Is the perception of the Ole Miss defense changing?
Rebels dominated Texas A&M defensively and are on the cusp of the first 10-win regular season in program history
Hope everyone is having a good Monday. We have a new podcast out. It’s a little different than the typical Sunday show as Weldon Rotenberg was out of town. I talked to The Clarion-Ledger’s Nick Suss and my baseball podcast partner Collin Brister about the win, what it means, the state of the program and a whole lot more. Check that out here anywhere you get podcasts.
We have a ton of football to dive into today.
Saturday was a perfect day in Oxford
From a publicity and perception standpoint, Saturday couldn’t have gone any better for Ole Miss. College GameDay was a three-hour infomercial for the program, the environment in the stadium was electric and Ole Miss soundly handled the 11th-ranked team in the sport. Lane Kiffin said on Twitter after the game, that he and his staff came here to play in games like this, in front of crowds like this and on stages like the one that unfolded on Saturday night.
Ole Miss now sits on the precipice of achieving its first 10-win regular season in program history. Think about that for a minute, especially considering that, just under two years ago, on the day after Thanksgiving, the program was issuing a public apology about one of its players doing a dog pee celebration in the end zone that led to a brutal Egg Bowl loss between two completely irrelevant teams. The program was headed nowhere fast. Things have changed quickly and the ascent has been truly remarkable to watch.
Now, to the game.
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The way this defense is perceived is changing
How many of you kept waiting for the dam to finally break on Saturday night? For the lack of depth to kick in. For the defense to get worn down. For Ole Miss to reap the consequences of its offensive ineptitude the red zone, and to finally allow Texas A&M to take the lead and win a game the Rebels dominated for three quarters. It never happened. Ole Miss won a game against a formidable opponent by the defense bailing the offense out and carrying the team to victory. When is the las time that has happened? The 2014 or 2015 season? That’s a long time ago.
This next observation was much easier to pick up on watching the game a second time on tv on the way home on Sunday, and maybe it’s easier to watch when you know the result, but at some point during that game (though I doubt many in the stadium felt this way), the vibe of the game shifted from “how long can this defense keep this up?” toward “Texas A&M really isn’t doing much at all offensively. This might hold up.”
Ole Miss looked like a good defense on Saturday night. To me, the most surprising part of the game was the way in which the Rebels dominated the line of scrimmage on the defensive side of the ball. Last week, I (wrongly) conceded that Texas A&M would run for a lot of yards on Ole Miss and argued the game would come down to how the Rebels fared in red zone defense. I don’t really feel dumb(er) for thinking this. The Aggies ran for 215 yards or more in each of their previous games. On Saturday, they ran for 141 on 29 carries. Calzada threw 15 more passes than the number of carries Isaiah Spiller and Devon Achane had combined. That dog will hunt.
Ole Miss flew around the to the football and played with an edge. The secondary was mostly really good. Deane Leonard played a fantastic game and A.J. Finley continued what has been nothing short of a tremendous second half of the season for him. The defense scored nine points. It made seven more as easy as possible for the offense via Ashanti Cistrunk’s fourth-quarter interception.
The defense won this game for Ole Miss and did so without arguably its best or second best player for the entire second half after Jake Springer was ejected for targeting.
The bottom line is that this looks like a good college defense. Yes, it lacks depth in some areas and talent in others, but it is an incredibly improved from a year ago. Hell, it is improved from five weeks ago. The defense has carried this team for a month. And after a half decade of utter ineptitude on this side of the ball (minus one really good coaching job from Mike MacIntyre), the perception of the defense and what Ole Miss can expect from it on a game-by-game basis is finally changing. That is what stuck out most to me from Saturday.
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Did tempo sparked the running game, or did the running game enable tempo?
Ole Miss’s ability to the run the football yet again told the tale of this game. It’s not really rocket science. In Ole Miss’s two losses, it ran for 78 yards (Alabama) and 157 yards (Auburn). In the eight wins, Ole Miss has run for 320 yards or more three times, 250 yards or more six times and 185 yards or more seven times. The lone exception was the 142 yards the Rebels ran for in a win over Liberty. When Ole Miss runs the football with consistent success, it wins the game.
How did it happen? Well, it seemed like a couple of different things. There was a concerted effort to go up-tempo, particularly in the first half. What changed? I am sure some of it was the offense getting healthier. Corral looked like he moved around better, even if he didn’t run much. The offensive line inserted Eli Acker at right guard and looked better and Dontario Drummond returned from injury.
It sort of feels like a chicken and the egg thing, but it’s no coincidence that the running game was more successful than it was in the previous two weeks as the offense went faster. Texas A&M was scrambling defensively for the first two quarters of this game. I imagine it’s a bit of a two way street. Popping off a productive run on first down makes going the up-tempo thing more effective than scrambling to get off a 2nd & 9 snap after a short run. Similarly, parlaying the tempo into another chunk play on the next snap, either on the ground or through the air is often a product the defense not being properly lined up or having the wrong personnel group in with no chance to substitute. Whatever the predominant factor is, the running game paired with the tempo is the most important element to what fuels this offense.
Red zone woes resurface
It wasn’t an offensive masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. Ole Miss had six red zone possessions and only scored two touchdowns and 20 points. Utilizing tempo as a weapon is often a double-edged sword. It’s less effective when the field shrinks near the goal line and the defense has less ground to cover. Part of the goal this strategy is to prevent the defense from substituting. Sometimes that hurts the offense in the red zone when different personnel is needed. It’s why you might have looked up at one point on Saturday night and wondered why the hell Jadon Jackson is in the game at a crucial moment by the goal line. Just like you wondered why Ealy took the first fourth down carry inside the 10-yard line at Alabama. Sometimes you live by not allowing the defense to substitute and die by not substituting your own personnel into the game.
Ole Miss struggled to run the ball on the interior down by the goal line. Some of that is due to missing Ben Brown, but some of it is also a product of the Texas A&M defensive front being one of the best in the country. It also doesn’t help that Corral (presumably due to his health) hasn’t been much of a factor in the running game recently. When you can’t line up behind your guard and center and run over the opponent, making them defend a read-option play in which the QB isn't much of a threat to run isn’t a terrific choice either because, well, there’s nothing to read and it’s not really an option.
Hell, Ole Miss wasn’t very good in this aspect when it was fully healthy. It’s just not who this team and Kiffin has admitted as much at times throughout the season. It is what it is.
Yes, the red zone offense could have and needs to be much better. But Texas A&M is pretty good, too. DeMarvin Leal is a freak. So is Jayden Peevy and a handful of others on that side of the ball. Ole Miss struggled in the red zone against a good defense. It happens. It’s also the first game in a few weeks the Rebels have had relatively clean bill of health on that side of the ball. I am curious to see what it looks like over the next two weeks as guys get acclimated to playing together again.
Ealy shines in big spot again
Jerrion Ealy has had a weird year. One week, we won’t factor into the game much at all. The next week, he’ll carry the entire running game. It’s nowhere close to being his fault entirely. Many different factors have gone into that. But he once again put together a great performance when Ole Miss needed it. Ealy rushed for 152 yards on 24 carries. He popped a few long runs that either got the offense out of its own end zone, into plus territory, or both.
The carries dispersion between the trio of backs was interesting to me, as it has been all year. Ealy’s 24 carries were more than Henry Parrish (9) and Snoop Conner combined (11). All three made an impact in the game. Earlier this year, after the Arkansas game in which we saw Parrish and Conner (and Corral) produce 324 yards on the ground in Ealy’s absence (concussion in the Alabama game), followed by Ealy having the least amount of carries of the three against Tennessee and not really being a factor at all, I wondered if the best use of the three was just that: using Conner and Parrish heavily with Ealy sprinkled in sporadically. But it seems like the opposite is true. Ealy got better as the game wore on. He’s a home run hitter in a sense and it seems like the more times you get him the ball, the better the odds he breaks one for a huge gain.
I am likely putting too much thought into this, as it’s one hell of a problem to have, I just thought the way all three were used on Saturday gelled nicely. With two games remaining, their carries and yardage totals are all oddly Similar:
Ealy: 96 carries for 588 yards, 4 TDs
Conner: 95 carries for 509 yards, 11 TDs
Parrish: 98 carries for 529 yards, 2 TDs
Toss in Corral’s 126 carries for 523 yards and 10 TDs and you’ve got one hell of a rushing attack.
Turnovers cemented the game’s fate
There was an element of weirdness to this game. Ole Miss out-gained A&M in the 408-91 in the first half, yet only had 13 offensive points and a 15-0 lead at half. The defense held the Aggies to that yardage number despite not recording a sack and only one three-and-out. Try explaining that to someone who didn’t watch. It speaks to how physical the Rebels were up front and how well the secondary played.
Turnovers eventually swung the game. Ashanti Cistrunk made arguably the two biggest plays of the game. A&M took over at is own 12 yards line trailing 15-13 with seven minutes remaining. It felt like that dam might finally break. Cistrunk batted down a Calzada pass on first down before picking off the next one. It set up Conner’s touchdown run that induced a collective exhale from the entire stadium. A.J. Finley picked off Calzada and took it to the house three plays into the Aggies next drive to effectively seal the game.
Ole Miss now leads the country in turnover margin. Last year, the Rebels finished the season at 95th. The Rebels are generating more turnovers on defense and giving the football away less frequently on offense. That seems good.
Final thoughts:
So, now what? Well, the Rebels are on the cusp of a historic season. They will beat Vanderbilt this coming weekend. Mississippi State is playing much better football and that game suddenly looks like a hell of a challenge for Ole Miss. The good news is that the Rebels are getting healthier. The fact that this conversation is being had is a testament to the season the team is having and the rapid rebuild this coaching staff is in the process of orchestrating. This was a great weekend for the program as it now has the opportunity to finish second in the SEC West and return to a New Year’s Six bowl for the first time since the Huge Freeze era. Who would’ve thought this was possible two years ago.
A look around the SEC
It felt like everything else in the SEC held serve aside from a wild result between Mississippi State and Auburn. Let’s take a look at a few of the games.
Georgia beat Tennessee, 41-17. - This game played out basically like I thought it would. A good Vols offense scored early to push Georgia a bit, but eventually the defense settled in and the Georgia offense played well. It’s still a great first year for Josh Heupel. The Bulldogs are the best team in the sport and I am not sure it is close.
Mississippi State won at Auburn, 43-34. - Well, this one got weird. Auburn went up 28-3 and proceeded to allow 40 unanswered points. This Mississippi State team is playing good football and Will Rogers is blossoming into a really good SEC quarterback. This is a bad loss for Bryan Harsin. Two weeks ago, Auburn looked like it was poised to finish second or third in the SEC West. Now, with Bo Nix out for the year with an ankle injury, do the Tigers get to seven wins? They’ll need to beat a South Carolina team fighting for bowl eligibility next week, on the road, with a backup quarterback. Good luck.
Florida beat Samford, 70-52. - Someone pointed this score out to me when it was 42-35 at halftime. I assumed it was an ESPN ticker malfunction. Samford is a 3-6 FCS school, and Florida needed a 21-point third quarter to erase a seven-point halftime deficit. I am assuming Mullen still gets a 2022 season, but this situation feels untenable and that every party involved is delaying the inevitable. I wonder if Mullen ends up taking a job elsewhere after the season ends. The only weird part about it is that he isn’t exactly a hot commodity right now.
Missouri beat South Carolina, 31-28. - This felt like a missed opportunity for the Gamecocks. But credit to Mizzou. I’d assumed they’d essentially mailed it in this year. Now, sitting at 5-5, the Tigers get Florida at home and Arkansas on the road to finish out the year. That’s more than a puncher’s chance at a bowl game.
Arkansas beat LSU in overtime, 16-13. - This is a good win for Arkansas, though I am not sure how good they actually are. Credit to LSU for not quitting, even though Ed Orgeron has seemingly decided to throw everyone under the bus.
Kentucky beat Vanderbilt, 34-17. - Sure.
Alabama beat New Mexico State, 59-3. - I hope both teams had fun.
On the horizon:
Packed week of podcasts, including a bonus pod with Weldon Rotenberg that should drop Monday evening
A lot of football and some hoops in this week’s newsletter.
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