Dominant win over Georgia validates Ole Miss as a contender
How the Rebels changed saved season with a convincing win over Georgia
A rain-soaked Lane Kiffin stood among a sea of fans flooding onto Jerry Hollingsworth Field in the immediate aftermath of Ole Miss toppling Georgia, 28-10, to save the program’s most anticipated football season in a generation. He was interviewed by ESPN sideline reporter Molly McGrath.
As Kiffin seemingly processed the scope of the moment in real time, he reflected back 364 days prior to November 11, 2024, the night Ole Miss was embarrassed 52-17 by the same Bulldogs program that it defeated on Saturday evening — one that’s become the gold standard in a sport that is historically ruled by an elite few programs with little parity.
“One year ago, we lost to these guys by like 30,” Kiffin said. “We made a decision that we have to go recruit differently. We’ve got to coach differently. We planned for this game for a year. We’ve game-planned all off-season schematically for their defense and their offense.”
That November night in Athens, nearly a calendar year ago to the day, proved to be a pivotal moment for a Kiffin-led program that has been wildly successful in his four full seasons as head coach. The Rebels posted a 34-15 mark in that four-year span, had multiple 10-win seasons and won 11 games and a Peach Bowl in 2023. The Rebels were a solid, consistent program, but when it came to facing the best teams in the SEC, they usually fell short. Ole Miss arrived in Athens last November with an 8-1 record and were the No. 9 team in the country, but was a double-digit underdog to No. 1 Georgia. In theory, Ole Miss was playing for a potential at-large playoff spot in what used to be a four-team College Football Playoff. But as the betting line and general consensus reflected, no one (rightfully) gave Ole Miss much of a chance. The Rebels were promptly throttled by 35 points. Kiffin’s postgame quotes that night were telling.
“We have to recruit at a higher level. I am not blaming anyone. We have to coach better. But at a certain point, the stats are what they are. We have signed one 5-star, they’ve signed 24 or something. Those stats do kind of show up at some point,” Kiffin said after the loss. “So, we need to recruit at a better level and just do a better job recruiting.”
He scoffed at the notions of his team’s potential playoff hopes being dashed after the loss.
“No. That was not a playoff-looking team we put on the field tonight. The last thing I am worried about is us being knocked out of the playoffs. We don’t deserve to be in the playoffs,” Kiffin said.
Kiffin and his staff spent the offseason landing blue-chip talent in the transfer portal — a recruiting avenue no single coach in college football has navigated more effectively than Kiffin — to get bigger, stronger and more athletic at the lines of scrimmage. He saw the seismic gap between his team and the best teams in the sport, as well as the reasons for that gap, and sought to close it.
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This was a program-defining win
Saturday’s 28-10 victory over Georgia was a perception-changing win for Ole Miss football. The Rebels slayed the proverbial giant. The Bulldogs have won two of the last three national championships. Prior to Saturday, Georgia had not lost to an opponent other than Alabama since November 7, 2020 when a Dan Mullen-coached Florida team beat them in Jacksonville. Mullen hasn’t coached a game since 2021 and Georgia beat 52 consecutive non-Alabama opponents.
It was also a multi-faceted validation of a team, a coach and a program.
It’s a proof of concept that Ole Miss, who has been on the forefront of the rapidly-changing NIL landscape, can compete with the best when it is invested. It’s proof of how Kiffin built this talented roster. There was nothing fluky or auspicious about this. Ole Miss pushed Georgia around for four quarters because it was the more physical football team. The Rebels’ defensive line destroyed the Bulldogs’ offensive line. Quarterback Carson Beck was sacked five times. The Ole Miss defense generated nine tackles for loss. The defense leads the country in both categories. Ole Miss has generated 103 tackles for loss this season. The next closest mark is Duke with 85. The Rebels have 46 sacks on the year, six more than the next closest, Boise State.
Georgia Tech transfer Jared Ivey and Florida transfer Princely Umanmielen were complete game-wreckers up front. Both had two sacks. Suntarine Perkins added a sack and was a problematic match-up for Georgia’s tackles for the entirety of the game. Perkins leads the SEC in sacks with 10. Umanmielen is second with 9.5. Ivey ranks fifth in the conference with seven.
“I told our team coming in that I thought this was the most talented team we have played,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said. “Their defense really affected us through the pass rush.”
Georgia had just one rush for 10 or more yards. Georgia had 69 yards of total offense in the first half and a season-low 245 total yards. After the Bulldogs capitalized on the early interception with a touchdown, they scored just three points the rest of the game.
“I told the guys, they’re not scoring again,” Umanmielen said. “This game doesn’t even need to be close. I don’t think they are on our level.”
A year after realizing that they couldn’t match up physically, the Rebels defeated the Bulldogs using a similar blueprint Georgia has used to ascend to the pinnacle of college football.
The win is also a validation of Kiffin’s overall approach to the transfer portal. It’s been debated how sustainable Kiffin’s heavy reliance on the transfer portal is and whether or not you could actually build a contender with that approach to roster construction. The team on the field on Saturday night looked like it could compete with any team in the country.
“This is why I came here,” Umanmielen said. “To play big time football, to play in big time games and win games like this. This feeling is just unreal.”
It’s a validation of Kiffin’s offensive genius. For as clunky and disjointed as this offense has looked at times this season, Saturday was a schematic masterclass from Kiffin and Charlie Weis Jr. Ole Miss threw for 263 yards at an average 14.6 yards per completion. Only one other opponent (Alabama) has thrown for more yards and scored more points on the Bulldogs this season. And the Rebels did it without starting running back Henry Parrish Jr. and arguably the top receiver in the country in Tre Harris. Ole Miss had receivers running wide open for most of the afternoon. Harris has now missed three consecutive games since he suffered an injury in the loss to LSU. In his absence, the Rebels have been forced to spread the football around to their other pass-catching weapons and have become a more effective offense as a result. Obviously, Ole Miss is a much better offense with a healthy Harris, but his absence seemingly forced a needed change to the approach to the passing game.
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Ole Miss saved its season with this win
This win was also a validation that this team is indeed as talented as many believed it was in the preseason. The Rebels are now very much back in the mix to earn a berth into the College Football Playoff, a thought that seemed fairly incomprehensible a month ago. Ole Miss lost two games in excruciating fashion to inferior opponents in Kentucky and LSU. The loss to Kentucky is by far the most inexplicable of the two and looked to be the one that everyone would ultimately gaze back on at the end of the year when wondering how this gifted yet confounding team fell woefully short of expectations. The loss in Baton Rouge, a game in which Ole Miss didn’t trail for a single snap, eliminated all margin for error.
“We have to win out,” a shell shocked Jaxson Dart said after the loss. “There’s no other option.”
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“I told the team after the LSU game that you’re now in the playoffs. You have to win each game from here, so the playoffs start now,” Kiffin said. “Sometimes things happen and you don’t know why. That put our backs against the wall. For a lot of people, when your backs are against the wall, you fight a little differently.”
With its season on the brink of failure, Ole Miss notched its best win of the season, against the toughest opponent on its schedule, in a game it absolutely had to win. It certainly didn’t have to be this way for the Rebels, but maybe the bumpy road to Saturday’s triumph was ultimately the needed path. A large chunk of this team’s core was formed through an 11-win campaign in 2023 that saw them win several one-score games and overcome a few second-half deficits — like erasing a nine-point deficit against LSU in the final eight minutes of the game. For the entirety of the offseason, Ole Miss was praised as a legitimate contender for both the talent it returned and the talent it added. The Rebels were not tested through the season’s first four games due to a weak non-conference schedule. When (mostly self-inflicted) adversity arrived, this team didn’t respond well. It seemed to be what the 2024 Ole Miss Rebels might ultimately be remembered for. Saturday was a different story.
The first nine snaps of this game could not have possibly gone any worse for Ole Miss. Dart was swallowed by Georgia’s defensive line on the first three plays, threw an interception on third down and then limped to the locker room with an ankle injury as Georgia took advantage of a 21-yard short field and scored a touchdown. Ole Miss didn’t blink. Redshirt freshman Austin Simmons led the offense down the field for a 10-play, 75-yard touchdown drive that drastically altered the momentum of a game that could’ve quickly spiraled for the Rebels.
“He changed the momentum of the game,” Dart said. “He is one hell of a player, and for him to come in and manufacture a drive that resulted in a touchdown, that really sparked our team.”
In both of its losses this year, Ole Miss led entering the fourth quarter, only to surrender the lead and come up short in the games’ most crucial plays and drives. On Saturday, the Rebels slammed the door on Georgia. The Bulldogs did not score a touchdown in the second half and did not score a point in the fourth quarter.
“Georgia is a team that has been down more than we were up on them today and have come back,” Umanmielen said. “We knew we had to keep our foot on their necks and not give them any room to breathe, and we did that.”
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Ole Miss is within striking distance of earning a playoff berth
As significant as this win was, Ole Miss is still far from a lock to make the college football playoff. The two losses still eliminate any margin for error for the Rebels in the final two games of the season — a road test at Florida after the bye week and a home game against a hapless Mississippi State team the day after Thanksgiving. Ole Miss cannot afford to lose either game.
Whether or not a 10-2 record will be enough for the Rebels to get into the playoff is still uncertain. Ole Miss moved up to No. 10 in the AP poll, one slot ahead of Georgia. On Tuesday, the second edition of the College Football Playoff rankings will be released. The Rebels debuted at No. 16 in the initial rankings last week. I think a significant climb up the rankings after a win of this caliber is likely. I think that if Ole Miss wins its final two games, it will get into the playoff. Entering the season, most assumed a 10-2 record would be more than enough to get into the playoff. Strangely enough, with the way this season has played out, I am not sure that notion would’ve ended up being true without one of the ten wins being Georgia. I don’t think Ole Miss would have a good enough resumé to get in without a quality win like this one.
Ole Miss will also be a favorable team from an optics and narrative standpoint. The Rebels are playing their best football at the end of the season. The convincing manner in which they demolished Georgia removed any discussion of it being a fluke. Maybe it’s fitting that beating Georgia — the same program that, one year ago, showed Ole Miss just how far it had to go to compete with the top teams in the sport — was the requirement to rectify two bad losses to get its season back on track. Fitting, that the manner in which the Rebels won — being the more physical team and dominating the lines of scrimmage, just like Georgia did to them in 2023 — is what might ultimately convince the selection committee that Ole Miss is undoubtedly one of the 12 best teams in college football.
At the end of his on-field interview with McGrath, Kiffin got emotional when asked about the toughness and resiliency of Dart. He was asked again in his postgame press conferencee. Kiffin has stated repeatedly that Dart did more than any single other active player to help recruit this offseason’s portal haul that allowed Ole Miss to assemble a championship-caliber roster.
" Jaxson had just walked by on the last play and said ‘love you, coach.’ He’s just an awesome kid,” Kiffin said. “It’s a cool group of kids. He led this thing, in getting this all together, getting all of these guys together, almost like a coach. For him to deliver a gritty performance like this, it was just awesome to watch.”
Dart and Kiffin’s relationship has evolved in Dart’s three years at Ole Miss and now appears to be stronger than ever, but certainly didn’t get to that point without rocky moments. The team those two spent so much time and energy assembling has also had its own trials and tribulations. But it’s an Ole Miss team that appears to be finding the best version of itself at the right time and still has everything left to play for.
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What a great week!