What did you get Drew Lock for his 1-year anniversary as Mizzou starter?

Here are today's Mizzou Links.

By Bill Connelly@SBN_BillC Oct 12, 2016, 4:58am CDT

Q: In what ways have you seen Drew make strides this year?

[Josh] Heupel: "He’s come a long ways in understanding defenses, throwing the ball on time, getting his eyes in the right place, playing fundamentally sound. Is he a finished product?" Saturday will be his 14th career start, so "he’s fairly young yet. We want him to be perfect. He’s not that yet, but he’s going to continue to get better."

Q: Do you remember back to when you were a young quarterback? Can you relate to the growth, or is the game so much different now?

Heupel: "Yeah, my 14th start was against Ricks Junior College."

-- The Trib (Blake Toppmeyer): Coaching quotables

Last year was basically the one-year anniversary of Drew Lock's first Mizzou start. HIs stat line through his first 13-game "season" as starter: 227-for-437 (52%) for 2,782 yards, 17 touchdowns, and 11 interceptions. That's a 113.2 passer rating -- not particularly good, but more than livable for a true freshman starting in the SEC. (Well, a true freshman not named Jalen Hurts, anyway.)

Let's put it this way ... here's Matthew Stafford's line when he was a freshman at Georgia: 135-for-256 (53%) for 1,749 yards, seven touchdowns, and 13 interceptions. Passer rating: 109.0. No, he didn't face any defenses as bad as EMU's and Delaware State's (well, UGA did play a really bad WKU team that year), and no, I'm not saying he's going to end up the No. 1 pick, but this was quite the learning curve, and Lock has made clear progress this year, with a well-regarded QB coach and a receiving corps that actually has some semblance of experience.

His 'second year,' by this definition, begins on Saturday against a really, really good pass defense. Perform better than you did in Baton Rouge, then return home and start putting up big yards on lesser defenses again, and we'll go from there.