.” Like he’s done on the football field the past two seasons, Wallace-Simms said he’s still working to find his own definitive musical style.
But the fact that Wallace-Simms is comfortable enough to roughhouse with Davis after practice and collaborate with teammates on a rap track illustrates how much he’s grown since arriving at Missouri. His increased comfortability with his personality off the field has helped Wallace-Simms remain mostly anonymous on it — in a positive sense. He’s found and embraced his role along the offensive line.
“I’ve gotten to watch Tre’Vour grow from kind of a boy to the man he is today,” Adams said. “The past two years, obviously playing next to him, ... I learn more things about him, and he’s a really good guy. He cares so much about this.”