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Chris Low, ESPN Senior Writer
When he wasn’t running roughshod through Division II defenses at Truman State, Cody Schrader had no interest in watching other games on television in his spare time.
It didn’t matter who was playing, be it teams from the Big Ten, Big 12, SEC or anybody else on college football’s biggest stages.
“I didn’t pay attention to any of the big-time Division I football games just because I always saw myself being able to play at that level and play in the biggest games even if nobody else did,” Schrader told ESPN. “I was mad about it. I wouldn’t watch, couldn’t watch.”
Now fans across the country are watching Schrader on those big stages, and defenses on those “big-time Division I football” teams are struggling to stop the 5-foot-9, 214-pound dynamo. In his second season at Missouri after transferring from Truman State as a walk-on, Schrader leads all FBS players with an average of 129.4 rushing yards per game.
His 1,499 rushing yards is 365 more than the closest SEC player this season, and he became the first player in SEC history to rush for 200 yards (205) and have 100 receiving yards (116) in the same game in Missouri’s 36-7 pummeling of Tennessee.
Schrader has been one of college football’s most captivating stories, one that will reach a climax Friday night when No. 9 Missouri takes on No. 7 Ohio State in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic (8 p.m. ET, ESPN and the ESPN App).
“If you know Cody, I don’t think he’d change anything about the way his career has unfolded.” said Gregg Nesbitt, Schrader’s coach at Truman State. “The ability has been there all along, and then there’s the work ethic, which you can’t duplicate, and I’m not talking about [just] a great competitor, but an elite competitor. And for some guys at that level, there’s a sense of entitlement that might slip in. But not with Cody.
“He’s the same person now, as the SEC’s top running back, as he was when everybody missed on him coming out of high school.”
The most enduring image of Schrader’s storybook 2023 season came when his teammates hoisted him on their shoulders after his record-setting performance against Tennessee, prompting Nesbitt to tweet, “This will become a movie.” Schrader gets a chance to write the ending of the script in his college football farewell against the Buckeyes, capping an improbable career fueled by persistence and self-belief. After all, despite rushing for 6,759 yards and 99 touchdowns at Lutheran High School South in St. Louis, Schrader was an afterthought when the Division I colleges started handing out scholarships.
Curtis Luper, the running backs coach at Missouri, said he thinks Schrader was overlooked primarily for one reason, even if it wasn’t overt.
“I think it’s pretty obvious. Cody’s a unicorn, a white running back, and you just don’t see that at this level,” said Luper, a 25-year coaching veteran who is Black and played at Oklahoma State with future Hall of Fame running backs Barry Sanders and Thurman Thomas. “Let’s be honest. I think a lot of people had a hard time believing what they were seeing out there on the field when Cody was in high school.”
Carl Reed, now a college football analyst for 247 Sports, coached against Schrader in high school at rival Lutheran North and said Schrader remains the best running back he has ever coached against. Reed, who is Black, isn’t surprised by what Schrader has done at Missouri.
“It’s the same thing he was doing in high school,” Reed said. “We had 10 Division I players on our team, and he went through us like a hot knife through butter. It’s not like the St. Louis area was lacking talent, either. It’s just that there were questions about him as a white running back that wouldn’t have been there had he been a Black running back. He wasn’t what people were looking for.
“I know that’s a sensitive subject and people don’t want to say it, but I was there. I saw it.”
Sylvester Croom was the SEC’s first Black head football coach, at Mississippi State from 2004 to 2008, and coached running backs in the NFL for 21 years with seven organizations. Having recruited in the SEC, Croom understands how so many schools could have overlooked Schrader.
“You don’t see many white kids playing running back, period, in high school, not kids who are going to be playing that position in the SEC,” Croom said. “I mean, that’s the deal. You just don’t see it.”
But Croom has been in enough locker rooms to know that there’s no fooling the players.
“Guys may joke about it, like white men can’t jump and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “But let me tell you something: If that joker can play, the guys up there in the offensive line ain’t going to take a Black running back that can’t run over a white kid who can. They’re going to be like, ‘Hey, get your white butt out here and let’s roll.'”
Schrader said the issue of race has never really resonated with him, although he admits he’s been the subject of some good-natured kidding from teammates.
“We have one of the closest locker rooms you could ever imagine, and in a playful way, you might hear, ‘Man, that white boy can run,’ or something like that,” he said. “The beautiful thing about this team is that they’ve treated me just like one of the guys even when I came in as a walk-on. They never treated me any differently.
“We all wanted the same thing, to win.”
Schrader is one of only three white running backs in the SEC to eclipse the 1,000-yard mark over the past 50 years, making his odyssey even more unusual. The other two were Jacob Hester from LSU’s 2007 national championship team and Mississippi State’s Wayne Jones in 1973. Schrader is the first white back to lead the SEC in rushing since Alabama’s Johnny Musso did it in 1970 and 1971.
“It might be another 50 years before a white running back does it again, and that tells you how special Cody is,” Reed said.
Hester, who played five seasons in the NFL, loves to tell a story from the 2007 SEC championship game, when LSU played Tennessee. He was tackled by the Vols’ Jerod Mayo, who is now the New England Patriots‘ linebackers coach, and Hester’s helmet popped off. As they were getting up from the pile, Hester said Mayo looked at him, grinned and said jokingly, “Hey, you’re a white dude. Shouldn’t you be playing at Air Force?”
That kind of chatter wasn’t uncommon, Hester said, but he said it was never problematic.
“Once you’re in that locker room, all that matters to your teammates is whether or not you can play, and that’s the way it should be,” Hester said.
ONCE SCHRADER WAS given a chance, there was never any question he could play. And he never allowed his frustration to get the best of him even when countless recruiters told his high school coaches he wasn’t a Division I back.
“No one would ever really say why,” said Desmond Reichold, who was Schrader’s offensive coordinator at Lutheran South and now coaches at Webster Groves High. “He did it all for us, covered kicks, could return kicks, could have been a great linebacker in college.
“And you talk about toughness. He finished a state semifinal game for us after breaking his sternum and did it by running over a guy. The guy’s face mask went into Cody’s sternum as the guy was falling backward.”
The lack of interest, even from FCS schools, was disheartening for Schrader and everybody close to him, but he refused to let it break him.
“He’s refused to let anything beat him, on the field or off,” Missouri coach Eliah Drinkwitz said. “That’s his mindset and what separates him.”
For a fleeting moment, Northern Colorado looked as if it might be a possible landing spot, but the school lost interest when it landed another player it was recruiting. Schrader spent the next four years at Truman State in Kirksville, Missouri, a Division II school with a little more than 3,900 students.
Schrader was the national Division II rushing leader in 2021 with 2,074 yards and showcased the same blend of toughness, vision and production he did in high school. Although he appreciated his time at Truman State, he yearned for more.
He still wanted a shot to play on college football’s biggest stage, and he got the chance thanks to a favor Drinkwitz felt he owed a prominent donor. The Missouri coach happened to be meeting with Steve Trulaske after the Tigers’ 2021 season. Trulaske knew Schrader from working out at the same gym as him and asked Drinkwitz if he would take a look at Schrader if he sent him a tape.
“That’s the first time I heard Cody’s name, and what was I going to say, that I wasn’t interested?” Drinkwitz said. “The next morning, Steve sends me a text and was like, ‘Hey, did you watch the tape?’ and I hadn’t watched it. So I said, ‘We’d love to have him. Send him over.’ Because, really, at the end of the day, I was more interested in getting the donation. I didn’t want to make Steve mad.”
Sure enough, Schrader showed up on campus in January along with the early 2022 enrollees. The only thing Drinkwitz had promised him was the opportunity to walk on. Nothing else.
“In my mind, I’m thinking, ‘You can always use another walk-on running back on down the depth chart the way those guys get beaten up,'” Drinkwitz recalled.
Schrader was hell-bent on being more than just “another walk-on running back,” and in virtual anonymity, he went to work. His sanctuary was the weight room, and he soaked up every aspect of the Tigers’ offseason conditioning program. He was willing to play anywhere on the field, particularly on special teams, and started to turn heads after playing well in the spring game. He continued to gain momentum in the summer, and then a pair of running backs — freshman Tavorus Jones and Stanford transfer Nathaniel Peat — suffered injuries in preseason camp.
“The last man standing was Cody Schrader, and he’s never looked back, not once,” Drinkwitz said. “And I’m glad Steve asked me a second time about that tape.”
It didn’t take Schrader long to earn his scholarship as he went from walk-on to Missouri’s leading rusher in 2022 with 746 yards. This season, he blossomed into one of the country’s most complete running backs.
A punishing runner, Schrader ranks seventh among FBS players with 788 yards after contact, and he has fumbled just once in 248 carries. And, yes, he’s still peeved over that one lost fumble. One of the knocks on Schrader was that he didn’t have that extra gear to accelerate like many of the elite backs. Yet he ranks second in the FBS to Oklahoma State‘s Ollie Gordon II with 11 runs of 30 yards or longer. Gordon, the Doak Walker Award winner, and Schrader were the only FBS running backs with more than 240 carries who averaged more than 6 yards per carry.
In the passing game, Schrader caught 22 passes and had the second-highest pass-blocking grade among SEC running backs (behind Georgia‘s Daijun Edwards), according to Pro Football Focus. And he didn’t pad his stats by rolling up big numbers against outmanned teams; Schrader rushed for 100 yards against six of Mizzou’s eight SEC opponents.
“I have an old-school running style that I think a lot of people haven’t seen at the Division I level for a long time,” said Schrader, who was the first player in three years to rush for 100 yards against Georgia in the Tigers’ 30-21 loss to the then-No. 1 Bulldogs.
“I think it took the right fit for me to get this opportunity, which is maybe part of why I didn’t receive a lot of interest,” he said. “I’m more of an old-school, downhill, one-cut running back. I don’t have that Reggie Bush or Saquon Barkley style that people see in most of the premier running backs. It just took a while for people to believe in me, even the Mizzou fans, and I understand that.”
SCHRADER’S COMMITMENT AND loyalty are legendary. He went through practice scripts on his own during freezing temperatures one night last December after missing practice earlier in the day because he was taking part in graduation ceremonies. And this season, after injuring a quad, he spent more than 12 hours a day in the football complex receiving treatment to make sure he didn’t miss any games.
“He’s the leader of this team. He’s the one who holds everybody accountable in everything we do,” said Missouri quarterback Brady Cook, who is Schrader’s roommate.
Schrader has always held himself accountable too. When he entered the transfer portal after the 2021 season at Truman State, he was sure he would get at least some Power 5 interest. He got none. In fact, he said the only FCS offer he received was from Southern Illinois. Everything else was in the Division II ranks, where he had already proved himself.
Nesbitt remembers receiving the phone call from Schrader that he was entering the portal.
“It was time for him to go. I told him so,” Nesbitt said. “I tell everybody that I slept like a baby after that call and then woke up every two hours and cried when he actually left. He made us all look like pretty good coaches.”
But if not for the invite to Missouri, Schrader said, he was close to returning to Truman State. There was no way he was going to turn his back on his brothers there just to start anew at another Division II school.
“I would have never done that,” Schrader said. “But I knew if I could just get on the practice field at Missouri, that’s all I needed. I’m in love with this game, and I just love everything about it. I tell people all the time that when I’m on the field and when I’m playing, it’s the only time I feel absolutely free from the world.”
Luper picked up on that vibe pretty quickly, although he notes that Schrader was about eighth on the depth chart when he arrived on campus.
“He doesn’t want to come off the field,” Luper said. “He had over 300 yards in that Tennessee game, covered kickoffs, covered punts, made a tackle. That’s who he is.
“He’s just a different breed.”
Luper has put his old teammate, Thurman Thomas, in touch with Schrader, and they’re planning to talk again after the season. Thomas slipped to the second round of the NFL draft after questions were raised about an injury to his knee.
“Thurman had a chip on his shoulder his entire NFL career,” Luper said. “Cody’s going to be the exact same way. He’s going to be overlooked at the next level just like he was at this level, and he’s going to prove them wrong.”
Luper paused and added with emphasis: “Again.”