The Least Talked about Great Player in the Country

Nationally, Tyler Badie hasn’t been getting much love this season, but he sure does deserve it

In a season that has featured many disappointments, Tyler Badie has been one of the main bright spots for the Missouri Tigers. After a career-high 217 rushing yards yesterday against North Texas, Missouri Head Coach Eli Drinkwitz called him “probably the least talked about great player in the country right now.”

The least talked about great player in the country right now is almost the perfect way to explain the year Badie’s having. The senior currently leads the SEC in rushing touchdowns, touchdowns from scrimmage, and yards from scrimmage. He’s also second in the conference in rushing yards.

However, despite all this success, Badie is still on a .500 Missouri Tigers team that is greatly underachieving based on their preseason expectations. So while he’s not getting the national love that runningbacks like Bijan Robinson or Treyveyon Henderson are getting, Badie deserves to be talked about in that upper echelon of elite college runningbacks.

Badie knows he belongs in that group, too. “My goal is to be the best running back in this conference, in the NCAA, period,” he said. However, even with all his success this year, Badie remains incredibly humble.

“I get all the praise and all the glory,” the Tigers running back said. “But at the end of the day, the O-Line does the hard work, the wide receivers block for me, and the quarterback hands me the ball so I feel like it’s just a team effort.”

While Badie is right that it takes a team to put together a great individual statistical season, special players still make special plays when no one else would, and there’s been no greater example of that this season than Badie’s 42-yard run at the end of the third quarter.

It looked like Badie was surely stopped for what wasn’t going to be more than a 6-yard gain, but inconceivably he broke out, got to the edge, and turned a decent gain into a 42-yard run. That’s just the 2021 rendition of Tyler Badie for you.

When asked about the run in the postgame, Badie downplayed the impressive nature of it saying, “Honestly I just closed my eyes. Sometimes you close your eyes and good things happen.” But the truth is, most players don’t make that play, only great players do.