Mizzou linebacker Cale Garrett makes an interesting pick for his hero

Missouri coach Barry Odom likes for his team to discuss more than just football, considering broader questions about life in some team meetings.

At one such meeting, Odom went around the room asking players who each considered his hero.

“We got the usual responses you’d expect, like LeBron James and guys like that,” Odom said. “We get to Cale, and he said Michael Scherer — and he’s dead serious. That’s pretty cool, and that’s a good guy to look up to.”

With less than a week to go before national signing day last winter, Cale Garrett — then a senior at Kearney and fresh off leading the Bulldogs to a Missouri Class 4 state title — had resigned himself to attending the U.S. Naval Academy on a football scholarship.

Mizzou was his dream school, but they’d yet to offer. That changed five days before scholarships were inked when Odom and wide receivers coach Andy Hill, who is the program’s primary recruiter in Kansas City, pulled the trigger with a late offer.

“Towards the end, I kind of lost hope, but I had always wanted to go here and I knew in the back of my mind that I did … ,” Garrett said. “I knew where my heart was at the whole time.”

Only 10 games into his college career, Garrett — who ranks seventh on the team with 37 tackles, including four for a loss — already is drawing comparison to Scherer, who suffered a season-ending knee injury Oct. 22 versus Middle Tennessee.

Both arrived at Mizzou as precocious players, whose effort and intellect helped them see the field early despite perceived physical limitations about speed and overall athleticism and ability to play in space against elite SEC competition.

The comparison elicits a demur smile from Garrett.

“Scherer’s definitely my role model and big brother … ,” Garrett said. “(It’s) just his ability to read the game and how he lives his life on and off the field. You’ll see him with Coach Odom’s sons sometimes. They’ll run up to him and give him a big hug or a handshake. That’s kind of the guy I want to be like. He’s a really good football player, but off the field people want to be around him, too. I think that’s really cool.”

After working hard to master Mizzou’s new defense last spring and summer, Garrett was thrown a curveball in October when Odom and his staff reverted to last season’s scheme — one in which he had no experience.

“The terminology has switched on him, the schematics have changed on him a little bit mid-stride and he's a freshman, but I’m really impressed with him,” Odom said. “He’s going to have a tremendous playing career here.”

Garrett admits it was frustrating to be thrown into the deep end with a new scheme midseason, but he embraced the challenge.

“At the end of the day, a linebacker’s got to be a linebacker and the expectation, no matter what scheme we’re in, is the same,” Garrett said. “You have to make solid tackles, get everybody lined up and then execute whatever’s asked of us. It seems like we’re attacking a little bit more in this one, whereas in the other one we were reacting.”

Asked if Odom sees shades of himself as a player in Garrett, he quipped, “No, he’s bigger, he’s better-looking, meaner, tougher, faster, all that stuff.”

Count Scherer among those impressed with Garrett, who enrolled for the spring semester and quickly established himself as the backup at middle linebacker despite his youth and inexperience.

“He’s got that attitude that he’s never going to stop until he gets what he wants,” Scherer said. “I think that’s got him where he is, and he’ll continue to keep working. I’ll help him as much as I can, but he’s got a lot of talent and a natural ability to play linebacker.”

Can Garrett be the program’s next Michael Scherer?

“Definitely, maybe he’ll even be a little better,” Scherer said.

This story was originally published November 15, 2016 at 6:59 PM with the headline "Mizzou linebacker Cale Garrett makes an interesting pick for his hero."