Jason Lane remembers the reassurance in Johnny Walker Jr.’s eyes.

Lane’s wife had been diagnosed with stage-three colon cancer in 2018, which coincided with Walker’s junior year under the head coach at Chamberlain High in Tampa, Florida. The coach couldn’t step away from his coaching duties, but the news weighed on him; impacted his day-to-day

Walker was there to help.

“Johnny would genuinely check in with me. Like, genuinely check in with me,” Lane said. … “I just remember the times he'd make eye contact with me and, in essence, just let me know that he cared about me, that he loved me, that he knew everything was going to be alright.”

It was. Lane’s wife is now cancer free. The coach never forgot the kid who went “above and beyond.”

Walker is entering his fifth season as a defensive end for Missouri football, where he has just been named a team captain ahead of the 2024 season. Bring him up to current and former coaches and eventually, it seems, you’ll stumble on a story about the Missouri edge rusher stepping up at the right time.

Coril Joseph, Walker’s defensive end, called him a “thermostat.”

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Unlike the thermometer, thermostats set the temperature.

“Johnny, he set the tone,” Joseph said. “He let the guys know what the standard was going to be.”

There’s a lot of change on the Mizzou defense this season, a year that, if some credible questions can be answered, offers a berth to the first 12-team College Football Playoff. The No. 11-ranked Tigers begin their new campaign against Murray State on Thursday in Columbia.

With 10 prominent members of the 2023 defense now gone to the NFL or graduation, the Mizzou defense needs some consistency, some leadership. With a first-round talent in Darius Robinson no longer manning the edge, the Tigers also need some up-front excellence.

Enter: Johnny Walker Jr.

How Johnny Walker grew into Missouri football’s next elite DE

All 197 pounds of Walker’s high school senior frame walked into the Chamberlain gym, where Joseph informed him his teammate, James Ash, a current Florida A&M defensive tackle, had just hit a 500-pound deadlift.

Walker may have been undersized, but he was squatting double his weight. He was unexpectedly strong.

And extremely competitive.

So, 250 went up on one side. Another 250 went up on the other side. Plus the bar, that’s a 505 attempt, more than a 2.5 multiple of Walker’s weight.

“He knocked out the deadlift,” Joseph said, “and said, ‘Alright, I'm done for the day.’”

Walker was still sub-200 when he stepped on Mizzou’s campus. Strong as you like, those big SEC boys up front are going to eat that up. He didn’t play until Year 2 in CoMo, and even then his reps were sparing.

Walker knew that. That’s why he’s now 250 and every ounce the athlete.

“It was pretty hard gaining all that weight,” Walker said. … “So I got with our nutritionist Liz (Stuart), found out what shakes work for me, what doesn't, what time to stop eating, the cut off time before I go to bed.

“Really, just chugging a bunch of shakes before I went to sleep.”

Then, opportunity arrived. Walker’s chance as a starter came in the 2023 season opener. He manned the edge opposite Robinson, the No. 27-overall pick in this year’s draft. Walker finished the outing with a team-leading six tackles and a sack.

He finished his first season as the Cotton Bowl Defensive MVP in a defensive beatdown of Ohio State.

The Buckeyes learned that day in Arlington, Texas … blink and you might miss him.

“I'm telling you,” MU linebacker Chuck Hicks said, “We were doing little races, offseason messing around — he's a fast dude.”

That seems to be the common consensus.

“I think he feels the football being snapped,” Lane said.

“He's moving with the ball,” Joseph added … “And once he gets started, he's full speed within those first two to three steps.”

But the new season is posing a fresh challenge for Walker. He has to replace Robinson, the player he called one of his best friends. The player who, when he first stepped foot on campus, unwaveringly helped him acclimate, although Walker could never figure out why he made so much time for him.

Now he knows.

Was captaincy a role Walker wanted? It’s tough to tell. He’s not loud or overly vocal, by his own admission. He’s said before that he’d rather lead by example and is finding his voice.

But it’s a role he’s accepted.

Mizzou coach Eli Drinkwitz saw Walker do it after the coach got “all over” Florida transfer Chris McClellan for not meeting the standard.

“Pulled him aside,” Drinkwitz said, “and said, ‘Hey, this is how we do it here. … You’ve got to respond in a positive way.’”

Even the five-star freshman got the arm around the shoulder: “I’ve seen him pull Williams Nwaneri aside,” Drinkwitz said, “and try to become a mentor to him.”

Walker’s the senior, and that’s what Robinson did. He’s “been in their shoes,” he said.

It didn’t hurt that a Missouri icon who has been in Walker’s shoes lended a helping hand this offseason, too.

Joseph set up a summer surprise for him: A meeting with former Mizzou defensive end and first-round draft pick Shane Ray.

“They had some conversations about what it means to be a Mizzou edge guy,” Joseph said, “and what Mizzou’s D-line used to be like and what the standard was there back when Shane Ray was playing.”

That surely meant conversations about Michael Sam and Kony Ealy; Markus Golden and Aldon Smith.

Ray and Walker, Joseph said, competed on who had the better first step, and “Shane’s still got the juice,” the coach confirmed.

But raw power?

“If it was college Shane?” Joseph mulled. “Johnny's stronger than college Shane.”

Walker has big ambitions. He won’t share them. He’s superstitious and rapped his knuckles onto the wooden lectern even when posed the question. He has NFL aspirations and every opportunity to get there after this season.

The Tigers have tabbed him for the new 'Joker' role on defensive coordinator Corey Batoon's defense, which is the boundary end tabbed as the team's premier edge rusher but, also, as a player who can drop back into coverage when necessity dictates. It's new, and a season-ending injury to the No. 2 for the position, Darris Smith, only adds to Walker's load.

That’s just fine.

Coach or teammate in need, captaincy or Cotton Bowl, playing time or packing pounds … Walker’s met ‘em all head first.

“I always felt like — just keep building, keep stacking days,” Walker said. “It'll turn out for me, I never shied away from any challenge.”

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This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: How Missouri football DE Johnny Walker has risen through the ranks