How Brady Cook navigated a tricky offseason to earn Mizzou football's starting QB job again

Brady Cook’s 2022 season ended in defeat on Dec. 23. He was scheduled for surgery on a torn labrum in his shoulder on Dec. 29.

The Missouri Tigers football team's starting quarterback, following a deflating Gasparilla Bowl loss to Wake Forest, spent Christmas with his family. It was as much of a break for his family who had watched the injury-ridden starter go 6-7 with sparse reprieve as it was for the starter who emerged battered and bruised. They all needed some mental rest. Cook needed the physical respite.

Six days. That was his lot.

And on the other end of the New Year’s bells, although he couldn’t throw a football through the spring, Cook was crashing head-first into a quarterback competition. After all he’d endured, that was surely the feather that would break the camel's back ... right?

Not even close.

“I think he just believed in his heart he was gonna be QB1,” said Amy Cook, Brady Cook’s mother.

On Tuesday, Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz announced Cook would repeat as the Tigers’ starting quarterback this season. Despite a preseason competition with redshirt freshman Sam Horn and Miami transfer Jake Garcia, when MU’s offense takes to the field to face Middle Tennessee State at 6 p.m. Saturday in Columbia, it’ll be Cook front and center.

“Brady just does not complain. The guy just doesn't complain. He just doesn't believe in it,” Amy Cook said. “I mean, he just worked hard. I’m like, ‘does it hurt?’ He’s like, ‘eh, it’s alright.’ He just kind of grinds through it. He didn't like sitting out spring, but then again I think he just knew, ‘OK, it's just a matter of time, I’ll get in there.’”

After his December surgery, Cook worked closely with Missouri director of football sports medicine Zack Parker to rehab his injury.

There were take-home therapeutic machines and an incalculable amount of ice-bath plunges. He had group physical therapy sessions with teammates who had gone through similar offseason procedures. There were many days spent with rubber bands and other therapeutic props doing obscure exercises.

“Every now and then he sent me a little clip of what they were doing,” Amy Cook said. … “He'd be in this position you'd never seen before holding the medicine ball.”

But Brady Cook took the process all on the chin, just like he had the in-season knocks that had put him there in the first place and had his parents checking in on his well-being.

There was a job to win. His job.

And slowly but surely there was progress.

Parker would get the St. Louis native and Chaminade alum on the practice field and let him throw a predetermined number of passes, incrementally moving him further and further back and allowing him to throw more and more at each distance as the days stacked. One day it was 10 passes at short yardages, maybe the next it was 20. There was always some sort of progress.

By Missouri’s spring game in late March, ahead of schedule, he was able to go through warmups but not participate. He got the all-clear to play golf, which Amy Cook said kept the quarterback just about sane.

Then came the all-important all-clear for Brady — a full bill of health for the first time since suffering the initial injury against Kansas State in Week 2 of the 2022 season. He told the Columbia Daily Tribune before training camp that he resumed full activity in May. He was invited to and attended the Manning Passing Academy to practice with 44 more of the nation’s top college quarterbacks in front of Peyton, Eli and the elder Archie Manning in late June.

Then the bid to repeat as Missouri’s starter really began.

Brady Cook said at the beginning of training camp, despite the time away from the field, that he was confident entering this season with a year’s worth of experience.

He said he had learned how to treat fall camp, this being his fourth cycle. He’d learned how to talk to the media. He had the experience, and he understood what high-pressure situations looked like. More than all that, he knew how to look after his body.

“(He’s learned) novels worth. I mean he could definitely write a book already,” Amy Cook said. …. “He is a mature kid, you know, he always has been. He handles things well. I mean, I wish I could handle things the way he does — we just have to get off of Twitter. Forget that.”

The experience told. He took every observable rep in fall camp with the starters like he’d never missed a beat.

The dedication was recognized. He was called on by former Missouri QB and Heisman Trophy candidate Chase Daniel, whom Cook grew up watching, during fall camp to talk about what playing with a Tiger on his chest meant to him.

Then, as the quarterback competition rolled into the first week of the season, he drew effusive praise out of Drinkwitz after the Tigers beat South Dakota in Week 1.

Drinkwitz lauded his leadership and his selflessness, his grit and determination. And just like that, after the first act, the mystery was all but over.

“He never flinched (last season). He never stinkin’ flinched,” Drinkwitz said. “And we asked him, ‘hey, you want to take (time off)?’ (He said), ‘no does doc says I can play. Doc says, you're good. Can't injure it any worse. I'm in, I'm fighting my butt off of this team.’ So I’ve got no questions about his determination or him putting Mizzou first or putting the team first.”

The signs were all there.

When Brady Cook first learned he would make his first start for the Tigers ahead of MU’s Armed Forces Bowl appearance against Army in December 2021, he sent a message in the family group chat that said, “It’s official.”

This year, the announcement was more subdued. But the succinct, title-announcing text — the one that mattered this season — came before he knew he was QB1.

“Captain!” it read, Amy Cook said.

Before Brady Cook led the Tigers to 28 points on a 17-of-21 passing first half with a touchdown in the air and another on the ground, and well before Drinkwitz made the announcement that he would split reps as Missouri’s starter, Brady Cook got the only vote of confidence he needed, being voted as a team captain by his teammates for the second straight season.

There were challengers and challenges, but in the end the result was the same.

It was Brady Cook’s job then, and it’s Brady Cook’s job now.

“If they say, ‘oh, we're gonna have a QB competition,’ he's like, ‘OK,’” Amy Cook said. “He's never thrown a teammate under the bus. He supports his coach, his team. I mean, I'm always just proud of how he handles all of it and how he just picks himself back up.”

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: How Brady Cook navigated a tricky offseason to earn Mizzou football's starting QB job again