Jesse Anderson tried to spread the word about Ahmad Hardy. He called college coaches. He sent film to try and convince them.
“I begged them to give him a shot,” Anderson said. “But it was what it was.”
Nobody ever said no. They were cordial.
“It was always, ‘He’s on the radar. We’re looking at him. We’re evaluating him,’” Anderson said.
Offers? Hardy — Anderson’s star running back at Lawrence County High in rural Mississippi — was hoping college coaches would just call him. Yet that rarely happened for the prospect from Oma, Miss., a place so small it doesn’t have its own Wikipedia page.
After he ran for 2,442 yards as a senior, more than anyone in the state, the only schools that called, brought him to campus and extended an offer were Louisiana-Monroe and a few local junior colleges.
He hoped the big programs in Mississippi wanted him. They didn’t.
“I was a zero-star recruit,” Hardy told The Athletic.
Still, Anderson said he felt it was a “foregone conclusion the big guys were gonna come knocking one day.” After Hardy rocketed to a freshman All-American season at Monroe, dozens did.
Hardy chose Missouri. In his first season in the SEC, he’s making the most of it. He leads the country in rushing with 730 yards and nine touchdowns, helping the Tigers to a top-15 ranking entering Saturday’s crucial clash with No. 8 Alabama. In one year, Hardy has risen from an unknown Sun Belt freshman to a Heisman Trophy contender.
Anderson, who coached Lawrence County for seven seasons, saw an 11-year-old Hardy run for 426 yards in a game the first time he watched him. A few years later, Hardy was a freshman running for more than 200 yards on Anderson’s varsity team.
Everywhere he’s been, he’s produced.
So why did it take so long for colleges to see it?
Ahmad Hardy was a freshman All-American at UL Monroe, where he finished third in the country in missed tackles by a running back. (Daniel Dunn / Imagn Images)
Hardy’s dream was straightforward. He wanted to get that magical call from Dabo Swinney, go to Clemson and spend “three or four years” there before moving on to the NFL. Once his NFL career finished, he wanted to find a place where he could spend the rest of his years training horses.
He has three now: Jet, Coco and Chaotic, who lives up to his name.
“One time I was riding him and he just stopped, didn’t want to go down the road and kept turning in circles,” Hardy said.
Hardy’s social media feed is dotted with clips of him riding the trio, usually down a nondescript dirt road somewhere in mid-Missouri.
Ole chaotic coming on along !! pic.twitter.com/UmbESzXp2w
— Ahmad hardy (@Ahmadhardy29) July 29, 2025
Hardy began riding with his grandfather when he was around 4 years old, but developed a fear of horses until he was around 12. Now, it’s his favorite hobby along with fishing.
Whether he’s in Columbia or back home in Mississippi, he’ll take calm night rides a few miles down the road and back.
“It’s relaxation for him. To get away and be on something that’s just as strong and fast as him, but he’s in control of it,” said Dexter Sutton, who coached Hardy in youth football. He later invited Hardy to move in with him to help simplify the logistics of getting to various sports and activities in Monticello, about a 20-minute drive south from Oma, where Hardy lived with his mother.
Hardy’s football dream, or anything close to it, had trouble getting off the ground. Hardy was only playing 4A football — the state’s classifications range from 1A to 7A — in Mississippi. That didn’t help.
“He was coming from a small town, and this high school, we’ve never been dominant in the sport,” Sutton said.
He was also playing in a Wing-T offense. There was little to no film of him pass blocking or catching passes out of the backfield.
“It’s not glamorous. It’s not flashy. And I think a lot of the spread teams, they kind of stayed away because I don’t know if they realized if he could close the learning curve and learn their offense,” Anderson said. “People always say for him to have this opportunity, he must have had a good high school coach. I definitely don’t claim that, man. All I did was hand him the football and say, ‘Go.’ And that’s what he did.”
That left schools unimpressed.
“I felt underrated, but I also felt like everything happened for a reason,” Hardy said. “So I just put my head down and worked, trying to get to the top.”
In the modern recruiting world, where players earn renown at offseason recruiting camps as much as during their high school seasons, Hardy was an unknown. He went to a few camps, but wasn’t a fixture.
Hardy’s game, too, is hard to translate out of pads. At 5-foot-10 and 205 pounds, he’s not wanting for size, but he’s hardly hulking. His speed is serviceable but wouldn’t leave anyone wowed.
However, his best attribute is perhaps the most important one for a running back: Tackling him looks impossible. On nearly every run, he’s plowing over a defender, shimmying out of the grasp of another or brushing off an arm tackle.
South Carolina learned that painful lesson last month. Missouri trailed 17-12 midway through the third quarter, but was threatening on the Gamecocks’ 5-yard line. South Carolina star defensive end Dylan Stewart got his arms around Hardy behind the line of scrimmage. Hardy ran through it.
Another defender grabbed him, but Hardy found himself on top of a pile of humanity with his back to the goal line, looking over his shoulder. He rotated his hips and re-established his feet with the ground, his momentum jolting to life in an instant.
Defensive back Myles Norwood met him at the goal line. Hardy plowed over him and celebrated a go-ahead touchdown that ignited the crowd.
It was the highlight of a parade of broken tackles against South Carolina. That’s been par for the course for Hardy since he was playing pee-wee football.
STAYIN’ IN THE FIGHT 🗣️@MizzouFootball x 📺ESPN pic.twitter.com/LYz5nE0yvR
— Southeastern Conference (@SEC) September 21, 2025
This year, he leads the nation with 46 missed tackles forced after rush, according to Pro Football Focus.
“Physically, he’s the prototypical running back. He’s got a low center of gravity, low center of mass. His legs are strong, but he initiates a lot of contact with defenders before they’re ready to tackle him. They don’t expect that. He’s initiating and making the first move in the chess match, and they’re not prepared for it,” Anderson said. “And his mindset, his will: He tells me all the time, ‘I don’t want to get tackled. Two of them not gonna be able to tackle me. Three of them not gonna be able to tackle me.’”
As Hardy’s high school career wound down, Anderson and Sutton never heard Hardy complain about the lack of interest. He just wanted a chance. And when he went to Monroe, he saw how the coaching staff and roster interacted. It felt like home.
“He was just out to prove to them that they were going to make a mistake if they didn’t pick him up,” Anderson said. “It was like, ‘Whenever I do get on somebody’s campus, I’m going to make those other guys pay for overlooking me.’”
Hardy ran for 103 yards on 19 carries against Jackson State in his first game as a true freshman. He added seven more 100-yard games and a pair of 200-yard games against Marshall and Arkansas State. By season’s end, he ran for 1,351 yards and 13 touchdowns.
He finished the season with 93 missed tackles forced, according to PFF. The only two FBS players with more were Heisman finalist Ashton Jeanty and human wrecking ball Cam Skattebo, who helped carry Arizona State to a Big 12 title. Both played in the College Football Playoff and are starting in the NFL as rookies.
“Last year was great. I did what I did, but I saw the opportunity to do it at a higher level,” Hardy said.
He entered the transfer portal in the winter window and, for the first time, schools finally took notice.
“Everybody was calling,” Hardy said.
Mizzou coach Eliah Drinkwitz was hopeful, but realistic.
“We kind of assumed he was going to go to Ole Miss,” Drinkwitz said.
It was home. Ole Miss is well-funded. The staff watched closely as Hardy’s visit to campus came and went. When he didn’t commit, Drinkwitz and running backs coach Curtis Luper put on the full-court press.
It helped that Hardy liked Drinkwitz’s history with running backs, from Jay Ajayi at Boise State, to Darrynton Evans at Appalachian State, to his run of backs at Missouri like Larry Rountree, Tyler Badie, Nate Noel and Cody Schrader, who transferred up from Division II Truman.
Hardy was fine in spring practice, and the staff was intrigued by his speed and power numbers during a post-spring combine they do for the roster. But in preseason camp, Drinkwitz watched Hardy send his experienced, first-team defense into hysterics trying to tackle him.
“It was like, ‘Whoa.’ Then we said no more live tackling. He’s been tackled enough. We know he can break tackles,” Drinkwitz said. “And then the first game, the vision combined with speed and toughness was pretty impressive.”
Hardy needed just 10 carries to rack up 100 yards and a touchdown in a win over Central Arkansas. A week later, he added 112 more yards and a score in a win over Kansas.
Entering Saturday’s game against Alabama, Hardy has rushed for 100 yards and a touchdown in every game. More than 75 percent (551 of 730) of his yardage has come after contact, the most in college football.
The Tigers are 5-0 and dreaming of the program’s first appearance in the College Football Playoff. Hardy’s on the short list for the Heisman Trophy.
That campaign will go into overdrive if Hardy helps the Tigers spring an upset on Saturday.
Anderson doesn’t have to beg anybody to take Hardy seriously anymore.
“I’m thinking, ‘Man, a 19-year-old from Oma, Mississippi that played little 4A football down here in a country town with one red light, having the opportunity to win the Heisman one day?” Anderson said. “It’s a blessing.”
