After hitting rock bottom, Jordan Ulmer looks to have bounced back

On September 2, 2017, Missouri opened Barry Odom’s second season against the Missouri State Bears. One of Odom’s starting safeties in that game was a three-star safety from Belleville, Mich. named Jordan Ulmer. He had been on campus for all of three months and had just turned 18 three weeks earlier. The whole world was in front of him.

“That camp, he was lights out,” defensive coordinator and secondary coach Ryan Walters said.

Then the game started. Missouri State threw for 353 yards and scored 43 points against the Tigers. Certainly not all of that was Ulmer’s fault, but in his first college game, the freshman struggled mightily. While he led the Tigers with six tackles (never really a good sign for a safety) and broke up a pass, it was a game Ulmer would like to forget. He would play in just seven of Missouri’s final 12 games and make only two more tackles as a freshman.

As a sophomore, Ulmer played in ten games exclusively on special teams. He made two tackles. Halfway through his college career, he had still started just the one game. He fell off the radar of Missouri fans almost entirely.

“It was a struggle but it wasn’t something that broke me,” Ulmer said. “It’s something I fought through, something I bounced back from. It was hard.”

On the field was one thing. That’s what everyone could see. But what nobody outside the program could see was the struggles he had off the field. He said that was a bigger battle than football.

“Me getting benched and having to go through school and everything, going through my mind and stuff, it led to a point where I was down,” Ulmer said. “I didn’t know what to do or how to get back up.”

“Once school started I think the lights got a little bit bright, the social life was available and I think that pressure hit him,” Walters said. “Everything you do correlates. You can’t be really, really good at football and then bad in your personal life. Your habits are who you are.”

Who Ulmer was at that point was a player struggling on the field and a student struggling off of it.

“There were times that I didn’t know if he was going to be part of the program,” head coach Barry Odom said. “That’s just being real honest. And he knows it. And that was some of the things he was not taking care of academically. He’s got all this ability, but he had to look in the mirror a little bit.”

Through conversations, it becomes obvious that the idea he may no longer be part of the program wouldn’t have been entirely his choice. Ulmer had to turn things around off the field if he wanted to earn his way back on it. The junior says he never seriously considered leaving on his own.

“Not really, but kind of,” he said. “I knew sometimes I was at my low point but I knew it wasn’t the end. I knew I could figure out something to be able to stay and help out the team so I bounced back.”

Ulmer credits his teammates, his coaches and his family for helping him through two very difficult years.

“I talked to my parents often,” he said. “They talked to me, gave me words of encouragement, let me know that they were proud of me and stuff like that. That helped a lot.”

“He’s came a long way. He’s gotten way better. His confidence got way higher,” Joshuah Bledsoe, a starting safety and Ulmer’s roommate, said. “He’s doing a good job. He’s going to have a big year this year.”

And now, midway through his third fall camp, nearly two full years after his only college start, Jordan Ulmer is back as a potential contributor to Missouri’s defense. The Tigers have gone to a 4-2-5 base defense, which employs three safeties. Ulmer is running second on the depth chart at one of those spots and has taken quite a few reps with the number one defense while starter Tyree Gillespie nursed an injury.

“Credit to him on the approach he has taken,” Odom said. “He has grown up and he has had as good of a camp as anybody up to this point. I think he’s going to help us.”

“Some of it was the natural maturation in terms of growing up and sometimes you’ve got to hit rock bottom to realize what’s important to you and what you value. I think that happened for him and I’m glad it did,” Walters added. “He’s been good in the classroom, good in the weight room and he’s also been good on the football field.”

Ulmer can’t pinpoint a moment. There was no light bulb that suddenly flashed, no day that stands out. It was more of a gradual realization.

“Time. Time was running out,” he said. “I’m a junior right now. I feel like I can’t waste no more time. I’ve got to stay on everything. Being in the film room, staying in the playbook, knowing my assignments. Off the field, stay on my schoolwork. Time was just running out. I learned that the hard way, but it came.”

To earn his way back into the rotation, Ulmer couldn’t just get back to the point he was at two Augusts ago. He needed to be even better. He thinks he is.

“I feel like I’m a way better player,” he said. “That’s with the help of other players. Tyree (Gillespie) and all them, they’re pushing me. We’re all competing. That’s going to make me want to work harder.”

“I think he’s better, through ten days or whatever it’s been, than we’ve ever seen from him,” Odom said.

The proof won’t come for a while. Ulmer has been good in August before. The ultimate test will come in two weeks at Wyoming, then in three against West Virginia and beyond. But for the first time in a long time, there is reason to believe that Ulmer can make an impact.

“Jordan has definitely made us a lot more comfortable and excited to see what we thought we saw his freshman year when he got here,” Walters said. “Better late than never for sure.”