In December of 2016, Missouri landed a commitment from a relatively unknown running back out of North Carolina. It wasn’t an area the Tigers had ever recruited. In the previous 15 years in the rivals.com era, no high school player from the state had ever signed with Missouri. But the Tigers thought Larry Rountree III was worth breaking new ground.
Boston College was the only other Power Five school that found Rountree worthy of an offer. Appalachian State, James Madison and Miami (OH) rounded out the offer list for the three-star back. But Missouri saw something it liked. And it had a plan for Rountree.
“When you come to Mizzou I think the coaches are very straightforward telling you what’s going to happen,” Rountree said. “Me and my recruiting experience, I think coach Ofodile just told me the truth and I felt great about that.”
He feels even better now that it’s pretty much all happened.
Rountree saw action from the start, running 11 times for 41 yards and a touchdown against Missouri State in his first college game. Over the next five games, he carried 20 times for 88 more yards. And then starter Damarea Crockett got hurt.
“Pay your dues, then hey, whoopty-doo, somebody might get hurt, you gotta be ready. I didn’t expect Crockett to go down but after that it was like, all right let’s go” Rountree said. “You paid your dues. You just have to play certain roles and freshman year you’ve got to find your role. You just got to say yes sir and keep it rolling.”
He hasn’t stopped rolling since. In the 20 games since, he has carried the ball 320 times for 1,790 yards and 16 touchdowns. He enters his junior season as the SEC’s second-leading returning rusher behind Vanderbilt’s KeShawn Vaughn and suddenly the clear No. 1 back for the Tigers after Crockett unexpectedly declared for the NFL Draft following his own junior season.
“We didn’t know it until a ways down the road, so it didn’t come soon enough,” running backs coach Cornell Ford said of the early departure. “And we needed the bodies at other positions, so we felt like we could get away with one tailback at that time. And had we known Crockett wasn’t coming back, we probably would have taken two, but at that time, we really didn’t know it yet.”
The main reason the Tigers feel like they were okay taking just one back is Rountree’s ability to handle a heavy workload. He carried the ball at least 14 times in the final five games of his true freshman season, but that was just an appetizer. As a sophomore, he logged five games with more than 20 carries, including 26, 29 and 27 in Mizzou’s final three games. And he got better the more he got the ball. In those final three games, Rountree ran for 458 yards and averaged 5.59 per carry.
“He earned it and we needed it down the stretch,” Ford said. “He was very strong, and people kind of shied away from 34 when he was coming around the corner. But he’s a power back he’s a downhill kind of running back, and he wants that.”
“I think he proved that he can do it over the course of the season,” head coach Barry Odom said. “It happens out here the way that he works, the energy that he brings, but also the preparation that he puts into it to put himself in a position to be a good player. Now we need him to be a better player than he was last year.”
Complacency isn’t something the Tigers need to worry about with Rountree. While it’s clear to everyone that he’s Missouri’s starting running back, you’re not going to get him to say it.
“I don’t look at it knowing I’m the guy. I still got to earn my position,” he said. “You gotta have the same mentality as you did your freshman year coming in. That has to carry on to your next three years of college because when you don’t look at it like you’re trying to fight and get on the field and do anything coach asks you, you get complacent. You get complacent, you get self satisfaction.
“You can’t do that. You still have to be the same person you were day one, but still work hard every day.”
And, while Ford calls the Tigers "thin" at running back, it’s not as if Rountree has nothing behind him. Tyler Badie played in 12 games and had 567 yards from scrimmage on 101 touches a season ago as a true freshman. Simi Bakare graduated from special teams duty to the backfield down the stretch last year and ran 11 times for 53 yards and a score. Including Crockett, the Tigers have now had four consecutive running backs see action as true freshmen.
“Well, we’ve been fortunate that the guys that have come in, mentally, from a maturity standpoint, have been sharp enough to walk in and help us in some fashion,” Ford said. “Not all of them can do that.
“You’re probably, if you’ve got the right guys here, not going to have them much more than three years anyway,” Odom added.
The Tigers will add The Tigers will add Anthony Watkins to the mix in the summer as well. He could step immediately into the role as the fourth running back and have a shot to see the field in his first year just like his predecessors.
“We’ve got to give him some time to get there,” Ford cautioned. “We think athletically, he’s that kind of a guy, but you never know until you get them here and the bullets start flying, you see what they do in practice.”
Watkins fits a mold similar to Rountree’s. He was a two-star prospect throughout much of the recruiting cycle, adding a third late in the process. Texas Tech and Baylor were his only other Power Five offers, despite running for 2,601 yards and 34 touchdowns as a senior. All of which will mean nothing once he hits a college campus. For proof, he need not look beyond his own backfield.
“I try to let it go sometimes but I do keep that on my shoulders at times,” Rountree says three years later of his recruiting snubs. “I’m not really too worried about that. I think that was more of a freshman year thing but now being older, I don’t want to sound like I’m old been here five years, but I just think now I’m seeing the bigger picture. Maybe God sent me here for a reason. He put me in this position. Maybe if I would have went somewhere else I may not be in this position.”
