Jamal Roberts was already in line for a bigger spotlight at Missouri this fall. With Ahmad Hardy set to miss the season opener and perhaps more, that spotlight has turned into something much larger.
Roberts’ return to Columbia looked like a major win for Missouri even before the season got here. After a 2025 season in which he piled up 754 rushing yards and six touchdowns on only 124 carries, the St.
Louis native would have had every reason to test the transfer market. That’s the reality of college football now.
Eli Drinkwitz acknowledged as much, and he made a public push to keep Roberts home.
“If anybody in St. Louis has third-party NIL they’d like to donate or work through to keep Jamal Roberts around, we’d love to talk to you,” he said ahead of the offseason, “because he’s a heck of a player and we’d love nothing more than to have him be a Tiger for his career.”
Missouri managed to hold onto him, announcing his return just before the transfer portal opened. At the time, it mattered. Now, with Hardy unavailable for the opener, it looks even bigger.
Drinkwitz said Hardy won’t be ready for the first game.
“Ahmad is working his rear end off. He’s doing everything we can ask him to do, but just not going to be able to be ready for that first game,” Drinkwitz said.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Saturday that Missouri is aiming for a mid-September return for Hardy, which would put his season debut somewhere in the stretch against Kansas, Troy or Mississippi State. Drinkwitz, though, stopped well short of putting a date on it. He said Hardy has to get through a full two-week ramp-up of practices before the staff will even think about putting him in a game.
“Does that mean mid-September? I don’t know.
Does it mean mid-October? I don’t know,” he said, “I need a two-week fully invested, being able to practice at full speed, before we consider playing him in a game.
And I’m not there yet.”
So Hardy’s return could land anywhere from the Border War matchup to Missouri’s conference game at Ole Miss, or even later.
That leaves Roberts in position to carry more of the load. He already showed he can handle starter-level work in 2025, averaging 6.1 yards per carry and looking like a back who could start for plenty of Power Conference teams. Now he gets a real chance to prove it in a much bigger role.
His impact isn’t limited to the backfield, either. Drinkwitz said Roberts was voted a captain by his teammates, a sign of how his standing inside the program has grown.
“Jamal’s been phenomenal,” Drinkwitz said, “He was voted a captain by his teammates yesterday, and I think he’s responded the right way to exit camp.”
Sophomore wide receiver Donovan Olugbode has seen that development up close.
“[Jamal] stepping up and taking on more of a leader role and being a guy that you want the team to lean on and go to and just talk to about anything,” Olugbode said, “just stepping up and being that captain for the team, has definitely helped a lot.”
Roberts is now in a pretty uncommon spot in college football: heading into his fourth year with the school he signed with out of high school. Even rarer, he’s done it while making only two career starts and still showing enough talent and production to draw attention elsewhere.
He entered the offseason as the expected complement in what looked like one of the country’s better running back tandems. Less than two weeks before kickoff, he suddenly looks like a necessity for Missouri on both sides of the locker room.
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