Trying to piece together Brady Cook’s timeline of events is nearly as impossible as the comeback.
There’s a visit to the hospital in a Missouri’s staffer’s truck. An MRI. A moment where the pads came off and the starting quarterback for the Tigers believed his day was done.
A fix. “A lot,” the quarterback said with a knowing smile, that went into that fix.
Plenty of time spent finding that fix in the Stephens Indoor Facility. Pads on, pads off.
Game off, game on.
There’s a sprint out the south end zone tunnel. There’s a roar from the Memorial Stadium crowd.
A comeback — an astounding, season-saving, belief-defying, 21-17 win over Auburn on Saturday — that will live long in Mizzou football lore.
And there’s a quarterback at the heart and soul of a team that is daring you to dream again.
This is the story of Brady Cook’s Saturday. It’s hard to believe. Bizarre, even.
Here’s the best we can tell it:
Missouri football quarterback Brady Cook leads game-winning drive. Here’s what happened
Let’s start at the end.
It’s 2:11 p.m. Ninety-five yards of Faurot Field stood in front of the banged-up Brady Cook. Four minutes, 26 seconds were left on the game clock.
A third-and-18 completion to Luther Burden III reduced the yards necessary to keep the comeback alive to fourth-and-5, which Cook sent, and completed, back to Burden. Later, there was third-and-10 completed to Theo Wease Jr. There were two health-out-the-window scrambles from the quarterback, a sack that surely stung. There were 17 total plays to end a manic day.
It’s 2:30 p.m., and running back Jamal Roberts got the handoff from Cook. Touchdown, 21-17.
Ballgame.
Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz, tears in his eyes and a rasp in his voice, sang his quarterback’s praises not too long after. He again reiterated the faith the team has in Cook. The faith everyone should have in Cook. Not much surprises him anymore about the St. Louis native under center.
But that?
Do you believe what you’ve just seen?
“Don’t believe it,’ Drinkwitz said. ‘It’s one thing to come back. It’s another thing to be able to scramble for a couple of first downs, to move in the pocket and deliver accurate throws. Number-one characteristic of an elite quarterback is toughness, and that guy’s got it written all over him.”
‘Toughness’ might be underselling it. Cook came back from the hospital.
A trip in an un-tinted truck
Cook was in a truck driven by a Missouri staffer.
He was getting wheeled out of Memorial Stadium in the opposite of style while the game was still in the first quarter.
Cook called it a classic “hip-drop” tackle that took him out the game. He toughed it out for a handful of plays. Then, his leg folded as he took a step. He could not put weight on his right ankle. He ended up going down — collapsing — for an 11-yard loss.
His day, seemingly, was done.
Cook first, per in-game reports, went to the locker room, where sideline reports emerged that he was getting taped up and was going to try to go again. And then halftime reports emerged that a return was unlikely.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, Cook was staring a fan in the eyes from an untinted truck.
People were clocking him from the passenger seat of the truck. He was on his way to the hospital.
“We’re driving through the tailgate areas, random areas,” Cook said, “I’m seeing people make eye contact with me. They’re like, ‘What is going on?’”
Finally at University Hospital, across the street from the stadium, Cook went for an MRI. He couldn’t have any electronics. While he was there getting tested, the quarterback said he received two updates.
Both were scores from the slog of a game: “3-0,” he said, and “3-3.”
“I was just sitting in silence for about 30 minutes,” Cook added, “looking at the ceiling.”
It felt over. Somewhere, unknown to Cook, Missouri’s day felt over, too.
Cook, maybe still in the hospital, maybe not — the timeline gets hazy here — missed a couple updates.
It was Auburn 17, Missouri 3.
The season was slowly dying. A second loss was going to close Missouri’s path to the College Football Playoff.
The sprint and the eruption
Cook burst out of the south end zone like the past two hours hadn’t happened.
Helmet on. Ankle strapped.
It’s 1:20 p.m., and there is life in Columbia again.
Cook jogged and tested the ankle out, pacing the Faurot sideline like a junkyard dog. Auburn was still driving, but Missouri’s defense was putting up a fight to match the sideline mettle.
The quarterback ran over to where the offensive starters were seated and nearly took hands off with high-fives as he rallied the troops. Cook was throwing passes at a graduate assistant that might have beat the wind out the staffer if they weren’t caught.
Drinkwitz asked Cook if he could play.
You know the answer.
But how did he get here? From hospital to sideline to, in a moment, on Faurot Field and starting the comeback with a four-play, 80-yard touchdown drive?
If you’ve been paying attention, you know that answer, too.
“He told the team that in the hospital,” Drinkwitz said, starting to get choked up and tears forming in the corners of the coach’s eyes. He pauses, and continues. “He realized, ‘I only got two-and-a-half games left on Faurot Field. There’s no way I’m spending it here in this hospital.’”
It’s 1:40 p.m., and the stadium is on its feet and loud — believing — for the first time in a while.
Cook is about to start the comeback.
‘12 sure would die on that field for everybody’
Cook’s pads are off. So, too, is the tape around his ankle.
He’s been to the hospital. He hasn’t yet been to the field. Right now, the quarterback is in the Stephens Indoor Facility, adjacent to the stadium, trying to make it work. But it isn’t. The pain isn’t going away.
“I was pretty positive,” Cook said, “I wasn’t coming back.”
They’d tried with the medical team. Nothing, like the rest of the MU team, was working.
You can want it all you want, but the level of want-it where you leave the hospital because this can’t be the way it ends? That only takes you so far. The ankle has to cooperate.
Cook and the Mizzou staffers keep trying. It’s last-gasp o’clock.
“There was one more thing we ended up trying,” Cook said.
What was the fix? Cook isn’t saying. Just that it took ‘a lot.’
The tape is back on. The pads are going on.
No. 12 is heading back to the tunnel.
“I mean, for all the criticism that young man takes, 12 (Cook) sure would die on that field for everybody,” Drinkwitz said. The tears are coming now. “For him to be out there, put his body on the line for us, is incredible and that ought to be inspiring to everybody that watched it today.”
Suddenly, Missouri football is back
Missouri is 6-1, and 2-1 in SEC play.
How healthy is Cook now? He handed that ball off to Jamal Roberts and, as he was celebrating with his backup Drew Pyne on the sideline, said that the pain set back in pretty quickly. He walked with a pretty noticeable limp as he came to meet the media and regale his near-superhuman day.
“I knew we needed to come back and find a way to win this game,” Cook said. “I think, you know, we lose that game, the rest of our season looks a little different. I recognize that, and I knew we needed to go win.”
Mizzou heads to Alabama next Saturday for a pretender-or-contender type game. Bryant-Denny. The mighty Crimson Tide.
Win, and everything is on the table.
Has Missouri convinced you it’s possible?
The man who, beyond all odds, made it so? He’s convinced.
“I think this win is going to take us far,” Cook said. “I think this is one of those moments for our team that we hadn’t had yet. We really haven’t had one of these moments yet, where we band together, we fight and we go win an SEC football game like we need to. We go make plays to do it.
“You know, I think our team needed that. It’s going to take us far.”
