Ole Miss' win over LSU was a multi-faceted validation
The Rebels still have a long road ahead, but Saturday's win was a validation of many things
Saturday’s win, and the scene that came with it, was emblematic of a pivotal moment in the Lane Kiffin era.
Thirsty for a signature victory, on the heels of the most disappointing loss of Kiffin’s tenure in Oxford, Ole Miss played a nearly-perfect game on offense in its 55-49 win over LSU on Saturday.
The victory was a validation of sorts for both Kiffin and this 2023 team. It was also evidence of stability and cohesion in both the short and long term, amongst this team and the program.
Above all else, it provided a reason for optimism as the Rebels’ pursuit of an SEC Western Division Championship remains alive, whereas the opposite would have been the case with a loss.
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Pushed to the brink, Ole Miss never flinched
I view ‘win probability’ as a generally silly and useless stat far more often than I find it to be a helpful metric. But in the case of Ole Miss on Saturday, as precious seconds melted off the clock in the fourth quarter, win probability was reflective of just how dire the situation was for the Rebels. When LSU scored a somewhat controversial touchdown on a 29-yard deep ball from Jayden Daniels to Brian Thomas, the Tigers led 49-40 after a successful extra point, and also held a 92.7 percent win probability. Ole Miss had less than an 8 percent chance to win a game it could ill-afford to lose.
Down nine points with 8:24 remaining in the season’s most consequential game, Ole Miss needed to to drive 65 yards for a score, generate a stop by forcing just the third LSU punt of the game, and then orchestrate another drive to give itself a shot at a potential game-winning field goal or touchdown. And, as the game actually played out, the Rebels generated two stops and two touchdowns to seal a dramatic, come-from-behind win.
"I just thought we had an overwhelming amount of confidence. We'd been moving the ball all game long,” Jaxson Dart said after the game. “Before I even went out to the huddle from the sideline, I knew we were going to score. I could see it in everyone's eyes, just to see how determined they were and focused, also calm.”
Down two scores with less than nine minutes left against one of the best offenses in college football, a team with nearly 50 newcomers and very little battle-tested experience accrued together, possessed a quiet calmness, according to one of its undisputed leaders.
“I knew this team was different,” Dart said. I thought we had a great week of practice this week. We had a team meeting and a player meeting this week. We saw everything that everyone put out about us after the Alabama game. We're more disappointed than anyone else was about that game. We just had to regain everyone's focus. I thought this week we stepped it up the whole week of practice and we fixed those errors and issues. Like I said, we had confidence coming in before the game and I was so proud of how resilient our guys were.”
In this current transfer portal and NIL-fueled era of college football, no program has consistently relied on the portal than Kiffin and Ole Miss. Naturally, this strategy warranted questions about chemistry and team cohesion. How does a team of relative strangers come together in a handful of months? And how does it fare when adversity strikes? Kiffin’s fielded at least a dozen questions about this over the last two seasons and has acknowledged the difficulty of building chemistry and maintaining culture with essentially an entirely new team each season.
The 2021 team didn’t face a lot of adversity as it marched to a 10-2 record. Last year, when hardship struck — like after a devastating November home loss to Alabama — the 2022 team faded. This year, on the heels of a disappointing defeat to the Crimson Tide and its preseason goals and aspirations hanging in the balance, this group thrived.
“It was big for both sides of the ball to have to make plays in the last four series of the game. The offense got two scores and the defense got two stops. Can’t do any better in that situation. We have some really cool kids who had a really hard week. They went into a really hard place to play a week ago. Teams don’t win (at Alabama) often. It was a hard week. This team practiced hard this week.
“I challenged them. No disrespect to last year’s team, we are 8-1 and lose to Alabama. We that completely affect us and we fall apart and lose the rest of the games. Two years ago, a team that was very close, very tight, went into Alabama undefeated and got smoked. That team rallied, went 10-2 and went to the Sugar Bowl. We had a choice: which team do we want to be? I hope we answered that today.”
Saturday’s win is not a concrete declaration that a portal-heavy recruiting strategy is an infallible way to build a roster and run a program, nor does it guarantee this team won’t succumb to the next dosage of adversity. But it does serve as validation that all of those things can be true and that it is ultimately possible to have a tight-knit group bred from the portal. It made me wonder if Kiffin and this coaching staff (as any good staff should do) learned from how last season ended and utilized those lessons in how they approached recruiting in the portal — pursuing the right players and personalities in addition to the ultimate goal of acquiring talent to fill position gaps and formulate depth. The way Kiffin talks about this 2023 team in comparison to last year suggests that he knows he has a good group of people in that locker room.
If nothing else, it was gratifying to see a group that, when pushed to the brink, played its best football.
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The offense Kiffin envisioned took shape on Saturday
As mentioned above, the Ole Miss offense played a nearly-perfect game on Saturday.
Yes, the LSU defense has its issues. Through five games, the Tigers rank last in the SEC in yards per play and second to last in yards allowed per game. LSU’s secondary is thin and the Tigers are generating fewer than two sacks per game. But that unit still features the likes of Harold Perkins and Maason Smith, and the Tigers have played three SEC West opponents and 5th-ranked Florida State in four of their five games.
None of that should diminish the 55-point, 706-yard performance the Rebels put up on Saturday evening. The Ole Miss offense was hit by the injury bug before it played a competitive down. Zahkari Franklin and Caden Prieskorn each missed the first three games of the season. Tre Harris missed essentially two games with a leg injury, and was far from healthy in the loss at Alabama. Even though Prieskorn and Franklin returned in the loss in Tuscaloosa, wading into game action for the first time on the road against a ranked opponent is hardly a manageable task. Saturday felt like the first time Ole Miss had its full complement of pieces to power the machine, and the result was pretty eye-opening.
After struggling to get star running back Quinshon Judkins and the running game going in the first four games, the Rebels ran for 317 yards on 49 attempts at a clip of 6.5 yards per rush. Judkins carried it 33 times for 177 yards and a score. Ole Miss ran 88 plays in this game: 49 rushes, 39 pass attempts. Balance is crucial to Kiffin and Charlie Weis jr.’s offense, and Ole Miss achieved balance for the first time this season against LSU.
So, what was different in the running game? Prieskorn’s presence cannot be underscored. He is 6-foot-6, 250 lbs. and was a crucial run-blocking piece on several plays, in addition to hauling in a handful of crucial receptions on third down.
“Caden is a great player,” Judkins said. “He’s changed the way our offense works. You can utilize him in so many ways.”
I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that Ole Miss having its full arsenal of pass-catching targets healthy resulted in Dart having the best game of his Rebel career.
This offense looked like an explosive unit that will be hard to stop if it remains healthy. That is something Kiffin has been hinting at the last couple of weeks. Before the Alabama game, he called Prieskorn a crucial piece to this attack. He’s pointed out more than twice how different the offense is when Harris is on the field versus when he isn’t.
"I've been saying, number nine [Tre Harris], he's been healthy eight series before. Seven touchdowns, one field goal, and he caught five of the touchdowns,” Kiffin said. “This guy is an electric receiver in our system, so that's why I was kind of down. He couldn't do anything in the game a week ago, so now he's probably 90% which is amazing. Just really excited to be back at full strength which we were not last week.”
These reinforcements have joined Dayton Wade and Jordan Watkins, two immensely valuable players whose performances in the absence of the other guys should not go under-appreciated. Watkins has tallied more than 100-yards in three of the five games. Wade caught a season-high seven passes in the win.
Ole Miss will face tougher defenses than the one LSU rolled out there last Saturday, but it remains significant that the first time the offense benefited from a clean bill of health, the results were historic. Kiffin has alluded to this every week until it finally came to fruition.
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This win was validating for Jaxson Dart
I sometimes get accused of being a Dart apologist, and while I think his importance to Ole Miss the last two years has been undervalued, questioning his play in big games against the best competition was more than fair. I thought he erased those doubts in this win. Dart went 26-39 for 389 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions. He notched 50 rushing yards on seven attempts. Most importantly he made sound decisions.
"Yeah, I think Jaxson [Dart] kind of fits in what I'm saying about the team as much as anybody,” Kiffin said. '“As far as all the heat, all the criticism, how he played in Alabama, can he play in big games, all of that. To come out and just play, I mean really play amazing. To go 26-of-39, four touchdowns, no interceptions, 389 yards, and then you put another 50 yards on the ground for another touchdown. And no sacks, which he got out of a couple. Especially the one to Quinshon [Judkins], that was amazing.
“A lot of quarterbacks, a lot of years, a lot of games where you're down two scores and you don't take the team and lead them like that.”
Hints of Dart’s progression as a quarterback can be derived from his handling of the offseason turnover at the position. Ole Miss brought in two highly-touted quarterbacks to fill out the position room, never “publicly” declared a starter until after the season’s first game, yet to anyone halfway paying attention, there never really was a quarterback competition. This is due to Dart’s improvement of course, but also his leadership. Enduring a quarterback competition for a second straight year, on the heels of a sturdy true-sophomore campaign at the then-19-year-old put together, could’ve thwarted him. Early season injuries to his pass-catching corps could’ve adversely affected his play. A subpar performance on a big stage the week before could’ve planted doubt in his mind. But Dart overcame all of that and played his best career game when Ole Miss needed it most.
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This win was validating for Kiffin, too
Last week, for the first time since he took over as head coach in December of 2019, Ole Miss fans and media alike began to doubt Kiffin’s ability to win marquee games — the kind that his own heightened standards and $9 million salary expect of him. After a dud of an offensive performance at Alabama — a game he covets most on the schedule, made clear by his comments and behavior — created an opportunity for valid doubt about both his greatest strength has a head coach (explosive and innovative offenses) as well as his ability to build a program equipped to regularly compete for championships.
A narrative began to form about Kiffin’s lack of a signature win. Whether you, the reader, found that more than fair or completely unjust, there is no doubt the storyline existed. This was a bonafide signature win for Kiffin in a crucial spot in this team’s season. A loss would’ve all but erased any hope of an SEC West title and would’ve made an access-bowl birth incredibly difficult to attain.
With a cloud of doubt looming, Kiffin (and Weis Jr.) responded with a nearly perfect offensive performance that Ole Miss needed every bit of to win this game. Asked about whether he felt the pressure that doubt created, Kiffin shrugged off the notion.
“I don’t really think like that,” Kiffin said. “I put a lot of pressure on myself. I saw (Ole Miss AD) Keith (Carter) after the (Alabama) game and apologized. That one was one me. I am hard enough on myself. I am really proud of our guys.”
A win or a loss wouldn’t have defined Kiffin’s career at Ole Miss, but a defeat would’ve certainly gone a hell of a lot farther in doing so, and would’ve fueled that newly-forming narrative.
There are still seven games remaining in this season. A lot could go well and a lot could still go wrong. But with his back metaphorically pushed against a wall, Kiffin and Ole Miss returned with their best punch. Their reward is a collective sigh of relief as the Rebels continue to dive into the teeth of their SEC schedule.
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So, what’s next?
As remarkable of a performance as the offense pieced together, there is still much room for Ole Miss as a whole to improve.
We didn’t talk about defense much in this column. The Rebels allowed 637 yards and 49 points, including over six yards per carry on the ground. Some of that is simply due to the incredible play of Jayden Daniels and the Tigers offense. Daniels was nearly flawless in the first half. All three of the long touchdown passes he threw were perfectly placed throws. To an untrained eye, Ole Miss offered pretty stern coverage, but was simply bested by a top-level quarterback and a pair of NFL-caliber receivers operating at a high level.
With that said, the run defense is still a concern, as are the defense’s tendency to have a handful of coverage busts per game. The pass rush generated three sacks and four quarterback hurries, but also allowed Daniels to run for 99 yards. An early turnover and a pair of crucial late stops proved to be the difference, but the jury is still out on just how good this defense is — or better put, how good it can be.
Next week, a struggling Arkansas team with a talented veteran quarterback will come to Oxford in desperate need for a win. The road doesn’t get any easier for Ole Miss. Arkansas, despite its struggles, is more than capable of beating the Rebels. The Razorbacks nearly beat LSU in Death Valley two weeks ago.
If Ole Miss can manage a win and enter its bye week at 5-1, everything this team set out to accomplish will still be within reach. It’ll set up for a fascinating back-half of the season.
But had the Rebels not prevailed and gutted a win in an adversity-stricken second half last Saturday night, we’d be having a drastically different and far less hopeful conversation.