‘This is what it’s supposed to be like’: Inside Drew Lock’s final home game at Missouri
Before Drew Lock took Faurot Field for his final possession in front of a Missouri home crowd, a Tiger assistant coach blitzed the quarterback with a pop quiz.
“You know how to do this right?” asked Ted Monachino, a MU defensive analyst.
Lock responded with a confused look. Given Missouri’s gigantic lead over Arkansas, this interaction early in the fourth quarter might have been the first thing to trip him up Friday.
“Do you know how to walk off the field?” Monachino said to the quarterback who will likely finish his career second in passing yards among Southeastern Conference quarterbacks.
“You better have a plan, so you don’t look stupid.”
Until then, Lock, a Lee’s Summit native, had not even realized his next play would be his last in Columbia. His offense had been cruising all game, and he had completed 16 of 25 passes for 221 yards and two touchdowns in front of NFL executive John Elway and also Jerry Jones, two of the many men who will be evaluating Lock as a professional prospect in the coming months.
“My whole mindset is, ‘Was he actually here to watch me?’“ Lock said of Elway. “I feel like I still want to prove a lot to those people.”
Lock handed off to Simi Bakare before hugging each teammate on the field. He gave the sparse crowd a quick point before leaving with 9:31 left in the fourth quarter of Missouri’s 38-0 win that occurred on a cold and rainy Black Friday.
After his previous two home games against Kentucky and Vanderbilt ended on last-second plays, Lock and MU didn’t leave any room for suspense in this contest. The most pressure Lock got Friday came hours before kickoff. As he crossed the footbridge from the Missouri Athletics Training Center to Memorial Stadium, he turned a corner to find roughly 15 of his high school and middle school teammates waiting for him. Lock walked into a avalanche of hugs, the closest thing to a sack he experienced all day.
“Here he comes,” one said, as Lock made his way down the walkway.
Lock’s former teammates were huddled in front of his parents when their former quarterback turned the corner to see them. A smile immediately broke out on his face as they mobbed him before he could get any words out.
“This is what (my final home game) is supposed to be like,” Lock thought at the time.
Lock then made his way toward his parents, who were already cheering for each of Missouri’s other 18 seniors. Even before Lock’s father Andy, a former MU offensive lineman, embraced his son, he admitted he was getting sentimental.
“I’m trying to push the thought back,” the quarterback’s father said of his son’s final home game.
After receiving the opening kickoff, Lock wasn’t needed much during MU’s opening drive. Sophomore tailback Larry Rountree got eight touches on MU’s 11-play inaugural drive, which culminated with a 9-yard rushing touchdown from Lock.
Senior linebacker Terez Hall gave Lock a short field late in the first quarter after intercepting a pass at Arkansas’ 35-yard line. Lock handed off to Rountree twice before finding senior wideout Emanuel Hall for a 19-yard gain to Arkansas’ 8-yard line. Three plays later, Lock scrambled into the end zone for his career-high second rushing touchdown of the game.
“That was a shocker to me,” Lock said of his rushing scores. “They gave me a couple of good looks to be able to pull the ball, and I took advantage of it.”
Before Elway could start thinking about Lock as a dual-threat quarterback, Lock took the field with 1:39 left in the first half from the Hogs’ 43-yard line, after a strong series for the MU defense. True freshman Tyler Badie got the Tigers into the red zone with a 32-yard run. Then Lock threw a 6-yard laser to Hall for a touchdown.
By the third quarter, Lock began looking for senior tight end Kendall Blanton. Lock wanted to send Blanton, a Blue Springs South graduate off with a touchdown of his own.
“(Offensive coordinator Derek) Dooley was calling a lot of plays our way,” Hall said referencing the seniors. “Dooley and Drew were trying to get us the ball.”
Blanton dropped a pass from Lock as MU was driving down field, and the play would have been for a big gain. Two plays later, the Hogs’ jumped offsides and Lock took advantage of the free play.
He found Hall deep on a go-route and connected before the senior wideout split a pair of defenders for a 67-yard touchdown. The play extended Missouri’s lead to 35-0 with 8:19 left in the third quarter, and Elway had seen enough. He exited the stadium with senior advisor and former Broncos coach Gary Kubiak.
With the game in hand, Lock admitted his second touchdown throw to Hall got him thinking about what this season could have been. Missouri’s offense struggled without Hall healthy in its losses to Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama, but when the quarterback had his top wide receiver, the Tigers averaged 389 passing yards in their first three games.
Shortly after Missouri’s heartbreaking loss to Kentucky on Oct. 27, Lock approached head coach Barry Odom after taking a look at the remaining schedule.
“Anything other than 8-4 would not be right,” Lock told Odom.
The two men’s legacies at MU are intertwined. Before this season, both were viewed as having resumes filled with empty calories. Lock set a SEC record for touchdown passes in a season last year, but he played in a simplistic offense. Odom’s team rebounded from a 1-5 start to make a bowl game in his second season as head coach, but the Tigers six-game winning streak to close the 2017 regular season didn’t include a victory over a team with a winning record.
Now Lock and Odom have toppled a ranked Florida team on the road and every team they were supposed to beat at home to close this season. With a bowl game to come, the Tigers have a chance to complete their first nine-win season since 2014.
As he prepared to exit the training facility, fresh off a home victory for the final time, Lock and his family spoke to KCTV5. A television camera illuminated the quarterback’s sweaty and floppy hair, and after years of Andy looking on while his son conducted interviews, this time Lock’s parents stood by his side. In that moment, he had everything he wanted.
“The best way to put it is it felt right,” Lock said of his final home game. “There was no way to leave this game without a win.”
Alex Schiffer
Alex Schiffer covers University of Missouri athletics for The Star.
This story was originally published November 23, 2018 at 8:46 PM.