Tyler
Badie.
Tyler
Badie.
Missouri· 5'8"· 197 lb· 4.45s 40
Badie is 5-foot-8 and 197 pounds, a former AAU Junior Olympics sprinter who plays like one. He ran 4.45 with a 1.54 ten-yard split and a 4.28 shuttle, and the burst shows up the instant he clears the line: he is a one-cut runner who plants and goes rather than dancing behind blockers.
His real value is out of the backfield. He caught 126 passes in four years at Missouri, including fifty-four as a senior, and he runs option routes and wheels like a slot receiver instead of a back checking down. Contact balance is better than the frame suggests — 268 carries for 1,604 yards in an SEC season proves he can absorb a workload — but he is not moving a pile, and pass protection against a blitzing linebacker is a genuine problem at his weight.
A spread passing offense that uses him as a third-down and two-minute back, splitting him wide and running him on option routes.
Year 1: return man and passing-down change of pace. Ceiling: 1B in a committee with 120 touches a year.
A gap-scheme, downhill run offense that asks its back to stay in and block the A-gap blitz on third and long.
He is a matchup piece, not a between-the-tackles solution.
Tyler Badie 2021-2022 Missouri Highlights
His 1,604-yard All-America senior season at Missouri.
BEST RECEIVING BACK IN THE DRAFT? Tyler Badie - Missouri RB
A pre-draft look focused on his work as a route runner.
Tyler Badie | Every Touch Of The 2024 Season | Denver Broncos RB
Every NFL touch from the season he briefly won a role in Denver.
Badie was born in New Orleans, displaced to Maryland by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and grew up a sprinter and a lacrosse player before football took over. He started high school at the Friends School of Baltimore, moved to Memphis when his mother took a job there, and finished at Briarcrest Christian with 1,186 rushing yards and eighteen touchdowns as a senior. He decommitted from Memphis to sign with Missouri.
He was productive right away — 89 carries for 437 yards and SEC All-Freshman honors in 2018 — but for three years he was the change-of-pace back. He shared the job with Larry Rountree in 2019 and 2020, topping out at 108 carries, while leading the team in receptions one year and catching 28 more the next.
Then 2021 happened. Handed the job at last, Badie carried 268 times for 1,604 yards and fourteen touchdowns, added 54 catches for 330 yards and four more scores, went over 200 rushing yards in five different games and finished as a second-team All-American and first-team All-SEC pick. He left Missouri with 2,740 rushing yards, 1,149 receiving yards and 23 total touchdowns in 46 games. Teams still saw a 197-pound back with a one-year workload history, and he lasted until the sixth round.
- 01
Receiving ability
126 career catches for 1,149 yards, with senior-year route work that looks like a slot receiver rather than a checkdown back.
- 02
Long speed
a 4.45 forty and a track background as a Junior Olympics sprinter mean he outruns pursuit angles once he is clean.
- 03
Short-area quickness
a 4.28 shuttle and 7.07 cone show the change of direction that makes his one-cut style work.
- 04
Proven workload
268 carries for 1,604 yards against SEC defenses in 2021, including five 200-yard rushing games.
- 05
Vision on zone runs
he presses the hole and plants decisively instead of dancing, which keeps his carries from losing yardage.
- 01
Size
5-foot-8 and 197 pounds with 29 3/8-inch arms puts a hard ceiling on how many NFL carries he can survive.
- 02
Pass protection
he cannot anchor against a blitzing linebacker, which limits how many third downs a coach will trust him with.
- 03
Power through contact
14 bench reps and a small frame mean he goes down on first contact when he is met in the hole.
- 04
One-year sample
three seasons as a rotational back before the senior explosion left teams guessing which version was real.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.45sp50
- Vertical
- 33.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 121inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Att | Yds | TD | Rec | RecYds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Missouri | 12 | 89 | 437 | 2 | 12 | 130 |
| 2019 | Missouri | 12 | 108 | 457 | 3 | 32 | 356 |
| 2020 | Missouri | 10 | 48 | 242 | 4 | 28 | 333 |
| 2021 | Missouri | 12 | 268 | 1604 | 14 | 54 | 330 |
| Career | — | 46 | 513 | 2740 | 23 | 126 | 1149 |
Season lines come from his Sports-Reference college page. The four seasons sum exactly to the published career totals: 46 games, 513 carries for 2,740 yards, 126 receptions for 1,149 yards. The season rushing touchdowns add to 23 and the receiving touchdowns to 11, matching the career line. The zeros in 2018 receiving touchdowns are verified, not filled in.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Hybrid back-receiver who survives on roster versatility and special teams rather than volume.
Tiny, fast, receiving-first back who turns a return job into a fifteen-year career as an offensive weapon.
Quick change-of-pace back whose carries never materialize behind an established starter.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Baltimore drafted him 196th and cut him at the end of camp, keeping him on the practice squad. Denver signed him off that squad on December 29, 2022, and in Week 18 he caught a 24-yard touchdown from Russell Wilson on the first NFL touch of his life. It stayed that kind of career: waived and re-signed to the practice squad in August 2023, a reserve/future deal that January, waived again in August 2024.
The 2024 season came closest to a breakthrough. Elevated for Week 2, he touched the ball twice; elevated again for Week 3, he led Denver in rushing with 70 yards on nine carries, and the Broncos signed him to the active roster two days later. A back injury in Week 4 put him on injured reserve and the moment passed. Through 2025 he has 20 career carries for 109 yards, 23 receptions for 163 yards and 452 kickoff return yards, and Denver tendered him as an exclusive-rights free agent in March 2026 at $1.075 million. Five years on an NFL roster is real; a college workhorse who has carried twenty times as a pro is not what pick 196 was hoping for.