The Missouri Tigers Legends Draft: Round XXI

Just jumping in? Here are the previous rounds of the Missouri Tigers Football Draft:

Round XII (this has the halfway point breakdown and links to rounds 1-11)

Round XIII

Round XIV

Round XV

Round XVI

Round XVII

Round XVIII

Round XIX

Round XX

Welcome, Tiger fans, to #PeakOffseasonContent. Despite a lack of championships, the Missouri Football Tigers have had some excellent players throughout the years, both at the college and professional levels. There have been excellent ambassadors on and off the field, as well as some that changed the program or revolutionized a position. So what better time than now to draft a hypothetical team of these exquisite athletes?

BK and I will build a team of 22 starters (sorry, specialists!) to craft a team to play against the other. For simplicity’s sake, we’re limiting our selections to guys who played on the 2000 team going forward, including the current roster in 2020. Each Round will alternate who goes first and we’ll provide our reasoning/explanations/defense afterwards.

At the end, you all will be able to vote for who you think has the best team! And of course, we’d love to hear your picks for each round as well and why we are dumdums who don’t know what we’re talking about.

Round XXI, Pick 41: BK selects Offensive Guard Connor McGovern

Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images

One of the strongest human beings to ever come through Mizzou is the next pick for me. He once squatted 700 pounds while he was at Mizzou. He ranked among the top 15th percentile of NFL Combine participants over the last 20 years in the following categories: 10-yard split, 40-yard dash, vertical jump, broad jump, 3-cone drill and bench press.

Yeah, he’s a bit of a physical freak. But he was also a heck of a player.

McGovern was a 3-year starter for the Tigers along the offensive line, including in 2013 when he was a critical part of what will likely go down as the best Mizzou offensive line of the last quarter century. I’m not drafting McGovern for what he went on to do in the NFL, but it should be noted that he recently signed a 3-year, $27 million contract with the Jets after starting 36 games for the Broncos in his first four NFL seasons.

McGovern joins Evan Boehm, Tony Palmer and Mitch Morse along the offensive line to protect Chase Daniel and to open up holes for Henry Josey.

PS: Yes, we’re planning to bring back the Christmas Thursday videos. That’s a pretty significant bonus to adding McGovern to the club.

Round XXI, Pick 42: Nate selects LB Brock Christopher

Photo by Ron T. Ennis/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Every great Tiger defense has a vaccum tackler at linebacker. 2010 had Will Ebner, 2013 had Andrew Wilson (whom I drafted earlier), 2014 had Michael Scherer, 2018 had Cale Garrett, and the 2007 squad had Brock Christopher.

Brock was a mere backup for the first two years, but once he took over the starting mantle he logged 100+ tackles a year, had 7.5 tackles in both ‘07 and ‘08, and snagged 4 of his 5 interceptions. Middle linebackers in the Pinkel years were never asked to play the pass or disrupt the backfield all that often but Christopher was able to stay active in both fields. He set the standard for middle linebackers in all defenses after him and was a stalwart of two of the greatest teams we’ve ever seen. To quote BK, that’ll play.