As bowl approaches, Drew Lock savors final weeks with Missouri football team
After Missouri’s regular season came to a close, Drew Lock called an audible with his sleeping arrangements. The quarterback dragged the mattress out of his bedroom and plopped it in the center of the living room, a place he’ll always be surrounded by teammates and friends.
“This is the best month ever,” Lock said. “It’s just a really awesome time to relax and be with the guys you love and just kind of take a deep breath.”
Lock graduates this month, and he only has one Tigers football game left on his schedule: the Liberty Bowl on Dec. 31 in Memphis, Tenn. He said he can use the time between the regular season and bowl game to run and lift weights.
The Tigers’ quarterback found out about Missouri’s bowl destination when he woke up from a nap Dec. 2. His family in Kansas City can drive to the game, and he expects Missouri will have a strong fan turnout because of the bowl’s proximity to campus. Memphis is a six-hour car ride from Columbia and only four from St. Louis.
“If you think about your last game as a Tiger, you wouldn’t necessarily want 100, 200 people there,” he said. “I’d be grateful for the 100, 200 that were there, but it’s nice to be close, to be able to go out with a bang and have a lot of supporters there.”
For the second consecutive year, Missouri will play a Big 12 team in their postseason matchup. The Tigers fell to Texas in the 2017 Texas Bowl and have not won a bowl game since the Citrus Bowl in 2015.
A win on New Year’s Eve would almost certainly keep the Tigers (No. 23 in the College Football Playoff rankings, No. 24 in the AP poll) among the top 25 teams in the country. Missouri hasn’t finished a season ranked since 2014, a year before Lock came to Columbia.
As a Lee’s Summit native, Lock grew up around Kansas City barbecue. The Liberty Bowl will give him the chance to try Memphis barbecue, also considered some of the country’s best. Wide receiver Johnathon Johnson is from Memphis, and he told Lock about his favorite restaurants when the Tigers heard the bowl announcement.
“There will be a different taste,” Lock said. “I’m excited to see what it all tastes like.”
The Liberty Bowl presents a rematch of Missouri’s 41-31 win over the Cowboys the 2014 Cotton Bowl. Lock watched the game at home with his family and late Labrador, Truman, and remembers when Shane Ray returned a fumble 73 yards for a game-clinching touchdown. The highlight still played on TVs in Missouri’s athletic complex when Lock arrived freshman year.
Life for Lock will change after the Liberty Bowl. He will play in the Senior Bowl Jan. 26 and prepare for the NFL Draft, in which he’s projected to go in the first round.
For now, that’s not his focus. He’s focusing on his final weeks as a college athlete, relaxing in the living room with friends nearby.
“I don’t have much time left here,” he said. “I want to soak it all up.”