COLUMBIA, Mo. — Metaphorically speaking, the Missouri football team’s highest-rated freshman is a caterpillar.
You could make that a big-C Caterpillar, like the construction equipment company, because he is a big deal. Williams Nwaneri, the five-star edge rusher some recruiting services tabbed as one of the nation’s best defensive prospects, arrived on campus at 6 feet 6, 257 pounds.
But his coaches see him more like the insects that, after some time and plenty of digestion, turn into butterflies. Let defensive coordinator Corey Batoon explain:
“The cool thing about fall camp is you get a chance to detach yourself from the noise and, as best you can, live in a cocoon for as long as you can,” he said.
Mizzou’s preseason lasts another three weeks and change, with the Tigers’ season opener coming on Aug. 29. The question at that time will be whether MU keeps Nwaneri in his chrysalis or lets him loose on the edge of its defense.
People are also reading…
Coach Eli Drinkwitz wants to start with something a little more basic.
“Just need him to make sure his shoes are tied and he’s taped up, ready to go,” he said before the start of camp. “Everything else will take care of itself. He’s plenty talented enough. The key for us is to not put too many expectations on him — just let him learn the standards of how we operate on a day-to-day basis. When it’s his opportunity, he’ll take advantage of it.”
Nwaneri seemed to pass the shoes-and-tape test with flying colors during Missouri’s first week of preseason camp. He looked to be keeping pace with the team’s other defensive ends, though the mostly individual drills performed during the portions of practices that were open to the media don’t give away much about how players stack up.
By the end of the opening week, Nwaneri had earned his practice jersey number — newcomers begin their time at Mizzou with blank uniforms and are awarded numbers once coaches deem them worthy following particularly satisfactory performances in training sessions. The freshman will wear No. 6 this season, which was last donned by defensive end Darius Robinson — a first-round draft pick now with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals.
If the jersey number assignment seems like any sort of expectation imposed on Nwaneri, it isn’t.
“The good news is for him, he doesn’t have to feel any pressure about, like, ‘He’s got to come in right now and save the day,’” Drinkwitz said. “We’ve got a lot of really good players at the defensive end position. Now he can just come in and get up to speed as quick as possible and then use his natural abilities.”
During defense-wide drills, Nwaneri has lined up with what looks to be Missouri’s third-team unit, though again, that isn’t necessarily indicative of what the actual depth chart will look like at the start of the season. That places him behind the likes of Johnny Walker Jr., Zion Young, Darris Smith and Joe Moore III within the edge rusher room.
Whether or when Nwaneri climbs up the depth chart isn’t a concern to those veterans. Walker, who’s been with Mizzou since 2020, sees a student more than a competitor.
“I know how it feels, coming in, not knowing much,” Walker said. “Obviously, he’s a way higher recruit than I was. But I feel like my job is to help him understand everything he needs to understand. Any questions he has, he can come to me. He can lean on me any time.”
Nwaneri also joins some familiar faces in his new locker room. Offensive linemen Armand Membou and Cayden Green played with him at Lee’s Summit North High School in the Kansas City area. Because Membou and Green were older than Nwaneri during their high school overlap, they found it easy to push the young defensive lineman around. They’ve quickly found out that things have changed at the college level.
“He’s definitely got a lot bigger and a lot stronger, fast, since I was in high school,” Membou said. “It’s a lot more competitive now. ... I just see the size, the twitch, the explosiveness off the line of scrimmage. Wherever he wants to go is wherever Will’s going to go in his football career.”
The effort to give Nwaneri a quiet start to his college career after a heralded recruitment is notable because of the prospect’s high school hype, but Missouri’s coaching staff made clear at the start of camp that it isn’t unique to him. However much playing time Nwaneri ends up earning this season won’t come from the program pushing him out of the nest — out of the cocoon? — earlier than they want to.
“You don’t want to put any type of outside pressure or outside noise on anybody because it’s all about the individual — and that’s everybody,” Batoon said. “You could mention anybody on this roster. ... That’s kind of how we see it. It’s not like, ‘This is how I see you and this is where you’ve got to be.’ That’s not fair to anybody.”
Mizzou axes 2025 game
Mizzou has made a scheduling swap for the 2025 season.
The Tigers no longer will face Miami University of Ohio on the road and will instead add a previously unreported home game against Central Arkansas.
That game is scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025, according to a contract between MU and Central Arkansas obtained by the Post-Dispatch through an open records request. Missouri will pay Central Arkansas $500,000 for its participation in the game.
The Tigers and Bears never have played each other in football. Central Arkansas is a Football Championship Subdivision program that plays in the United Athletic Conference.
MU and Central Arkansas agreed to the game in April 2021, when Jim Sterk was Missouri’s athletics director. Those teams were supposed to play during the first week of the 2020 season, but that game was canceled because of the broader COVID-19 shakeup of college football schedules around the country.
Mizzou’s cancellation of its game against Miami, which would have been played in the Oxford, Ohio, stadium that seats 24,000, dodges an away affair at a smaller opponent. That game had been scheduled in April 2016.
While it was contractually a one-off, that game was set to follow two previous matchups between Missouri and Miami that took place in 2010 and 2011.
Though the cancellation of the 2025 Tigers-Redhawks fixture wasn’t apparent until recently, MU bought out the game in 2023 under then-athletics director Desiree Reed-Francois. That means the buyout cost Missouri $750,000, according to the game contract, as opposed to $1 million had the opt-out happened in 2024.
Before the cancellation, Mizzou had five nonconference games on the books for 2025, requiring one to be removed from the schedule at some point.
Replacing a road game with a home game can allow Missouri to capture more revenue from its 2025 football season, which will now include eight games held within Memorial Stadium. That is likely to be more valuable for the school as it enters the revenue-sharing era.
Mizzou No. 11 in poll
The top 12 teams in the final College Football Playoff rankings will make the expanded postseason field this year, and Mizzou is above the cutline in an unrelated preseason poll.
The Tigers are No. 11 in the preseason USA Today Coaches Poll that was released Monday, one spot ahead of fellow Southeastern Conference member Louisiana State.
Georgia was No. 1, with 46 of the 55 first-place votes. The Bulldogs were followed by, in order, Ohio State, Oregon, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Notre Dame, Michigan, Penn State and Florida State.
The Associated Press (media) poll is due to be released Monday.