Don’t ignore that Kewan Lacy put together a historic SEC season (and he’s not done yet)
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It’s too easy to overlook what Kewan Lacy did in 2025, and on the first day of 2026.
If you’ve been casually watching Ole Miss at any point this season, there have been plenty of other things that have likely caught your attention. For starters, Lane Kiffin made the unprecedented move of leaving his Playoff-bound team for LSU. That then led to several LSU-bound assistants pulling double duty to help Ole Miss in its Playoff push.
Of course, there was also the meteoric rise of Trinidad Chambliss, who went from post-spring Division II transfer to 8th-place finisher in the 2025 Heisman Trophy voting. His highlight-reel performance fueled an upset of Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, which was followed by reports that if he gets a waiver from the NCAA, he’ll return to Ole Miss in 2026 instead of transferring to a place like LSU.
Somewhat lost in the shuffle of all of this has been Lacy’s historic season, and not just because he set the program’s single-season rushing touchdown record while becoming the first Ole Miss player to be named a finalist for the Doak Walker Award (it went to Notre Dame’s Jeremiyah Love).
Shoot, it was lost in the shuffle of Chambliss escaping 3 Georgia pass-rushers on that all-important 3rd-and-7 that if Lacy didn’t both catch that pass and absorb the contact to pick up the first down, Ole Miss wouldn’t have moved the chains to set up that go-ahead touchdown drive.
Yes, Chambliss pulled off a Houdini act, but as Sean McDonough said on the call, it was Lacy who survived the big hit to pick up that pivotal first down. That play was at the center of Chambliss earning Sugar Bowl Offensive MVP honors, and deservedly so. He was as clutch as clutch gets. Lacy’s 110 yards of offense weren’t going to outshine Chambliss, especially considering that his fumble — the first of his college career — turned into a Georgia scoop-and-score.
Still, Ole Miss doesn’t win its biggest game in over half a century if not for Lacy’s toughness
It only added to the notion that he’s in the midst of one of the best seasons we’ve ever seen from an SEC running back. Even if that had been his last performance in an Ole Miss uniform, it would’ve been one for the ages. But as we found out late Monday night, he’s set to return to Oxford for his pre-Draft season in 2026.
Let’s rewind to the Sugar Bowl again, though. He played that game while dealing with a shoulder injury, which may or may not have been the main culprit of that extremely atypical fumble. With everything on the line, he still got 24 scrimmage touches, 2 of which resulted in rushing scores.
Speaking of that, Lacy is now up to 23 rushing scores through 14 games. He’s tied for No. 3 in SEC history in that department, trailing only 2015 Derrick Henry (28) and 2020 Najee Harris (26) on that list, both of whom won the Doak Walker Award in those respective seasons. Of course, both of those stars also did that for Alabama teams who went on to win national titles. It’s to be determined if Lacy will do that. The oddsmakers would suggest that Ole Miss has the least-likely odds to pull that off of the remaining semifinal field (+550 on FanDuel).
Unlike Henry and Harris, though, Lacy didn’t even crack the top 10 of the Heisman voting, much less the top 5. While the context of his postseason didn’t factor into that, it’s fair to wonder how different Lacy’s Heisman candidacy would look if voting were held after the national championship.
Some might scoff at that notion because Kiffin’s rushing attacks were mostly prolific at Ole Miss. The up-tempo spread scheme certainly helped Lacy.
What that would ignore is the fact that Lacy has bucked the Kiffin-era trend of having a diverse backfield distribution. Through 14 games, Lacy is tied for No. 2 in FBS with 295 carries, which is a whopping 266 carries more than any other Ole Miss running back (that explains why he still got 22 carries with a banged-up shoulder in the Sugar Bowl). Logan Diggs is No. 2 among Ole Miss running backs with 29 carries on the season. Even the 2023 Ole Miss team with Quinshon Judkins still saw Ulysses Bentley IV finish with 95 carries.
On top of that, Lacy is No. 3 in FBS with 88 missed tackles forced as a runner
Just for a little perspective, here are the 10 single-season SEC leaders in missed tackles forced since PFF began tracking that in 2014:
- 1. 2025 Ahmad Hardy (Mizzou), 96
- 2. 2025 Kewan Lacy (Ole Miss), 88
- 3. 2015 Leonard Fournette (LSU), 85
- 4. 2021 Brian Robinson (Alabama), 79
- 5. 2023 Quinshon Judkins (Ole Miss), 77
- 6. 2015 Derrick Henry (Alabama), 76
- 7. 2022 Quinshon Judkins (Ole Miss), 72
- T8. 2020 Najee Harris (Alabama), 71
- T8. 2019 Clyde Edwards-Helaire (LSU), 71
- 10. 2024 Dylan Sampson (Tennessee), 70
How fitting it is for this discussion that the only SEC running back with a better total in the 12 years of the missed tackles forced stat is someone playing in the same season as Lacy. Go figure that it’s Hardy, who did his damage at Mizzou, AKA the place where Lacy left after 1 season in which he got 23 carries for 104 yards and 0 rushing scores.
Odds are that Hardy will edge out Lacy and win the SEC rushing title. It would take 186 more rushing yards from Lacy for him to pass Hardy, though even if that happened, many would point out that Lacy got the benefit of extra games … which would ignore that Lacy played a monumental role in Ole Miss earning those extra games.
That context shouldn’t be lost, either. Ole Miss entered this season without a Playoff berth. The irony is that while that box is now checked, Ole Miss has still never reached the SEC Championship. In other words, the program could play in a true national championship game before it plays for a conference title. If that happened, yes, give a ton of praise to Chambliss, Pete Golding and this coaching staff that’s probably averaging more time on private jets to and from Oxford than hours slept.
But a year after Ole Miss failed to make the Playoff with what was believed to be its most talented roster ever, look no further than Lacy to find that difference maker. Instead of being a team without a true workhorse back who could finish games, Ole Miss has had Lacy, who has carried the ball 98 times when leading by 7 points or less. That’s 22 more attempts than any other player in FBS, and it’s 18 more than any SEC running back in the last decade.
If that’s not value, I don’t know what is.
We’ll have to wait on Lacy’s final 2025 numbers to put things fully in perspective, but for now, he’s 1 of 7 players in SEC history with 1,400 rushing yards and 20 rushing scores in a season. He’s got 986 yards after first contact as a runner, which currently ranks No. 5 among SEC running backs since PFF began tracking that in 2014. Lacy’s 9 rushing scores vs. teams currently in the AP Top 25 is the most of any SEC player in the last decade, though that could change when the final AP Poll comes out.
What won’t change is that this has been a historic season for No. 5. A year that began with uncertainty in Oxford blossomed into a special season … even if the uncertainty never faded. The only certainty going into Ole Miss and its Fiesta Bowl matchup with Miami is that Lacy will be featured prominently against that loaded Canes defensive front. How he fares remains to be seen, but if Lacy’s first season in Oxford is any indication, it’ll take an all-world effort to prevent him from making his presence felt.
Only a fool would overlook him.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
