Much of the attention around Saturday’s No. 9 Ole Miss-No.
13 Missouri showdown has centered on the Rebels-turned-Tigers making their return to Oxford. Austin Simmons, Cayden Lee and Chris Graves Jr. all transferred to Missouri last January, and that reunion has been a big part of the conversation.
But Kewan Lacy has his own former-team angle in this game.
The Ole Miss running back began his college career at Missouri after choosing the Tigers over the Rebels out of high school. Now he gets a shot to face the program he first committed to, and he arrives with something to prove after a season interrupted by injuries.
Lacy’s 2026 campaign has not gone the way anyone around Ole Miss expected. The Rebels had even built a Heisman push around him and quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, but injuries have limited him to 46 carries for 230 yards and five touchdowns.
That stands in sharp contrast to the breakout he delivered last year. After transferring to Ole Miss, Lacy rushed for 1,567 yards and 24 touchdowns in the 2025 season, a huge leap from his freshman year at Missouri, when he logged only 23 carries for 104 yards and no touchdowns.
There is at least one encouraging sign heading into Saturday: Lacy is off the injury report. He was listed as questionable before Ole Miss’ last game against Vanderbilt, then started anyway. In that blowout win, he carried seven times for 39 yards and a touchdown before coming out once the game was comfortably in hand.
Even with that clean bill of health, questions remain about how much Lacy can be trusted to handle and how close he is to full speed after missing so much time.
Missouri’s Jamal Roberts, who was teammates with Lacy during that freshman season, said he helped take Lacy under his wing when Roberts was a sophomore.
"He likes to compete a lot," Roberts said of Lacy. "There's gonna be a lot of competing on the field Saturday with me and him."
Roberts has had the more productive year on the stat sheet, carrying the ball 147 times for 828 yards and eight touchdowns. Lacy, though, has the chance to reset the narrative in a ranked conference game that carries real College Football Playoff weight for both teams.
In Other News...
Ole Miss Gets Texas At A Moment The Longhorns Desperately Needed Stability
Texas arrives in Oxford already carrying more baggage than anyone in the program would have wanted at this point in the season. Floridas 27-24 win over No. 7 Texas made it back-to-back SEC losses for the Longhorns, and the latest one came with Arch Manning enduring another difficult afternoon, capped by a costly late fumble that helped swing the game. For a team that opened the year with playoff hopes, the margin for error has quickly disappeared.
Ole Miss now gets a Texas team trying to steady itself while the schedule only gets tougher. The Longhorns still have multiple ranked opponents ahead, which means there is not much room for the kind of uneven play that has followed them through conference play. From the Rebels perspective, that makes this matchup more than just another SEC date - it is a chance to catch Texas at a moment when the Longhorns badly need a clean response, and they have yet to show they can find one. [Read more 🡒]
Kentucky Suddenly Faces A Dangerous SEC Test In Week 7
Week 6 was a reminder that the SEC race can shift fast, with six top-25 teams going down and No. 1 Texas among the biggest surprises after losing to Oklahoma. The ripple effect reached beyond the scoreboard, too, as the leagues contenders continue to juggle injuries and uneven stretches while trying to keep pace in a crowded conference picture. For teams like Ole Miss, the margin for error keeps shrinking every week.
Kentucky now draws a dangerous test at just the wrong time, with the Wildcats having to sort through the same chaos that has already swallowed ranked programs like LSU and Florida. Around the conference, from Missouri to Mississippi State and even teams outside the SEC such as UCLA, Wisconsin, SMU and Virginia, the recent results have made one thing clear: nothing is safe in October, and every matchup can turn quickly if a team is not sharp from the start. [Read more 🡒]
Missouri Faces Its Biggest Road Test Since The Tigers Took Off
College GameDay is leaning into the idea that Saturday in Oxford could come down to the final possession, and Rece Davis is now the latest national voice to land on Ole Miss in a game that has plenty of attention around the SEC. After ESPN analysts Dan Wetzel and Pete Thamel went with Missouri, Davis flipped his pick and framed it as a tight, back-and-forth matchup with the Rebels squeezing out a narrow win.
For Ole Miss, the appeal is obvious: the Rebels get a chance to prove their fast start is more than a hot streak, and Trinidad Chambliss is set to be a key part of that conversation. Missouri has its own reasons to believe, with Austin Simmons in the spotlight and both teams dealing with injury concerns that could shape how aggressive each side can be. It has the feel of a true measuring-stick game, the kind that can say plenty about where both programs really stand, even before the final score tells the full story. [Read more 🡒]