Friday Five: 5 things to watch as Ole Miss hosts Arkansas
Who starts at quarterback and how do the Rebels defend Taylen Green?
Ole Miss hosts Arkansas on Saturday night at 6 p.m. as the Rebels continue an eventful month of September and try to improve to 2-0 in SEC play. Here are five things I am thinking about before kickoff.
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1. Who plays quarterback for Ole Miss?
The most pressing issue Ole Miss faces entering this game is the health of quarterback Austin Simmons. The redshirt sophomore injured his ankle in the fourth quarter of the win at Kentucky. Simmons popped up on Wednesday’s initial injury report as ‘probable’ and then was removed altogether from Thursday’s updated report. I likely don’t need to remind most of you that Lane Kiffin hates this mandated injury reporting system and does not take it seriously at all. Last year, he’d have 30 players on it one week and two the next week. Given the lack of regulation and penalties in place for not putting out accurate injury information, this report is a perfect vehicle for Kiffin to use to troll a required exercise that he detests, rather than give an accurate update.
Personally, I do not put much stock in Simmons being removed from the injury report. Multiple people with knowledge of the situation told Rippee Writes that Simmons was very limited in practice all week and that there is a serious chance that the Rebels might be forced to turn to back-up Trinidad Chambliss — a senior transfer from DII Ferris State, where he won a national title. If that is indeed the case, how different will the Ole Miss offense look on Saturday? Perhaps we got a small taste of it when Chambliss led a scoring drive late in the fourth quarter in last week’s win at Kentucky to essentially ice game, but that was more of a four-minute offense situation in which the Rebels were trying to gain first downs running the football and were battling the clock as much as they were trying to score.
If Simmons is able to play, he will obviously be compromised. It’s worth wondering how different the offense will look with a hobbled Simmons. It is interesting to me that Kiffin said, point blank, during preseason camp, that the staff did not anticipate using Simmons in the running game much at all. After two weeks and one real SEC test, that is proving to be an inaccurate prediction. Several designed runs for Simmons have been called in the season’s first eight quarters. What changed? Is it due to poor offensive line play? A lack of running back depth behind Lacy? I am curious as to why Simmons carried the ball eight times against Kentucky (not all designed runs). And I wonder how much he will be used in the running game going forward, particularly considering he is already battling an injury because of his usage carrying the football.
I do not know what to make of all of this in terms of who starts on Saturday against the Razorbacks. Maybe it’s Kiffin being coy and throwing what he thinks is a smoke screen. I have reason to believe that is not the case. My guess is that it will be a game-time decision. Simmons will go through warm-ups, get shot up with Toradol or whatever the hell it is they gave Jaxson Dart during last year’s Georgia game, and the staff will decide who gives Ole Miss the best chance to win from there. It will be interesting to see who runs out for the first series.
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2. The offensive line
This will likely be a mainstay in this content item throughout the year until this unit proves it can be an above average SEC offensive line. Ole Miss struggled on the interior offensive line for the second straight game in the win over Kentucky. The Rebels did rush for 220 yards on 4.6 yards per carry, which is a positive sign. Kewan Lacy offers a level of explosiveness that Ole Miss simply did not have in the offensive backfield last year — even with the Ulysses Bentley saga. But a bad snap set the forces in motion for one of Simmons’ two interceptions and the Wildcats were able to consistently pressure Simmons, particularly early in the game.
Arkansas is not a good SEC defense. In fact, it could end up being one of the worst three defenses in the SEC by season’s end. Arkansas has several newcomers on its defensive line and the linebacking corps is pretty solid. The secondary is where the Razorbacks are likely to face challenges on defense this year. With that said, Ole Miss has had offensive line issues against the likes of Georgia State and a Kentucky team that could end up being the worst team in the conference. The offensive line will need to fare better to help whoever is at quarterback for the Rebels on Saturday.
3. Can the Rebels lean on the defense for a win?
I thought the Ole Miss defense was good, not great, against Kentucky. There were mistakes, and the Rebels allowed 20 points against a pretty putrid Wildcats offense, but when it mattered most and when the game hung in the balance, the defense got back-to-back stops to seal the win.
The test the Ole Miss defense will face on Saturday will be fairly unique in terms of anything Pete Golding’s defense has seen over the last year. Arkansas quarterback Taylen Green is a 6-foot-6, athletic quarterback who is a much better runner than he is a thrower of the football. Ole Miss did not get a full dosage of Green in the Rebels’ blowout win in Fayetteville last fall. Green was injured that week and split time with Malachi Singleton (who has since transferred to Purdue). Green is a dynamic running threat. The Ole Miss defense didn’t face a lot of mobile quarterbacks last season. The Rebels fared pretty well against D.J. Lagway — Lagway’s legs were not the reason Florida won that game. South Carolina’s LaNorris Sellers rushed 15 times for 55 yards against Ole Miss in Columbia last season, which is a fairly significant output when you factor in the six sacks (and the loss of yardage that comes with it) he absorbed. But aside from one long run in the 30-yard range, I don’t remember Sellers killing Ole Miss with his feet in a game the Rebels won 27-3, but I could be mistaken.
Arkansas might finish in the bottom third of the SEC this year, but it won’t be because of their offense. Offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino has produced highly-productive offenses at every single stop of his career over the last 20 years and the Razorback offense will be a significant challenge for Golding’s defense.
Whether it’s a compromised Simmons or Chambliss at quarterback, Ole Miss is going to need its defense to play very well in order to win this football game. Golding is as good as anyone in the sport when it comes to week-to-week schematics. I am fascinated to see how he tries to contain Green, how he uses Suntarine Perkins, and what the defense front looks like on a down-by-down basis in this game.
With Ole Miss’ uncertainty at quarterback, here’s a simplistic lens through which to view this game: If Arkansas scores more than 25 points, the Rebels could be in trouble. If Arkansas scores fewer than 20 points, Ole Miss is likely going to win this game. That is just my opinion, and I am often wrong. Golding’s defense played at a Playoff-caliber level every week last season. It’s the offense that kept Ole Miss out of the inaugural 12-team invitational. On Saturday, Ole Miss may have to lean on its defense again to beat Arkansas.
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4. The receiving corps
This is less about the receivers being a key to this game and more so about me being interested in how Ole Miss disperses the football to what appears to be a deep receiver room with diverse skill sets. Tre Wallace and Deuce Alexander each caught four passes last weekend and carried the bulk of the yardage production. Ole Miss only completed a total of 13 passes in the game. I am curious to see what this looks like on Saturday. I am told Arkansas transfer tight end Luke Hasz practiced this week. He was touted to be a key part of this passing game. Does he play? And if so, what is his role?
We haven’t seen much from the veteran of this pass-catching unit, Cayden Lee, so far this year. I don’t think that really means a whole lot. We are only talking about four real quarters of football so far this season. You can’t gauge much of anything about this team from the Rebels destroying Georgia State on Labor Day weekend. Is this a game in which Lee becomes the reliable option for a back-up QB in Chambliss or a hobbled Simmons? Ole Miss didn’t push the football down the field much against Kentucky. Most of the completions it executed were within 15 yards of the line of scrimmage and the chunk plays came from Wallace and Alexander’s ability to make their primary defenders miss tackles and dart upfield.
Again, I am not citing the receiving unit as a key to Ole Miss winning this game. I think the Rebels have a deep and talented receiving corps. I am just curious to gain another four-quarter sample size of what that group looks like.
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5. Is Ole Miss capable of winning in a Vintage Kiffin style
This is likely a bad headline, but I couldn’t come up with anything better despite trying. What I mean is that with the uncertainty Ole Miss has at quarterback, is this offense capable of running for 250-plus yards, leaning on a bad Arkansas defense, controlling the tempo of the game and winning at its own pace?
Lacy gives Ole Miss an element of explosiveness that it has not had since Quinshon Judkins — while that name is probably a sore subject among fans, and I am certainly not comparing the two running backs, it's simply the truth. I am far less confident in what Ole Miss has behind Lacy than I ever was with what Ole Miss had behind Judkins (Zach Evans and Bentley), but assuming Lacy is the bell cow, remains healthy and gets the majority of the carries in this game, is this offense, and particularly this offensive line — for one game at least— capable of running the football at the level that the 2021 and 2022 offenses did on a regular basis. It seems like Ole Miss could use a vintage offensive performance — like LSU in 2021 (249 yards rushing), Texas A&M in 2022 (390 yards rushing), or Tennessee 2021 (279 yards rushing) — to win a game with a compromised (or back-up quarterback).
For that to be the case, the interior of the offensive line must be better. I have doubts as to whether this subpar offensive line unit is capable of producing such an output, but it certainly feels like the Rebels could use it against a pesky but capable Arkansas team in a series that always seems to get weird.
To conclude, if Ole Miss wishes to be even a remotely serious threat to make the College Football Playoff, it must win this game — somehow, some way. There is no realistic path to this team playing meaningful football in the month of November with a loss to Arkansas on its resume. How this game plays out is as big of a mystery to me as any game in the Kiffin era. But, like most of you, I am incredibly eager to find out. We’ll have more on Sunday. Thanks for reading.