Ole Miss' blowout win over Wake a reflection of its newfound talent level
The Rebels won despite playing poorly. Why that's a reflection of the program's offseason roster building and newfound talent level
The mood in the postgame press conference following Ole Miss’ 40-6 throttling of Wake Forest was hardly an overly-joyous one.
Despite a lopsided final score and the Rebels dominating another inferior opponent, there was much left to be desired from the performance, according to its participants.
“Jaxson made two critical mistakes. He got a little bit laxed and played down to the situation,” head coach Lane Kiffin said. “Too many penalties, too many holding penalties on defense, critical ones too. Two turnovers called back. It’s good for us to have stuff to clean up.”
Ole Miss was penalized 11 times for 115 yards. The Rebels fumbled the ball three times and were fortunate to only lose one of them. As Kiffin alluded to, several defensive penalties extended Wake drives.
“I was talking to Coach Kiffin before the end of the game and I told him that I felt like this was exactly what we needed,” Dart said. "That was the ugliest 600-yard game that you could play. We did a lot of good things and didn’t finish. We hurt ourselves. It’s a good wakeup call for us and will light a fire under us. Going forward, for me, it’s taking accountability and working harder and preparing harder.”
If you read these quotes without the context of the score, you would think Ole Miss barely escaped Winston-Salem with a win. In reality, the Rebels dominated Wake up front, and shut down the Deacs’ slow mesh attack. On offense, Ole Miss posed significant match-up issues for Wake and blew the doors off a power-four opponent to the point of the game never being in question. The contrast between the final score and the way Dart and Kiffin spoke about the performance is reflective of a couple of things.
First, two things can be true at once. I didn’t think Ole Miss played a particularly clean game either. The fumbles and penalties are a reflection of that. Offensively, Wake Forest never really stopped Ole Miss. More often than not, Ole Miss stopped itself with turnovers, penalties or miscues. I don’t think this is a scenario where Kiffin and Dart are pulling a Nick Saban and manufacturing adversity by finding flaws that don’t actually exist.
Second, it’s a reflection of this team’s maturity its desire to play to a standard it sets for itself, regardless of opponent. All of this sounds like the vague platitudes every team, player and coach in the country offer at most of these press conferences, but given Kiffin’s unabashed (and often unprompted) praise of this team’s maturity and character so far this season, I think it’s relevant.
“We challenged them to not give into what was kind of a dead atmosphere and play their game,” Kiffin said. “When you can go on the road, have some adversity and still win by 34 points, it says that this is a really talented team. We can play sloppy, get penalties, commit turnovers and still win like that, it means you have a really talented roster. Now, we need to go forward and not have those penalties and turnovers.”
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The main reason Ole Miss was able to win comfortably despite its self-inflicted mistakes was because it dominated the line of scrimmage, particularly on defense. As we discussed for most of the offseason, everything Ole Miss did to reshape its roster this offseason was centered around getting bigger, stronger and more talented on both sides of the line of scrimmage. The Georgia loss last November painted a pretty clear picture of the difference between the Rebels and legitimate playoff contenders. So, Kiffin and his staff fixed it. Saturday night was perhaps the first legitimate example of the drastic difference between having top-end talent up front, particularly on the defensive line, and not having it.
Wake Forest couldn’t get anything going offensively because the Rebels lived in the offensive backfield. The Demon Deacons had a whopping five rushing yards in the first half and 46 for the game on 32 carries. Wake quarterback Hank Bachmeier was sacked four times, which is a little misleading in terms of how dominant Ole Miss was due to Wake’s slow-mesh attack. We discussed on Friday how this game might be a decent litmus test for the defense, as the slow-mesh works against average to below average defensive lines and tends to falter when playing good ones. I would say the Rebels passed that test with ease.
While far from perfect, the Ole Miss offensive line paved the way for the running game to compile 273 yards rushing. Dart was only sacked one time. He was afforded the time to throw a plethora of pass-catching options as the Rebels preyed upon a hapless Wake secondary. This offensive line unit did this despite being down to starters.
Ole Miss has always had an explosive offense during the Kiffin era. On defense, it is usually been pretty opportunistic, even if talent was lacking at certain spots, and the Rebels have had a tremendous amount of overall success during Kiffin’s tenure. What’s different about this year’s team is everything we just covered above. Ole Miss is now able to dominate the line of scrimmage, which allows it to win games by large margins against opponents with inferior talent even if the Rebels don’t play well.
Ole Miss will face far better opponents than the middling Wake Forest team it beat on Saturday night and we truly won’t know just how good this group can be until it gets into conference play. But as Kiffin alluded to, this is a wildly talented team. And the reason it is a legitimate playoff contender and one of the best teams in the sport is because of what was on display at the line of scrimmage on Saturday evening. Couple that with Ole Miss being a mature team with veteran leadership, and you begin to wonder just how high this potentially historic group could soar.
Now onto some other news and notes from Saturday
Running back rotation remained the same
On Friday, I wondered if we’d learn more about this running back rotation. Would we see more of Ulysses Bentley IV this week? Would we gain any answers as to why he hasn’t played much? I am not exactly sure if we gained a surefire answer to the latter, but the fact that Bentley did not play until the tail end of the game makes it pretty clear at this point that Ole Miss believes a combination of Henry Parrish and Matt Jones give the Rebels the best chance to be successful running the football. Why is this the case? I haven’t a clue.
I think you can throw out the theory that Bentley is being “saved” until later in the year. It makes no sense why he’d play in mop-up duty if that were the case. The same logic stands to reason on the injury theory. If Bentley is injured, why send him out there for meaningless snaps? I don’t know what transpired during spring football and preseason camp, but it’s clear it will be the Parrish and Jones combination going forward. I remain skeptical of the viability of that plan once Ole Miss is knee-deep into its SEC slate, and figure that will have to change drastically if either guy suffers an injury, but for now, that appears to be the path the running back rotation is following.
ETA: after this note was written, Kiffin expounded on the situation during his Monday press conference. Here’s part of what he had to say:
“It’s nothing negative about Bentley. There’s some of that in our program. We have a really good roster. I tell our guys that there is a cost and a benefit to everything. There is a benefit to having all of these good players. You have a chance to be really good. The cost is that everybody does not get to play as much as they would like. That’s happening with a number of our players. This is not anything Bentley has done. Our other guys have played extremely well. Bentley missed time during the spring. We have great confidence in him. This game was pass-heavy. We really haven’t gone to the third back, which is what he is right now.”
Make of that what you wish. It does sound like that the coaching staff simply believes that he is the third best option, and, at this point, the team hasn’t needed to go to the third option. I still think Bentley will make a valuable impact for this team at some point this season.
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Short yardage plan revealed?
To piggyback off the last thought, I’ve been curious as to whether Ole Miss might have trouble in short-yardage situations against formidable opponents given that both Parrish and Jones are smaller running backs. There were a couple of instances in the first two quarters of this game in which this exact scenario played out. In the first quarter, Ole Miss faced a 3rd & 1 at the Wake 26. Parrish ran for no gain. On 4th & 1, the Rebels brought J.J. Pegues into the game, direct-snapped it to him and Pegues leaped over the pile for a first down. Watching the replay, I felt terribly for Jayden Williams, who was on the ground, looked up and saw a behemoth of a human falling from the sky onto his head. Williams wasn’t injured on the play.
In the second quarter, Ole Miss faced a 3rd & 2 from its own 36. A handoff to Parrish was stopped short. On fourth down, Pegues and Walter Nolen entered the game, Pegues got the football and plunged forward for a first down.
I suppose this is Ole Miss’ main short-yardage strategy. It’s hardly a revolutionary concept and has been done before. I just found it interesting. Pegues is 6-foot-2, 325 lbs. He played tight end in high school. It seems like a perfectly effective option. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to attempt to prevent him from gaining 3-6 feet on an important down in a game.
Ole Miss has a ridiculous receiving corps
Wake’s secondary isn’t very good. The Deacs lost a defensive back in the portal from last year and somewhat unexpectedly lost another to the NFL draft. It’s the weak point of their defense and they were never going to pose a serious threat to the Ole Miss passing attack. With that said, it was still plainly evident how difficult of a match-up the Rebels are going to be for SEC-caliber secondaries. From Juice Wells, Tre Harris, Cayden Lee and Jordan Watkins at receiver, to Caden Prieskorn and Dae’quan Wright at tight end, Ole Miss has mismatches across the field on every snap. It also allows them to be multiple in so many different ways.
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Scott healthy on OL
Southern Miss transfer Gerquan Scott missed the first two games of the season with an injury. He returned in this game, though he did not start. Rather than playing center, Scott rotated at right guard with Julius Buelow — who has started the last two games in place of an injured Jeremy James.
Ole Miss keeping Reece McIntyre at center and using Scott at guard is interesting, especially since Scott worked at center for most of preseason camp before he was injured. I wonder if that was an effort to get Scott acclimated to game action or if McIntyre remains the permanent option at center. Ole Miss has consistently regularly rotated Diego Pounds in at left guard with starter Jayden Williams through three games. Nate Kalepo, Micah Pettus and McIntyre played every offensive snap of consequence.
The Rebels are still waiting to get James and Caleb Warren back healthy. I am not sure if Ole Miss has found their best five linemen yet, but it hasn’t been an issue so far, and getting Scott back is obviously a good thing for this unit.
Safety is still a bit of a question
Ole Miss rotated quite a few guys on the back end in this game. Isiah Hamilton and Trey Amos started at corner. Hamilton was targeted four times and held his own, allowing just one reception. Amos is going to prove to be a tremendous corner for the Rebels and will play on Sundays next year.
Wake picked on safety Jadon Canady a bit. Canady was targeted four times and gave up three receptions and a drop. John Saunders and Trey Washington played the majority of the 79 snaps the defense was on the field. Ole Miss rotated in Louis Moore a lot and Yam Banks played sparingly.
Rebel Grove’s Chase Parham wrote an interesting breakdown of the snap counts that you should check out here.
Wake backs out of return trip
It was apparently announced at some point on Saturday evening that Wake Forest called Ole Miss earlier in the week to buy out of its return trip to Oxford next season. Essentially, Wake will pay Ole Miss $750,000 to not have to play the game (would have been $1 million if inside a year of the scheduled game). Kiffin briefly mentioned this in his postgame presser and somewhat tongue-in-cheek declared that he told his team the news before the game to use as motivation — that an opponent is paying upper six figures to not have to play them again.
At the time, I really didn’t know what to make of this. College football is in the midst of so much rapid change, I wasn’t sure as to whether this had something to do with conference realignment and the ACC adding two more teams. I wasn’t sure if this was something that would be mutually-beneficial for both programs. For example, both Ole Miss and USC both agreed to cancel its future series. Given that the SEC requires each of its teams to play one non-conference game against a power-four opponent, maybe Wake and Ole Miss had made other plans? It was none of those things and Ole Miss was not happy about it.
Kiffin was asked about it on Monday and did not hold back, calling out Wake Forest Athletic Director John Currie by name, declaring it an unwritten rule and accusing them of a lame attempt at mind games.
“Really a very abnormal thing for Wake to do. You usually don’t do that during the season, the season before. That is rarely ever done. I have never heard of it. It puts us at a big disadvantage. It wasn’t appreciated very much,” Kiffin said. “We have to go find someone now and most people are all scheduled up. It’s kind of an unwritten rule to not do that.”
Asked about the power-four rule and how that will affect the program, given that this was not Ole Miss’ fault, Kiffin wasn’t sure how that worked.
”We are looking into things. It’s hard because everyone has schedules. There are a lot of dominoes in there. I guess when it’s happened before, the team submits a waiver to get around that rule. It’s not what we want to do,” Kiffin said. “But they may have put us in an unavoidable situation. I find it really amazing that you wait until the week of the game to tell us. They thought that that was going to disrupt us. John Currie was like ‘oh, we will tell them the week of (this year’s game) and disrupt them.’ Maybe that was their game plan for this game?”
I have no clue what Ole Miss will do to fill the void. Perhaps the Rebels are a candidate for one of those neutral site games in Atlanta, Houston or elsewhere. What I do know is that Kiffin was not thrilled with how this was handled. I don’t blame him.
We’ll have more coverage later this week.