COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Quarterback Drew Lock knows better than to get on Emanuel Hall's bad side. When they came to Missouri as freshmen in 2015, Hall's fashion sense was unlike anything else in the locker room.
The wide receiver from Nashville, Tenn., typically wore fresh polo shirts with the buttons always fastened, Sperry boat shoes and Chubbies shorts, the kind worn shorter at the knee and rarely in your standard khaki.
"Sometimes pink or teal," Lock recalled, laughing at the memory. "It looked like he came from church every day."
His teammates gave him grief, but Hall grew up in the South. His style was all he knew.
"I guess Tennessee (style), it's totally different," he said.
How so?
"A little classier," he said, smiling big.
The jokes bothered Hall, Lock realized.
"He started showing more aggression," he said.
That was three years ago. The fashion critics have since cooled off, but now it's Hall's football talents being questioned. For the last two years in former coordinator Josh Heupel's offense, Hall played a significant role as an outside receiver but was rarely asked to do anything but run as fast as he could down the sideline.
As a junior last fall, he torched defenses unlike any receiver in the Southeastern Conference, averaging 24.8 yards per reception, second-best in the country. He compiled 612 yards off deep passes, according to ProFootballFocus.com, the most among all 2019 NFL draft-eligible receivers.
Hall finished with 13 of what PFF measures as deep passes and averaged a robust 47.1 yards per deep catch. Overall, Hall had six receptions that covered at least 50 yards. Only two FBS players had more.
For the season, Hall caught 33 passes for 817 yards and eight touchdowns, all while rarely running anything more than a go route straight down the sideline or a post pattern from his position on the right of MU's formation.
Those days are over. Under new coordinator Derek Dooley, Hall has to master the entire assortment of pass patterns while lining up in multiple spots in more varied formations. If anyone thought Hall was a one-trick pony, he'll have the platform this fall to show off his other tricks.
"Now people are saying all he can do is run straight," Lock said. "He thinks about that every single day, and he's going to prove them wrong."
Receivers coach A.J. Ofodile has watched Hall the last two seasons while serving as the team's director of recruiting, and in the short time he's spent working more closely with the 6-3 senior wideout, Ofodile knows there's more talent there that's gone untapped the last two seasons.
"Everyone knows he's a take-the-top-of-the-coverage guy," Ofodile said. "He can run. He's elite in that realm. The challenge to him was, let's be more complete. Let's be a route-runner. Let's be a guy that finishes more plays regularly, a guy who makes the contested catch. He's taken that to heart. He's a competitive guy. Early on we're seeing that. We're seeing him make the tough catches. We're seeing him run more polished routes and having a better feel. We're excited to see what that looks like this fall."
Hall already has a favorite pattern that hasn't been part of his repertoire the last two seasons.
"I really want to take a slant like 70 yards, man," he said. "That's one of my big goals. I haven't done that my whole career."
If Hall is going to catch more slants and digs and curls, he's going to absorb more contact in the middle of the field and won't be able to rely on that elite speed to blow by defenders. That's the part of his game he's improved most this offseason, Lock said.
"I see it every single day," the preseason All-SEC quarterback said.
"There's a couple plays in our 7-on-7 (drill) where I'm coming across the field making my reads and I'm used to seeing Emanuel like 60 or 70 yards downfield. Instead, now he's coming across, ripping a (curl) and making a competitive catch, staying on his line, not fading away from the ball. He used to fade away from the ball on slants and routes that weren't necessarily a go, but he's attacking the ball now, which is huge."
Hall produced his share of highlights last fall -- he caught four passes for 141 yards and two scores at Georgia -- but also missed time with a hamstring injury and struggled with drops late in the year, notably in wins over Tennessee and Vanderbilt, the two SEC schools from his home state.
He insists he's left those games in the past.
"It was a learning experience," Hall said.
"For one, (I was) just getting too comfortable at practice. Two, I had a lot of family come in for those games and I let one (bad) game turn into another. That's one thing about maturity I've learned over the years. If you have a dropped ball or a bad game you've got to move on. If you don't, it'll trail over to the next game and you'll be criticized."