‘This is what I came back for:’ Drew Lock, once stung by criticism, is ready for NFL

A day after Christmas last year, Drew Lock was still processing the truth: He wasn’t ready to play at the next level, at least not according to NFL Draft Advisory Committee.

The Missouri quarterback was sitting in a conference room in a downtown Houston hotel when he shared the news with reporters before the Texas Bowl. Despite Lock throwing for 44 touchdowns as a junior while keying a six-game winning streak to save his coach’s job, the board thought he needed another season at MU.

A gifted athlete since elementary school, Lock was able to handle a 120-play playbook in middle school and had the likes of Michigan, Tennessee and Ohio State all recruiting him long after he committed to Missouri out of Lee’s Summit High School. So this was the first time he had ever not been good enough. For the first time, his football career did not progress according to his desired schedule.

“I don’t think anyone has ever told him that in his whole life,” said Lock’s father, Andy, a former MU offensive lineman. “If you come in as a true freshman and have some success and improve over three years a lot of times, you’re not meant to be there for four years. You’re meant to be successful for three years and move on. That wasn’t at the top of the list, but that was a piece of playing early.”

Ultimately, Drew Lock came back to Mizzou for his senior season.

And now, as Lock prepares to take the field in a Tigers uniform for the final time on Monday in the Liberty Bowl against Oklahoma State, he will finish off his Missouri career with no regrets about that decision, he said — even if he hasn’t forgotten about all of the questions NFL talent evaluators had about him around this time a year ago. He has spent this entire season using those as motivation.

“It’s kind of the same chip on the shoulder for the University of Missouri,” Lock said. “They kind of overlook us.”

There was a time midway through Lock’s junior season when he thought NFL talent evaluators couldn’t overlook him. In Missouri’s October 2017 game at Georgia, Lock found Emanuel Hall on a post route late in the first quarter for a 63-yard touchdown. The throw had such a high arch that TV cameramen briefly lost it in the air. As he left the field, Lock felt NFL-ready.

“I knew I was that dude,” Lock told The Star. “I knew I could be that guy.”

About two months later, Lock was at his apartment watching TV with fellow quarterback Jack Lowary and offensive linemen Paul Adams and Tommy Grossman. The Tigers’ regular season had ended with six straight wins, Lock had set records, and now pundits were mentioning his name and the NFL in the same sentences. While flipping through the channels, the group landed on the Dan Patrick Show at the exact moment when Patrick said Lock was his sleeper pick for the 2017 draft.

All four players looked at one another stunned, unsure of what to say.

Well I guess my name is out there, Lock thought.

“So Drew, senior year is going to be awesome right?” Adams asked.

The offensive tackle is one of Lock’s best friends, and he was just trying to break the silence while Missouri’s quarterback processed the hype around him growing. Soon enough, though, Lock came back to reality. Shortly before Missouri left for the Texas Bowl, Tigers coach Barry Odom texted Lock to inform him of the NFL Draft Advisory Committee’s evaluation. The committee cited Lock’s just-average athleticism, his struggles with intermediate throws and his completion percentage as a few of the main reasons why he needed to return to school. Going into the process, Lock knew the committee tended to be conservative in its evaluations, but the news still stung.

Lock was in Lee’s Summit and playing with his cat, Sadie, when Lock received that text from Odom, and afterward, he stood by the cat’s stand for a moment. He was in a bit of shock, he said. He would likely be playing for MU again next season while quarterbacks he met at different camps in high school — including his friend, Sam Darnold — turned professional.

“The one thing that really messed me up for a couple of days (was) when it clicked that guys my age were going to be in the NFL,” Lock said, “and I wasn’t going to be there with them.”

Lock confided in Lowary, and most of their conversations focused on MU’s 2018 season. If he came back for his senior season, Lock could leave MU’s program better than he found it and quiet his critics. The 2019 draft would also be weaker at quarterback, as Lock would not have to compete with Darnold, Josh Rosen and Heisman winner Baker Mayfield.

“He wanted to come back,” Lowary said. “It was important for him to finish it off here — what we could be, what we ended up being this year and everything.”

In Missouri’s win over Wyoming earlier this season, Lock rushed for 51 yards and a touchdown. Afterward, the quarterback, not one to hide his thoughts, revealed that the NFL was already on his mind, just two games into his senior season.

“That’s going to be on film now,” Lock said at the time. “(Scouts) will see I’m athletic. Even though I already knew I was athletic.”

The comment was the first of a few reminders Lock gave the media that the draft committee’s evaluation was still fresh in his mind.

Lock said the comments about his lack of athleticism bothered him the most, because he was a basketball star in high school with scholarship offers in that sport from Oklahoma and Wichita State. That critique still puzzles him — and he’ll happily lobby for himself.

“If you ask around about quarterbacks, I would put myself as the most athletic out of all of them,” Lock said. “Not many of us could have played Division I sports, two of them, on Final Four teams.

“It wasn’t like they were handing out candy offers.”

Missouri is a program that has fed off of prospects like tailbacks Damarea Crockett and Tyler Badie, both passed up by their local schools. Lock, however, was one of the nation’s top quarterbacks coming out of Lee’s Summit High School. He didn’t come to realize how his teammates felt until after the NFL told him he wasn’t ready yet.

“We all kind of operate on the same page here,” Lock said.

Missouri’s 2018 season fell short of the team’s loftier hopes — a Heisman Trophy for Lock, a SEC division title for the Tigers — but Lock said he’s yet to regret his decision to return to school. He said he’s had moments while watching NFL games this season that have made him think he could have handled the league this year, but he added that he wouldn’t have done well during pre-draft interviews’ whiteboard sessions if he had declared for the pros as a junior.

Former Mizzou offensive coordinator Josh Heupel’s system was good for scoring points, but the lack of routes didn’t prepare Lock for pro-level offensive concepts. After his first conversation with current MU offensive coordinator Derek Dooley in the spring, Lock realized he wouldn’t have been confident walking into those pre-draft meetings with professional franchises. Dooley’s NFL background showed Lock how much more he had to learn.

“I never would have thought like him six months ago,” Lock said of Dooley’s impact. “It would have been a bad representation of Drew Lock. From what I know now, how I see myself as a quarterback (compared) to what I would’ve gone into those meeting rooms with those GMs and coaches — they would not have gotten the guy that I would have wanted them to get.

“I think I’m going to go in and wow them this year. It’s night-and-day different from what it would have been last year.”

First, though, Lock hopes to lead the Tigers to a better bowl performance than last year’s, when Texas dominated Missouri. To end a season full of moments when Mizzou’s quarterback has worked to silence his critics, a victory over Oklahoma State would provide Lock with more evidence that he can, in fact, win big games.

He first proved this when he guided Mizzou to a dominant road win over Florida that helped the Tigers rebound from a last-second loss to Kentucky and save their season from disappointment. In that game, Lock threw for three touchdowns, including a 41-yard toss to Kam Scott early in the third quarter that put MU up by 18. After that throw, Adams shot his quarterback a look, and the two friends knew they were thinking the same thing.

“This is what I came back for,” Lock said.

This story was originally published December 28, 2018 at 8:09 PM.