- Arizona restored leading rusher Ismail Mahdi and starting linebacker Max Harris to its roster Monday.
- Mahdi ran for 859 yards at 6.4 yards a carry last season and scored five total touchdowns.
- Harris had 78 tackles in 12 starts and rejoins a defense that lost its leading tackler.
- Arizona is +2500 to win the Big 12 and opens Sept. 5 at home against Northern Arizona.
TUCSON, Ariz. – Arizona added running back Ismail Mahdi and linebacker Max Harris to its 2026 football roster on Monday, restoring an 859-yard rusher and the defense’s third-leading tackler to a Wildcats team less than four weeks from its season opener.
The Backfield Gets Its Volume Back
Mahdi carried 134 times for 859 yards and four rushing touchdowns in 13 games last season, with 10 starts, 6.4 yards a carry and 66.1 yards a game. He added 17 catches for 119 yards and a receiving score, and he was Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week after a 189-yard night against Kansas State on Sept. 12.
The 6.4 figure is the one that matters. Arizona averaged 152.4 rushing yards a game as a team in a 9-4 season, and Mahdi held that per-carry rate under the heaviest workload in the backfield, 50 carries more than any other Wildcats back. He was efficient and he was the volume, both at once.
Measured against the backs already in the room, the volume is the gap. Kedrick Reescano ran 84 times for 396 yards and Quincy Craig 65 times for 364, and both are back in 2026. Mahdi’s 859 yards outgained the pair combined.
That reshapes the workload question rather than settling it. A three-back room with a proven 134-carry lead back is a different projection than a two-back committee, and the ceiling on any single-game rushing line now belongs to a player who has already hit 189 against a Big 12 opponent. It is the kind of usage change that reaches a college football player props board before it reaches a season projection.
The Defense Was Down Two Of Its Top Three Tacklers
Harris started all 12 games he played and finished third on the team with 78 tackles, evenly split at 39 solo and 39 assisted, plus 3.5 tackles for loss, a forced fumble, a pass breakup and seven quarterback hurries. PFF graded him at 72.0 on defense, above the roughly 60 that marks an average grade on that scale.
He recorded no sacks, and that is the honest read on his profile. Harris is a downhill run-and-tackle linebacker who plays early downs, not a blitzer whose production spikes on passing plays. His number is tackles, and tackles come from snaps, which is what a college football props board prices when it sets a tackle line.
The snaps are there. Safety Dalton Johnson, who led Arizona with 97 tackles, and Genesis Smith, who had 77, are not on the 2026 roster. Linebacker Taye Brown returns after 93. With Harris back, Arizona’s two highest returning tackle totals belong to Brown and Harris, and the vacated production behind them has to land somewhere.
What It Does To The Number
Arizona sits at +2500 to win the Big 12, eighth on a board fronted by Texas Tech at -105, with BYU at +650 and Utah at +850. A +2500 price pays $2,500 in profit on a $100 winner, which implies roughly 3.8 percent.
Whether Arizona’s real chance of winning the league is better or worse than that number is the bet. Two returning starters do not move a conference title price on their own.
Where they do move something is the granular market. A lead back with a known carry count and a linebacker who started 12 games are exactly the inputs that price rushing-yard and tackle lines, a far narrower question than a college football futures one.
Why Both Players Are Eligible Again
Both are back under a July 31 preliminary injunction from U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Colorado. The order certified a nationwide class of athletes who began college play in 2022-23 and finished four years of eligibility under the NCAA’s old rules, and it barred the association from denying them a fifth season. The NCAA filed a notice of appeal to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Aug. 3 and asked Sweeney to pause her order while that appeal runs.
What Happens Next
Arizona opens Sept. 5 against Northern Arizona in Tucson, a 6:30 p.m. MST kickoff on ESPN+, then travels to BYU on Sept. 12 for its Big 12 opener. If the injunction is paused before then, both players come back off the roster.
