Ole Miss still in portal QB limbo, NFL recap, Payton retires
Some thoughts on Jaxson Dart, Sean Payton, a basketball win, Josh Allen and more.
Hope everyone is having a good week. We have a new podcast out with some NFL thoughts at the top, followed by former Andy Kennedy staffer Bracken Ray on some big-picture Ole Miss stuff (recorded before the Florida win), the week that was in the SEC, Penny Hardaway’s rant and more. Check that out here or anywhere you get podcasts.
To put it simply, we have a lot to get to today.
Ole Miss still in limbo when it comes to portal QB
As of this writing, Ole Miss has yet to land a transfer portal quarterback. The feeling last week was that the Rebels felt good about their chances of landing USC transfer Jaxson Dart (and presumably his teammate and fellow USC transfer Michael Trigg). So far, nothing is official. There is a bit of a clock on this, I suppose. The deadline to add or drop classes for this semester is January 31st. So, presumably, if Dart is going to go through spring practice, he’ll need to settle everything this week, get to campus and enroll in classes. I have no idea how this ends up or where he ends up if this extends beyond this week. It would be silly to assume every other school in the running for Dart’s services has the same add/drop deadline for classes as Ole Miss, but given that Ole Miss's winter break is as long as half a football season, I am just assuming the add/drop date is either the same or has already passed for most other places. Maybe there is a way around it if it drags out longer than this week. I am not an admissions counselor, and most of my add-dropping in college was done in the first week of the semester based on which teacher was most likely to use the generic test banks for exams that everyone in the business school had stored in their email inboxes. Sorry, not sorry.
I suppose this is the suspenseful part of the transfer portal, if it’s even worthy of being called suspenseful. Ole Miss is going to get another quarterback before next fall. It may be after the spring or in the summer, but this staff is going to get one, and likely more than one. Former Oxford High quarterback Jack Abraham announced his intentions to transfer from Mississippi State last week. Abraham is a former Tulane commit, Louisiana Tech signee, Northwest Mississippi CC transfer and Southern Miss transfer before he ended up in Starkville last spring. An early concussion prevented him from having any real shot of pushing for the starting job for the Bulldogs last year. You might think that sounds silly, but if you’ll remember this time a year ago, it wasn’t certain Will Rogers was State’s guy. Anyway, Abraham might make some sense as a depth piece. Having another guy in the room is something Ole Miss needs, even beyond whoever they land to compete for the starting job — if they land anyone at all(?). I don’t know more than you do when it comes to Abraham. I am just guessing. It makes logical sense.
There was a report last week that Kiffin met with Georgia quarterback J.T. Daniels and (now Alabama bound) wide receiver Jermaine Burton in Athens last week. I don’t think that report was accurate. It didn’t come from someone dialed into the program. Also, when is the last time you’ve seen a coach go meet with a transfer, on that player’s current campus and tweet that he’s there? I don’t think this was another Harbaugh I-Hop moment. It just didn’t add up. With that said, it does sound like Ole Miss has been in contact with Daniels to some extent. Who knows where that goes. It seems obvious the focus and hope in the building is on Dart. But, as with most things in college sports, trying to predict the behavior and decision-making of 18-22-year-old dudes is often an impossible game. For now, we wait and see if Ole Miss can land a quarterback and go into spring practice with a clear sense of direction at the most important position on the field.
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Ole Miss tops Florida to begin three-game week
Ole Miss Basketball capped a horrific week last week with an 18-point loss in Starkville in another brutal showing on the offensive end. With a game just 48 hours later to kick off a three-game week, it appeared the rubber was about to meet the road in terms of this team’s buy-in the rest of the year. At 9-9 and 1-5 in SEC play, would this team throw in the towel from an effort standpoint and slog through the final two months of the season? The answer, apparently, was no, and credit to them for that.
The Rebels beat Florida, 70-54, in the Pavilion last night in what was a reschedule of both teams’ SEC opener on December 29 that was canceled due to Covid-19. It was hardly a thing of beauty in the first half, with the score tied at 22 and Ole Miss ending the half with a nearly four-minute-long field goal drought (stop me if you’ve heard that before). But, to this team’s credit, it continued to defend, found some offensive success in the second half, and beat the Gators running away.
If you read the weekend newsletter, I was pretty tough on Davis and this team and the product they’re putting out on the floor. But, one thing I noted, and Bracken and I talked about this on the podcast as well, is that despite all of the issues, there is a decent young core in place. I think you saw that on display on Monday. Daeshun Ruffin scored 21 points on 6-13 shooting. He shot eight free throws, just one three and scored 15 of the 21 in the second half. Matthew Murrell added 20 points on 8-12 shooting and was 3-6 from three-point range. Ruffin is showing flashes of becoming a good scoring guard in the SEC. He got to the rim often and finished more times than not last night. Again, of his 13 shots, only one was a three. I think that’s his game, at least for right now until he’s able to develop a consistent jumper. He’s quick and is a great finisher at the rim. Keep in mind that he missed basically the entire nonconference season with that wrist injury. This was only his 11th college game and his 7th start. He’s starting to get comfortable.
Murrell shot it better last night and I thought he took better shots too. He was better driving to the basket than he has been for most of this year. He has a nice-looking stroke. He just hasn’t made jump shots consistently as you would like to see so far this year. It’s also worth noting that he had three steals and Ruffin had four. These were both highly-touted recruits and huge lands for the program when they signed. There are missed evaluations elsewhere on this roster, but these two are more than talented enough to become a good SEC backcourt tandem. Davis and this staff are going to have to do a better job building next year’s roster around them. But there is at least something to build around. Joiner isn’t young, but Ole Miss is presumably going to get him back healthy next year — and don’t forget about sophomore Jaemyn Brakefield. I don’t know exactly what he is yet as a player, but he’s a former 4-star prospect and Duke signee. There are pieces available to right this ship. It’s just a matter of filling everything else out in a more competent manner.
If there is a reason to continue to watch a .500 basketball team with no realistic postseason aspirations, it’s to watch this young core of guys and see which of them, if any, take strides in their development. I think you’ll learn something about next year. Ole Miss hosts Arkansas on Wednesday and then Kansas State on Saturday as part of the SEC-Big 12 Challenge.
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What a weekend of football
A little under 48 hours have passed since the end of the NFL Divisional round. This year’s version might be the best NFL playoff weekend ever. I always chuckle at all of us as sports fans immediately feeling the need to compare everything great to something else great and dub it as the greatest of all time. I am not sure how you can concretely label something so subjective. I just enjoyed it for what it was — two incredible days of football. But if there are three or four weekends that are on the Mount Rushmore of NFL football weekends, I feel pretty confident this one claims a spot. Three games were decided on a last-second field goal and the fourth one might have been the greatest football game I have ever seen. I can say with certainty I have never seen a football game with two better quarterback performances than the one on Sunday between the Bills and Chiefs. Here are a few thoughts on each game.
Chiefs 42, Bills 36 - It sucks that someone had to lose. Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen each played the closest thing to perfect football as you may ever see in a game of that magnitude. I was legitimately upset that it had to end. The final 12 minutes of regulation was as good as sports get. It’s insane that 13 seconds is too much time to leave Mahomes when he only needs a field goal to extend the game. It’s almost equally as insane that Allen went 27-37 while rushing the ball for 6.2 yards per carry on 11 carries. He quite literally knocked a linebacker out of the game on one fourth quater run. The two best quarterbacks in football put on a show for the ages. Doesn’t this feel like the beginning of Brady-Manning 2.0? I think it will end up being better, honestly. Both of these quarterbacks are 25 and 26 years old respectively and have already met in the playoffs twice. As great as Brady-Manning was, I don’t remember as many high-profile showdowns in the playoffs as I do in the regular season. I think Mahomes-Allen is on a collision course to happen at least five more times in the postseason, if not more.
People got upset at the NFL overtime rules souring the ending of that game. It led to a predictable, two-sided hot take battle. One side thinks the rules ruined the best game ever and the other side loudly declares the Bills should have gotten a stop. Can’t two things be true at once? Yes, the Bills could have gotten a stop in overtime. But neither defense got stops down the stretch. Why is the Chiefs defense exempt from having to get a stop? If you want to make the ‘well, they should’ve played better’ argument, you’d be smarter to point toward the fact that Buffalo allowed Kansas City to move the football 43 yards in 13 seconds. Why the Bills didn’t squib kick it on the ensuing kickoff after their go-ahead touchdown, and why they played hail mary defense when the best quarterback in the world had two timeouts is beyond me.
With that said, the NFL overtime rules do suck. The league has spent a decade or more tailoring everything to be quarterback-friendly and geared toward offense and fantasy points. How does it make any sense that in today’s offense-heavy format a playoff game can end without one quarterback ever being allowed to take the field? It’s a shame a coin flip and a gassed defense prevented Allen from getting a shot to answer. I get why the rules are the way they are. The NFL is a well-oiled machine when it comes to its product. Games are three hours and very rarely go longer than three hours and a few extra minutes. It’s also a safety thing. In a 17-game regular season, the league doesn’t want guys playing 15 extra minutes on top of an already grueling 60-minute game. But on the biggest stage in the playoffs, can we not just play an extra quarter? Is there one person on earth that complained about the length of that game? The playoff rules are not consistent with how the NFL has tailored its product. I hope it changes. I would have loved to have seen Allen answer and the two quarterbacks go back-and-forth until one of them blinked. Here’s to hoping we get to see that one day.
Los Angeles 30, Tampa Bay 27 - Tom Brady was short-handed at receiver and on the offensive line, and it showed. It was a valiant comeback and a nearly historic choke by Los Angeles. Poor Cam Akers. What a brutal late fumble. But you have to tip the cap to Matt Stafford. The guy played for a terrible organization in Detroit for a decade and was labeled as someone who couldn’t win when it mattered. Yet, when his team was on the brink of total collapse — to no fault of Stafford’s. He was terrific — he made the biggest throw of the game to set up the field goal to send the Rams to the NFC Championship game. It’s a cool story. Now, all the Rams have to do is win two games in their own building to hoist the Lombardi trophy.
I have no idea if this was Brady’s last game, but when he got strip-sacked by Von Miller, the look on his face while he was on the ground was that of a man who didn’t want to continue playing football. It will be interesting to see what Brady decides to do. He seemed adamant about playing until he’s 45 (he’s 44). But his comments on his podcast the day after the loss made it sound like he is really contemplating hanging it up. I bet he comes back and Tampa runs it back one more time with this group, but I could be wrong.
San Francisco 13, Green Bay 10 - Raise your hand if you had the Niners beating Aaron Rodgers at Lambeau Field, in the snow, without an offensive touchdown? This was a baffling result. I am not shocked San Francisco won. I am shocked at how it won. Every obnoxious, overly-political sportswriter and media personality in this sad, dying industry had their fun at the expense of Rodgers demise because of his politics. Vaccine content is the most original and creative content out there, and I can only hope to be as witty as the people who gleefully allow nauseating political discourse to seep into their day job (because that is a totally normal thing to accept). I find it more thought-provoking to point out Rodgers 7-9 in playoff games since the 2010 Super Bowl and has the same amount of playoff wins over the last half-decade as Blake Bortles. Rodgers is one of the most talented players to ever play the position. When he’s on, I still contend there isn’t anyone I would rather watch, but the postseason results are a large blemish on a hall of fame career. They don’t really make any sense either. Am I the only one that thought he looked bored throughout the game? The Niners defense is really good, but to not be able to score two touchdowns on them was shocking to me.
Good for Jimmy G, I guess. I still think San Francisco moves on from him barring a Super Bowl win. But hey, he’s two wins away from reaching his second Super Bowl in three years. The Niners are a really complete football team.
Bengals 19, Titans 16 - The Titans blew the best shot they’ll have to win a Super Bowl with this current group. Hell, maybe their best shot ever, aside from the infamous Kevin Dyson Super Bowl in 1999. I cannot believe they lost this game. They sacked Joe Burrow nine times and didn’t allow a passing touchdown. Tennessee was the better team for three quarters. Credit to Burrow for continuing to get back up and making three huge throws in the final six minutes when it mattered most. I am afraid the Titans got a dose of reality in terms of their ceiling with Ryan Tannehill at quarterback. He was awful in this game, and unfortunately, even an average performance would’ve sent the Titans to a home AFC Championship game. It sucks as a Titans fan. The one seed is so hard to get and it fell in their lap this year. Now, you look around the AFC and you are likely going to have to beat at least two of these five quarterbacks to get to a Super Bowl for the next decade: Mahomes, Allen, Burrow, Justin Herbert and Lamar Jackson. Yuck.
Aside from the Titans being a joke of a franchise, I continue to find myself rooting for Burrow, from LSU until now. He took a franchise that hasn’t won a playoff game in 31 years, has a top-five worst owner in the NFL and an average offensive line to the AFC Championship game in year two while coming off a catastrophic knee injury his rookie year. I would go to war with that guy any day of the week. Go Bengals the rest of the way. Who Dey.
Sean Payton steps away
News broke a few hours ago that Sean Payton is stepping away as the head coach of the New Orleans Saints. It’s the culmination of the most successful 15-year run in the history of the franchise. I feel like I have a unique perspective on this. I grew up in Jackson, MS. No one in my family cared about the Saints and I didn’t grow up a Saints fan, but I was surrounded by them. I enjoyed prodding them as a kid, asking where all of their Saints merch was prior to the 2009 season. It’s a joke, of course, because the Saints have some of the most loyal fans in sports and you can make a strong argument there isn’t a professional sports franchise that means more to a city than the Saints mean to New Orleans. Payton is a huge reason for the previous sentence being true.
NFL jobs are the most coveted jobs in football and are among the most attractive in sports. But go read the newspaper stories from around the time Payton was hired. No one wanted that job. The Saints were coming off a 3-13 season that was mostly played in San Antonio in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and there was buzz about New Orleans losing the franchise. Payton told a story at his press conference on Tuesday about how pissed he was upon learning he didn’t get the Packers job. He found out he didn’t get itwhile prepping to interview with Mickey Loomis for the Saints gig and chucked his flip phone (man, those were the days. Shoutout to the Razr). Seriously, no one wanted that job.
You know the rest of the story, from landing Drew Brees — if you needed another reason to hate or love Danny Kanell, his father was the team doctor for the Dolphins that didn’t clear Brees, preventing Nick Saban and the Dolphins from signing Brees and steering him to New Orleans, and Saban to Alabama — to making it to the NFC Championship game in year one, Bountygate and everything in-between. He turned the Saints into a winner and constructed a golden era of New Orleans football. It’s still weird to see this era come to a close with Brees retiring last year and now Payton stepping away. I have zero emotional ties to the team or either one of them, but it’s hard not to appreciate the impact they had on a city and a region of the country.
Payton isn’t done coaching. But I don’t think he’s taking the Cowboys job in a month. My guess is he does TV for a year and then becomes the hottest commodity in the 2023 coaching carousel. Maybe he ends up in Dallas after that. Jerry Jones keeps Mike McCarthy for one more lame-duck year, axes him, and then brings home the guy he’s coveted for a decade. Who knows. But what I do know is that Payton will probably be the most famous and beloved coach in Saints history, and as melancholy as the news may seem to Saint fans today, it’s unique he left on his own terms. That’s so rare in the NFL that it’s nearly non-existent. Payton certainly earned the right to do that, too.
On the horizon
Catching up with Weldon Rotenberg tomorrow on Ole Miss, Sean Payton and more for a late Wednesday pod
A couple more newsletters with football, golf and maybe some portal news.
That’s all from me today. Thanks for being a loyal subscriber. Send to your friends and tell them to join in on the fun by hitting the subscribe button below. It is free.