Few have a better view of which WRs are standing out than the CBs they're playing. Toriano Pride gives his take on the Tigers' receivers.
When he got to the Missouri Tigers before last season, cornerback Toriano Pride hit it off quickly trash talking with receiver Theo Wease.
With Wease gone, Pride has had to find someone new to trash talk with. But this year, the primary talker on offense hasn’t come from the receiver room.
“Honestly, (it’s) Ahmad (Hardy),” Pride said of the Tigers’ new running back. “He comes in every day, he’s really, like, playful. He keeps, he’s the same person every day. Walks around with his phone, playing music out the phone turned all the way up. Singing the songs in the locker room. Talking trash to the defense, the DBs, telling us we’ve got to tackle him in practice. Just yesterday, we had a scrimmage, he’s talking trash. … On the offensive side, he’s really the main talker.”
But just because he’s getting his trash talk from a running back, doesn’t mean Pride isn’t keeping an eye on the Tiger receivers.
Receiver room
Missouri had to replace a lot of production in the offseason after losing Wease, Luther Burden, Mookie Cooper and Mekhi Miller. So who has stood out so far to one of the Tigers’ primary cornerbacks?
“I like Marquis (Johnson), he’s gotten a lot better,” Pride said.
Johnson is one of the Tigers’ primary returning options. He spent the past two seasons taking the top off of defenses with his Texas High School State Track Champion speed. But what about any of the other returners?
“Josh Manning, he’s gotten a lot better, plus he’s gotten a lot bigger and stronger than last year,” Pride said.
But it’s not all returners. Knowing they had so much to replace, the Tigers brought in a couple of highly-ranked freshmen. And a couple have really stuck out.
“I like our freshman, Donovan (Olugbode), he’s doing really good, like extremely good fall camp,” Pride said.
Many of Olugbode’s ridiculous one-handed catches have gone viral for Mizzou fans on X. But it seems the team has not been posting another freshman’s crazy catches.
“You got Shaun Terry, he’s making a lot of plays. Making a lot of, like, crazy over-the-head catches and stuff like that,” Pride said.
Long-term relationship
While Pride has been impressed by just about every receiver in the room, one really stands out. Growing up in St. Louis, Pride had a long history with Burden last year. And similarly, he has a long history with new Tiger receiver Kevin Coleman.
“He’s been great, that’s been my boy,” Pride said. “We played on a team together one year in little league, but we’ve always played, just like with Luther, we always played against each other. Us three, boys played against each other. … Me and him, we was always close growing up, so like, us being together on a team in college is just always cool. Like even with Luther, like, playing against somebody you’re cool with as a young kid, you’re not thinking we gonna be in the same D1 college, big SEC school, together at the same time.”
Pride even might have played a roll in getting Coleman to choose to come back to his home state for the final year of his college career.
“Honestly, I told him after we played Mississippi State, I’m like, ‘Hey, if you’re thinking about leaving, you need to come back home.’ You don’t need to be no other school. No whatever, whoever’s calling, just come back to the crib,” Pride said. “Honestly. And then whenever he hit the portal, I called him. He didn’t tell me exactly, you know, he’s like, real mysterious. But I kind of had an idea he was coming back home.”
Overall, Pride said he’s impressed throughout the receiver room. And while there might not be someone at quite the level of Burden this year, he’s been impressed with how many options the Tigers have.
“Really all the receivers, I love the receiver room,” Pride said. “I feel like we have a lot more depth than last year, honestly at every position.”
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Category: General Sports
