After earning reps on scout team, Bakare poised to take on larger role

Last November, in an interview room beneath Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium, Missouri’s defense took center stage. The unit had just forced three turnovers — two interceptions and a fumble — in the Tigers’ 50-17 win. Safety Joshuah Bledsoe had returned the fumble 39 yards for a touchdown, and the defense as a whole had forced incompletions on two-thirds of the Volunteers’ passes.

When reporters approached middle linebacker Cale Garrett, the first question was, predictably, about the defensive score. Midway through his answer, Garrett pivoted, making sure to mention a player on the other side of the ball. It wasn’t quarterback Drew Lock who drew Garrett’s praise, or running back Larry Rountree III, who had rushed for 137 yards. Instead, Garrett named a different back, one who hadn’t entered the game until it was well out of reach.

“Before any other questions, shoutout to my boy Simi Bakare,” Garrett said. “I’m super proud of him. All he’s done is give us a great look all year. He was our scout team running back for a while, and got an opportunity tonight to go into the game, and he got his first career touchdown. I think that’s awesome.”

Bakare carried the ball nine times in the fourth quarter against Tennessee, gaining 41 yards and scoring a two-yard touchdown. That he played in the game at all showed that the impression he made on the coaching staff throughout in the season. The game was his sixth appearance of the year. Since he participated in more than four games, he used up his first year of eligibility.

But the shoutout from Garrett, who tied for the SEC lead in solo tackles a season ago, represented a more elusive honor and illustrated the respect that Bakare’s practice habits earned from his teammates during his weeks on the scout team last season. This year, with Damarea Crockett gone to the NFL, Bakare should have more opportunities to showcase his ability on Saturdays.

“I’m looking for him to have another role,” running backs coach Cornell Ford said of Bakare. “Right now, he’s the next guy up, so he’s got to get himself ready to play.”

Bakare is accustomed to having to fight for playing time. His junior year of high school, he battled an ankle injury for part of the season and saw a senior seize the starting job. Sam Robinson, who coached Bakare for his final two seasons at Cedar Ridge high school, said serving as the backup clearly bugged Bakare, but he never asked the coaching staff for more playing time. Instead, he turned a strong offseason prior to his senior year into a breakout campaign, in which he rushed for 1,714 yards and 29 touchdowns.

“He’s a great kid, and so you never saw him pouting or throwing fits or anything like that. But he didn’t like it,” Robinson said of Bakare’s junior season. “And I think that kind of drove him, too, like gave him a little fuel for the offseason.”

The drawback of being such a late-bloomer was that most colleges had already zeroed in on their top prospects by the end of Bakare’s senior year. When Bakare received a scholarship offer from Tulane, at the time the only FBS school to extend one, in October of 2017, he committed. His only other offers came from Central Arkansas, New Mexico State and Stephen F. Austin. But a teammate’s father told a friend on the Missouri coaching staff about Bakare, and upon watching Bakare’s film, Ford offered him a spot with the Tigers. Bakare flipped his commitment from Tulane to Missouri in December, shortly before the early signing period.

Bakare knew that rising up the Missouri depth chart would be difficult in his first season. The Tigers brought back both Crockett and Rountree as co-starters and added a second running back in the 2018 signing class, Tyler Badie, during the spring. Badie wasted little time in impressing the coaching staff and seizing the remaining regular playing time. That left Bakare to play on the scout team, a unit comprised of reserves that mimics the offense of each upcoming opponent against the first-team defense. Both Garrett and Ford stressed that it’s far from a glamorous job.

“When you go out on the scout team, you literally get the crap beat out of you,” Ford said. “And we didn’t have a whole lot of bodies on there, so he pretty much took all the reps.”

“Not only think about it for Simi, think about it for the five o-linemen in front of him, or the guys that we have rotate in there, they have to learn that (opponent’s offense), and they’re going to mess it up, too,” Garrett explained. “So sometimes a d-lineman like Terry Beckner is just going to have an open shot at you.”

Much like his junior season in high school, Bakare said he didn’t exactly enjoy his role on the scout team, but he embraced it and filled it without complaint. At the team's end of season awards banquet, he was named the scout team offensive player of the year. His hard-nosed, downhill running style caught the eye of coaches. Robinson described Bakare as “one of those players who got better games went on.”

“I think I’m a hard runner, and I’m going to try to punish the linebackers as much as I can,” Bakare said. “If I’m running hard and they feel me, they’re going to start easing back.”

Even more so, Bakare impressed his teammates and coaches with his toughness. During the playoffs his senior season, he played through a torn posterior cruciate ligament in one of his knees. Last year, he endured the daily hits on the scout team without a complaint. The coaching staff took notice.

“The story I got week in and week out is, man, that kid is really tough,” Ford said. “Man, he’s getting the stuff beaten out of him and he just gets up, goes to the huddle and does it again. … Our defensive guys were saying, I think he can help us. And our head coach said the same thing: I think he can help us. So, alright, here we go, let’s see what we can do.”

As a reward for his performance on the scout team, the coaches first inserted Bakare into a few special teams units. Then, with both Crockett and Badie battling injuries in the second half of the season, he made his debut at running back against Vanderbilt in Week Ten. He carried the ball one time for 12 yards, picking up a first down in a game that wasn’t decided until the final play. The following week, at Tennessee, he had his most productive outing and scored his first touchdown.

Even though most of his action at running back came late in blowout wins over Tennessee and Arkansas, Ford believes getting a taste of college game action helped him entering this past offseason.

“He didn’t play a whole lot, but he did play enough to get his feet wet, understand what the intensity of the game is, how to play against the SEC,” Ford said. “He got a little bit of experience, not a lot, but those few reps will really help him this year.”

The soft-spoken Bakare isn’t one to make brash guarantees, but Robinson said he’s more confident entering this season. He believes he’ll have a regular role alongside Rountree and Badie. The defensive players who spent all last season tackling him agree. By taking hit after hit from the starting defense and returning to the huddle without a complaint, Bakare earned Garrett’s respect, and Garrett believes he’ll be better for it.

“You can take that as, ‘man, I really don’t want to be out here, this is tough, and this isn’t any fun.’ Or you can look at it as a challenge and say, ‘I’m going to make the most of every opportunity I get, every rep I get, to make something happen,’” Garrett said. “I think that’s what he did. He took it in stride and he has gotten a lot better.”