The legacy of Mizzou’s Cotton Bowl comeback isn’t the win. It’s how they earned it
It was a year ago that Missouri quarterback Brady Cook returned home to spend Christmas with his family, and as much the appeal was escaping all things football for a bit, he knew he couldn’t escape the football conversation that has defined the sport for a half-decade now.
To stay or go?
This is real. He had that transfer talk with his tight-knit family last winter, even if it was a brief one. And in retrospect, they knew his answer before the discussion even started.
“I just think it was always in his heart to finish it,” his mom, Amy, told The Star. “To figure it out.”
A fitting phrase.
All week here in Arlington, Texas, plenty had been made of how appropriate it would be that Cook had a chance to play in the Cotton Bowl — after all, his mom had showed him a picture of 12-year-old Brady watching the same bowl game.
But he saved the most appropriate, the most fitting, moment for Friday night at Jerry’s World.
Cook led Missouri’s fourth-quarter comeback, an eventual 14-3 victory, against Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl at AT&T Stadium, marking the Tigers’ first win against a top-10 team in a bowl game since 1960.
Cook was named the game’s offensive Most Valuable Player — after the selectors probably spent the initial three quarters wondering if maybe they’d let the trophy sit idle for a year.
It was that ugly for awhile, if we’re being honest. The first half included 12 points, 29 inexplicable minutes without a target to stud wideout Luther Burden III or a completion of more than six yards. It included appearances by the second- and third-string quarterbacks for Ohio State, a finger-pointing penalty as the most discussed play and, most notably, zero Missouri points.
As much as he was responsible for the comeback, Cook has to own that piece of that, too. The pass rush consumed him early, and he appeared to let it consume his thoughts afterward.
Then came the fourth quarter.
Cook triggered a 95-yard touchdown drive with a 50-yard throw to Marquis Johnson, at long last. Cody Schrader capped the march with a 7-yard touchdown rush at the onset of the final quarter.
The next time they had it, the Tigers started inside their own 10-yard line again, and Cook led a 91-yard touchdown drive highlighted by a 31-yard throw to Theo Wease on a second-and-long snap.
They, well, figured it out, you might say.
Look, I’ve gone too long without mentioning the defense, which held Ohio State to 203 total yards. It would have been a disaster for Missouri to blow the kind of opportunity its defense provided against an undermanned Ohio State team playing without its top quarterback or star wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr., a future top-five in next spring’s NFL Draft. Nobody will remember the particulars 10 years from now. They might have, had Mizzou lost.
And the fourth quarter, the deciding comeback, was built on the backs on the kind of players on which you build a program.
That will be this group’s legacy: how they won as much as how often.
Cook had to win the starting quarterback job three times at the school he grew up adoring. Schrader is a former Mizzou walk-on who once carried footballs for Division II Truman State. He bet on his ability and finished with the most rushing yards in a single season in Missouri history.
Johnny Walker, the defensive MVP for the game, was not heavily recruited, either. And he, too, considered transferring a year ago, walking into head coach Eli Drinkwitz’s office and asking, “Should I transfer? Do you believe in me?”
“I believe in you, man,” Drinkwitz recalled replying. “Come back. Earn it.”
The team’s leaders — the literal MVPs Friday — are a collection of underdog stories.
Is it any wonder Missouri tossed aside three miserable quarters Friday and won anyway? Who cares the opponent? The theme within the story is the same. These guys have been swatting away football setbacks for years.
That’s what has to stick around now, because even Drinkwitz noted what awaits is “going to be twice as hard.”
Mizzou seemingly has plenty of momentum, both in the season and during the “off” season, the latter of which has a wave of talent headed to Columbia next year. The seasons that conclude with appearances in New Year’s Six bowls — even if this technically wasn’t played on New Year’s, it qualifies under the title — have a way of creating some momentum if you do it right.
But the Tigers have to remember the roots of an 11-2 season aren’t actually a series of celebrated recruiting wins. They sprouted from the same people who sparked the comeback for the biggest victory of Drinkwitz’s career. From the under-recruited.
It helps that a couple of those guys are returning, including Cook. So will the guy who actually is the high-profile recruit, wide receiver Burden, who caught the Tigers’ second touchdown against Ohio State.
The Tigers are positioned to build on what’s unfolded — not just Friday, but over an entire year — because of the way they put it all together.
“From going from unranked to the top-10 in the country is pretty special,” Drinkwitz said.
“But,” he added before turning toward the two players to his left, Cook and Walker, the game’s MVPs, “why stop now?”
