If Drew Lock’s football career doesn’t pan out as planned, he will always have a solid fallback option: catching them all.
Missouri’s sophomore quarterback, who played 12 games and started eight as a true freshman last season, is apparently a master Pokemon trainer. According to Benjamin Hochman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lock is so good at the new “Pokemon Go” mobile game that even coach Barry Odom’s five-year-old son had to ask for some tips.
“Hopefully, how I’m good at Pokemon will be how good I am at football, because I do feel like I’m a very good Pokemon player,” said Lock, who reportedly has already reached Level 21 and boasts an Exeggutor with the impressive combat level of 1,800. (For old-school Game Boy players, that’s like the equivalent of spending countless hours training your Pokemon to level 70-plus.)
It’s a lifestyle choice. Obviously.
“He showed me the ropes, he kept telling me about how they evolve,” Mizzou teammate Sean Culkin said. “We went to Stephens College one time — he had us looking for a Pikachu. It was about a two-hour hunt. … Hey, you got to find Pokemon just like you’ve got to find a receiver, right?”
Lock completed 129-of-263 (49.0 percent) of his pass attempts for 1,332 yards, four touchdowns and eight interceptions in 2015, but looks to lead the Tigers’ offense in the right direction under new offensive coordinator Josh Heupel’s spread offense.
Tyler Waddell is a member of the Saturday Down South news team. He brings over five years of professional journalism experience and is closing in on a Bachelor's in sports management. Follow him on Twitter (@Tyler_Waddell).
