Ole Miss catches Arkansas at a precarious spot on both its own schedule, and the Razorbacks schedule. It’s a game the Rebels should win handily. They are double-digit favorites, but it’s one that could absolutely turn into a loss if Ole Miss comes out flat and takes the Razorbacks lightly. I generally loathe that clichéd phrase, but I think it applies in this instance.
Let’s examine some storylines.
Schedule is no friend to Arkansas
Arkansas has lost three games in a row and has spent nearly a calendar month on the road. The SEC royally screwed the Razorbacks on scheduling this season. Arkansas last played a home game on September 16, a 38-31 loss to BYU. The Razorbacks will not play another game in their home stadium until October 21st. That seems impossible, right? Well, it isn’t. The league sandwiched the neutral site contest against Texas A&M in Arlington between a road game at LSU and back-to-back road contests against the Rebels and then at Alabama. That’s a pretty brutal break to go more than a calendar month without playing a home game.
To make matters worse, Arkansas insists on playing a game in Little Rock every year. I am sure there are reasons for this that I do not care enough to read into, but as someone who has covered a game in that stadium, it is a dump. If I were an Arkansas fan, I would be incredibly annoyed that a home game is wasted in Little Rock. Because the Razorbacks’ season opener was in Little Rock, their November 11th home contest against Auburn will be just the FOURTH game played in Fayetteville this season. To put that in perspective, on Friday November 10, exactly two weeks before Thanksgiving, three games will have been played inside Razorback stadium. Yuck.
Not to belabor the point, but Arkansas enters this game as a desperate team who has been away from home for a long period of time and is desperate for a win. The Razorbacks are staring five straight losses in the face if they are unable to win in Oxford on Saturday. The pressure on Sam Pittman is intensifying. Arkansas will bring a level of intensity similar to what Ole Miss possessed against LSU last week, and the Rebels will need to match it.
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Arkansas has offensive line issues
The predominant reason for the Razorbacks’ struggle in 2023 is their inability to run and pass block up front. Arkansas has the third worst rushing offense in the SEC thru five games at just 126 yards per contest. The Razorbacks have allowed the third most sacks (18) in the league through five games.
Quarterback K.J. Jefferson’s surface-level passing numbers have not suffered much. He’s completing 68 percent of his passes at 8.4 yards per completion — slightly down from his 2021 (9.7) and 2022 (8.8) marks, but not by much. The biggest difference with Jefferson this season is that he has already thrown four interceptions. He threw four all season in 2022 and just five in 2021. He’s a large, athletic, running quarterback who rarely turns the football over.
Arkansas lost offensive coordinator Kendall Briles to Clemson in the offseason. Jefferson, throughout his entire career, has played in Briles’ system that favors run-pass option actions and favors taking the top off the defense with the deep ball. Now, new offensive coordinator Dan Enos has implemented a slower pro-style offense. It appears to have Jefferson playing more tentatively and less aggressively than he has in the previous two seasons. Throw in a lack of protection and the end result is this: Arkansas is wasting a season in which it has a talented, veteran SEC quarterback due to the offensive line’s incompetence and a new system that does not fit Jefferson’s best attributes.
While I am far from locked into the day-to-day happenings at Arkansas, I’d have to imagine this is a main source of the fan and admin frustration with Pittman. When he got the job in 2019, Pittman had never been a coordinator at any level of football. He was a career offensive line coach who was supposed to be a program CEO and a tremendous recruiter. While the recruiting across the board has been pretty good during his tenure, and pretty good on the offensive line in particular, development on the offensive line has been an issue. When you’re a head coach who was seen by many as being in over his head from the time he took the job, with one of your calling cards being a great offensive line coach, and the offensive line stinks — that is, well, suboptimal, as far as making a case to keep your job.
I understand this series has been very weird over the last half decade or so. I get the angst Ole Miss fans might have facing Arkansas a week after such a dramatic and program-validating win. But I view this game through a pretty simple lens: Arkansas cannot block, and as complicated of a game as football can be, it is very simple and very hard when a team cannot run the football or protect its quarterback. Teams like that will struggle. Ole Miss should take full advantage and win by multiple scores.
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Rocket Sanders looks like a shell of himself
Coming off a season in which he ran for 1,443 yards at 6.5 yards per carry, Arkansas running back Rocket Sanders looks like a different player this year, and not in a good way. After a pedestrian performance in the season opener, he missed the next three games with a knee injury before returning against Texas A&M. His return did not go well. Sanders carried the ball 11 times for 34 yards in the loss to the Aggies. Maybe he’s still rounding back into form and trying to trust his recovering knee ailment (similar to Prieskorn and Harris against Alabama versus what they looked like against LSU). Maybe his second game back from injury will see him return to the All-SEC form he showed last year, but given the struggles the Razorbacks are having on the offensive line, I have my doubts.
For Ole Miss, its path to defensive success is relatively simple: contain Rocket Sanders and Arkansas doesn’t have many other bullets to fire. Yes, Jefferson could run wild on the Rebels if they are undisciplined in defending the RPO and solidifying containment on passing plays. But the idea that Jefferson can win this game throwing the football seems far-fetched given his struggles in this new pro-style system that lives in the middle of the field on short and intermediate routes. The Ole Miss secondary has shown tremendous athleticism and ball skills for most of this season, despite some glaring coverage busts. I have a hard time imagining a scenario in which Arkansas wins this game because Jefferson and a pedestrian receiving corps torched the Rebels’ secondary.
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Can the Ole Miss offense follow up a masterful performance?
To compound its issues on the offensive side of the ball, an Arkansas defense that has been on the field a lot early in this season has been a bottom-tier SEC defense through five games. The Razorbacks boast the third-worst rush defense in the conference through five games, allowing 180 yards per contest. The pass defense has not been much better, allowing a second-to-worst (in the SEC) mark of 274 yards per game.
In the LSU-reaction column, I pondered the idea of Ole Miss being a budding offensive juggernaut that is finally getting all of its pieces fully healthy and functional. The Rebels looked like an elite offense last week, albeit against a bad LSU defense. The presence of Caden Prieskorn, both as an additive in the running game and a massive and reliable target in the passing game, propelled this offense to a different level of production. Couple that with a healthy Tre Harris, a guy who Kiffin has repeatedly said changes the way the offense operates, and Ole Miss looked like an offense that will be incredibly difficult to stop. However, that was only a four-quarter sample size.
Can this unit follow up its performance with another similar to it? It would be ridiculous and unreasonable to expect the Rebels to top the 700-yard, 50-point output it produced a week ago again. But Arkansas is a bad SEC defense. Ole Miss should have no problem moving the football at will on the Razorbacks. Does that assertion actually come to fruition? We talked and wrote about last week being a validation for Ole Miss as a program. This week is an opportunity for validation for this offense. Was last week just a brilliant four quarters required of a team with its collective back against the wall, or is this an elite offense that will shred bad defenses? Saturday will be telling as far as answering that question.
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Four questions to ponder for Ole Miss
Last week, Prieskorn proved how valuable of a weapon he was in the running game and as a pass catcher, particularly on third down. As he eases into the season after missing three games due to a foot surgery (confirmed surgery haver!), does he become a force? NFL scouts rave about Prieskorn as a future pro. We got a taste of what he can do last week. Does this week force us to ponder him as the most lethal threat in this offense? He’s 6-foot-6, 250 lbs. His pass-catching radius is something to behold. No fault of his own, I am waiting on the breakout game that forces me to declare him as one of the best tight ends in the country.
Can Ole Miss generate a consistent pass rush against a shoddy Arkansas offensive line? As I wrote above, if the Rebels corral Sanders, the Razorbacks have few bullets left in the chamber. If Ole Miss consistently pressures Jefferson, affords him little time to throw, and does not allow him to extend plays with his feet, I am not sure how Arkansas moves the football. The baseline statistics against LSU paint a picture of a formidable Ole Miss pass rush. To my admittedly untrained eye, I thought the pass rush was very erratic. It was solid on some plays and nonexistent on others. It needs to be consistent on Saturday.
Is the running game back? Quinshon Judkins looked like the 2022 version of himself last week against a porous LSU defense. Arkansas’ defense isn’t much better. Has this offensive line, despite still rotating guys in on both sides of the line throughout the course of the game, figured something out? One omission from the last column I wrote was a notable schematic change Ole Miss made as far as the running game is concerned. The Rebels showed more pistol formation looks than they have at any other point in the Kiffin era that I can remember. It seemingly made the running game more downhill and effective. Will the line and Judkins validate this breakthrough on Saturday?
Is Ole Miss ready to meet this moment? What do I mean by that? The Rebels are riding the highest of highs right now, coming off a program-solidifying win. They’re catching a desperate Arkansas team at home heading into a bye week. How mature is this team? Does it bring the same level of intensity and urgency when the stakes don’t seem as high? I think Kiffin knows he has a good, mature group of guys in the locker room this year. Handling business with relative ease this weekend would speak to that, arguably more so than gutting out a win over LSU last week.
If Ole Miss is able to win this game move to 5-1 entering a bye week, the Rebels will be set up quite well for what is sure to be a dramatic and fascinating second half of the season. A win on Saturday, a week off, because of the injuries the injuries the team suffered before the season, would seemingly position them to enter mid-October as healthy as any team in the country — with an SEC West divisional title still perfectly within reach. Last Saturday’s win kept the hope alive. A win this Saturday would shift the conversation into a far more realistic air.
Enjoy the game.