The anatomy of disaster: Kiffin, Ole Miss, must learn from botched 2024 season
What went wrong and where must Ole Miss go from here?
In the moments after an inexplicable, devastating defeat to Florida, Lane Kiffin played out his usual post-loss routine. He spoke about “analytics”, the opposing team’s quarterback playing well, empty red zone trips and the “ball not bouncing” Ole Miss’ way. On the heels of losing to an unranked Florida team, 24-17, to end any realistic Playoff hopes for arguably the most talented Ole Miss team ever assembled, Kiffin appeared allergic to any form of the introspection he’ll need to channel to learn from this failed season.
“Disappointing outcome today. This was a game with a lot of missed opportunities, going 0-3 in the red zone, get stopped twice on fourth down and lose the turnover margin in a tough place to play, against a team that plays really well when that quarterback plays,” Kiffin said. “Credit to him. He is a really good player that made a lot of great plays in the first half. It’s a disappointing outcome. Sometimes things don’t go your way.”
His last sentence is undoubtedly true, but Ole Miss did very little to will the game in its favor. The Rebels out-gained the Gators by 120 yards. The turnover battle was even until the final three minutes of the game, when Ole Miss already trailed by seven points and was rightfully pressing due to being in a race against the clock and the scoreboard. Dart made a series of poor decisions on the final two drives that resulted in two interceptions to end a game the Rebels should have never been trailing in the first place. Dart’s postgame press conference differed drastically from Kiffin’s. There was no mention of analytics or things just not bouncing their way.
“It was a bad decision by me,” Dart said. “The only thing I can really say is that I am sorry. I am sorry to my teammates. I am sorry to my coaches and I am sorry to the fans. We cannot lose these games. This one is going to hurt for a really long time. All I can really say right now is that I am sorry.”
While Dart isn’t completely blameless for Saturday’s loss, this defeat to Florida — one that followed an eerily similar pattern to Ole Miss’ other two losses — rests at the feet of the coaching staff rather than one player. Yet it was the player with a larger appetite for shouldering responsibility in the postgame. More specifically, a player that Ole Miss would’ve never been in this position without. Dart worked tirelessly to recruit this roster and lead this team to the precipice of a playoff berth. He is an imperfect quarterback, but he is a crucial piece to the rise of Ole Miss, a kid who genuinely cares about this program, this school and this town. Dart may frustrate fans on the field at times, but the opportunity this season presented was never possible without a kid from Kaysville, Utah, who was forced to transfer from USC to no fault of his own, and arrived at Ole Miss in search of stability and acceptance, and ultimately blossomed into a star.
Why is it that a 21-year-old kid was more willing to accept blame than the $9 million man running the program?
The job of a coaching staff is to extract the best version of its team on a weekly basis. The best version of this Ole Miss team pummeled Georgia by three scores. Yet the 2024 season was torpedoed because the Rebels lost as three-score favorites at home to Kentucky, on the road to LSU in a game in which they didn’t trail for a single snap, and then as a double-digit favorite at Florida. Ole Miss lost to three teams with less talent. None of the three opponents performed beyond their talent level when they played Ole Miss. They simply let the Rebels beat themselves, and Ole Miss happily obliged. The coaching staff, specifically the offensive staff, failed this team.
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Empty second halves
In the second halves of those three losses (six quarters), Ole Miss scored a grand total of one touchdown — and it came on a 4th & 7 play in the third quarter of the Kentucky game in which Tre Harris caught a pass 10 yards downfield and ran it 38 yards into the end zone. Ole Miss converted 8-of-25 third downs in those six quarters and were outscored a combined 21-3 in the fourth quarter. The offense totaled fewer than 200 yards in the second half in two of those losses. More often than not, when a game was tight at halftime, the Rebels’ offense went into a shell in the final two quarters. The lack of consistency on that side of the football is one of the more puzzling aspects of this season. It’s also inexcusable.
There are many causes for this. Earlier in the season, Ole Miss was far too reliant on Tre Harris in the passing game. In the loss to Kentucky, Harris had 11 catches and accounted for exactly half of the team's total offensive yards. The only other receiver to record a catch in that game was Cayden Lee (2). Caden Prieskorn had one reception. Harris was lost to injury in the second half of the win at South Carolina. Ole Miss scored three points. Harris again exited the game with an injury in the second half of the loss at LSU. Ole Miss kicked three field goals in the second half. When the slightest thing went wrong on the offensive side of the ball, there seemed to be no back-up plan. Ole Miss tried to force-feed Lee the football in the absence of Harris. It failed miserably, and that is not a knock on Lee. His skillset is wildly different from what makes Harris such a dominant presence.
It took the absence of Harris over the next three games for the Rebels to change their approach to the passing game, and the offense ironically functioned more efficiently against Oklahoma, Arkansas and Georgia. If it takes your best player being physically unavailable to pivot to a different strategy, does that not make the coaching staff stubborn by definition? Stubbornness is one of many adjectives I would use to describe this hellacious season from the offense.
Ole Miss also struggled to run the football with any consistency this year. Some of that is due to running back personnel and the failed attempt to replace Quinshon Judkins. Some of it was due to the offensive line struggling all season, particularly in run blocking, despite landing four transfer linemen in the portal in what was supposed to be an effort to upgrade the offensive line. A lack of talent at running back and poor run blocking up front is a recipe for a dysfunctional running game. It’s nearly impossible to win consistently in the SEC without running the football well. An explosive running game has been a core component to Kiffin’s offenses throughout his entire career.
But even with all of that being true, the coaching staff’s puzzling use of the personnel didn’t help rectify the issue, nor did it bring clarity as to what specifically was the root cause of the problem.
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Puzzling handling of the running backs
The Ulysses Bentley IV situation will remain the greatest mystery of the 2024 season. When Judkins elected to hit the portal and go to Ohio State, Ole Miss paid Bentley to return for another season and seemingly felt pretty good about adding pieces around Bentley in the portal. The Rebels brought Henry Parrish back from Miami, added Miami (OH) transfer Rashad Amos, and Georgia State transfer Dominique Thomas. Unless this staff had an alternate plan all along, Bentley was supposed to be a key piece of the running game.
Then, the season arrived. We were all reminded that Parrish, who followed running backs coach Kevin Smith to Ole Miss, then to Miami, and eventually back to Ole Miss, was Smith’s proverbial favorite child. Parrish, an average SEC running back, debuted as the team’s starter. That’s fine, but it was Bentley literally never seeing the field that raised eyebrows as Ole Miss coasted through a joke of a non-conference schedule.
As the running game continued to falter, when asked about Bentley’s scarce usage, Kiffin essentially gaslit the fanbase by saying he’s simply not not as good as Parrish or former walk-on Matt Jones. Even after those two suffered injuries, nothing changed. Jones was unable to play at LSU due to an injury and Bentley had to play out of necessity. He ran for 107 yards on 11 carries, including a 50-yard touchdown run on a fourth-and-short down — a scenario the Rebels have notoriously struggled with all season, to the point of allowing a defensive tackle to take a direct snap and have free rein as to which gap to run through.
Kiffin was seen on the sideline shouting something in Smith’s direction after Bentley scored that night. If nothing else, that exchange wasn’t great optics for an already bizarre situation in a season littered with horrible optics. Bentley’s performance at LSU remains the only 100-yard rushing output by an Ole Miss ball carrier in SEC play.
With Parrish lost for the season, Bentley did not receive a carry in Saturday’s loss to Florida. Instead, Ole Miss used wide receiver and punt return specialist Micah Davis at running back. Yes, the coaching staff thought a fifth-string wide receiver and punt-return specialist who transferred to Ole Miss in August, was a better option at running back than Bentley.
The illogical gaslighting campaign continued the day after Saturday’s loss.
“It’s nothing off the field at all. He’s a wonderful kid and does everything we ask of him,” Kiffin said. “We just haven’t been real consistent and productive at that spot this year. Tried something else yesterday. Is what it is. Got a lot of respect for him, really appreciate how he’s handled the situation, but this is what happens in coaching. Everybody doesn’t play. You gotta make hard decisions.”
What is the hard decision? Assuming Bentley’s fully healthy (he’s apparently healthy enough to return kickoffs), he’s somehow all of a sudden not as good as Jones, Thomas and Davis? — a punt-return specialist receiver who once took some carries at the Air Force Academy a few years ago? Sure, piss on the fanbase’s head and tell them it’s raining. That’s not a remotely coherent explanation. It leads one to believe that Kiffin doesn’t think that the fans, many of whom donated money to fund the roster, deserve an explanation. What changed from January to September? What changed in the two weeks since the Georgia win? Bentley got carries in that game. If it’s so bad a receiver has to play running back in the most consequential road game of the season, why did Bentley play against LSU and Georgia? Veteran players like Dart and Jordan Watkins are advocating for Bentley to play on social media. If other players don’t understand the situation, isn’t that somewhat indicative of a problem?
Kiffin is paid $9 million to manage the roster and handle personnel. This isn’t to suggest he should cater to the whims of fans. But Ole Miss just played a game in which it ran the football 35 times and only 10 of those carries went to running backs. At what point does it become obvious the staff lost the plot?
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The offensive line has also been a mystery
Without adequate run blocking, the question of who runs the football becomes a moot point. The Ole Miss offensive line has struggled to move opposing defensive fronts. This unit was riddled with injuries early in the season. Caleb Warren and Gerquan Scott were injured during preseason camp. Jeremy James got hurt before the season’s second game. Jayden Williams was injured before the Kentucky game. Ole Miss was forced to shuffle some guys around. But Scott is the only one of the four transfers — who were brought in to supposedly upgrade the offensive line — to suffer a significant injury.
James started his 50th consecutive game in the season-opener at guard before his injury. Williams was the starting left tackle before his injury. Warren started 36 games over the previous three seasons. Scott is the only one of the four to return to the field in any significant capacity post-injury. Kiffin said entering the Florida game that the Rebels were fully healthy on the offensive line for the first time all year.
Warren has not played many snaps at all since exiting the injury report. James played sparingly at guard against South Carolina and Florida due to in-game injuries elsewhere. Williams, who wasn’t listed on the injury report last week, did not start at left tackle, but played in short-yardage packages. I am sure there are valid reasons for all of this, and it would be silly for me to act as if I know what Kiffin and his staff should do with their offensive line. It’s just puzzling that three veteran guys (particularly James and Warren, given that Williams’ was still working his way back through the second bye week) haven’t been given much of a look admidst the offensive line’s struggles.
Ole Miss invested in upgrading its offensive line in the offseason, but has seemingly regressed up front instead. It’s another head-scratching chapter in this season.
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This season has been a trainwreck from an optics standpoint
Despite all of the struggles outlined above, Ole Miss still had more than enough talent to beat Kentucky and Florida as double-digit favorites. The Rebels were talented enough to hang onto a four-point halftime lead at LSU. The shellshocked nature of the postgame press conferences following the trio of losses and the lack of substantive answers as to why they fell short has done little to ease the anguish.
The way Kiffin has discussed his team’s flaws in press conferences this year has been dramatically different than a year ago. The Bentley soap opera aside, I’ll revert back to a note I had in a previous newsletter about the way Kiffin discussed the struggles in the running game this year versus in 2023.
Last year, Ole Miss beat a ranked Tulane team on the road in the second week of the season despite running for fewer than 100 yards in the contest — a rare occurrence for a Kiffin offense at the time. That win came on the heels of rushing for only 143 yards in a 73-7 win over Mercer in week one. Kiffin was asked after the Tulane win about the early-season running game struggles.
"Highly concerned," Kiffin said "That’s very unusual for us, not just here, but anywhere. It’s just been a long (time), this job, FAU, Alabama, I don’t remember the inability to run the ball at all. They did a great job, but obviously that has a lot to do with us and that’s everybody. That’s perimeter blocking, linemen execution, running back footwork, everything. It takes everyone to have a good running game. We definitely look to improve there. That’s a major issue and one I don’t think we would’ve guessed."
This year has been a lot more of “It is what it is,” or “yeah, we’ve struggled there and are looking for a spark. Things just haven’t gone our way.”
Other than the loss of Judkins, it doesn’t seem rational to suggest the talent on the offensive line and in the running back room is remarkably worse than it was in 2023. The only stark difference between the two seasons is that this year, Kiffin has seemed flummoxed as to how to fix it. He’s paid handsomely to solve problems like this.
On Monday afternoon, he was pressed by Ben Garrett of the Ole Miss Spirit as to why Bentley doesn’t play anymore. Kiffin, seemingly flustered by being challenged on anything at all, cited yards per carry as to why.
Kiffin is not a dumb person. It’s obvious at this point his illogical crusade against Bentley is a cover for some alternative reason that we will likely never learn. The one question I have regarding it, is it the fault of the kid? Or a petty and defiant ego trip from the staff? If the latter is the case, that’s a problem.
It’s not great optics that all of the melodramatic subplots that sprouted throughout this season have been on the offensive side of the football. There have not been any baffling personnel mysteries or tactical errors on the defensive side of the football. Pete Golding’s unit has shown up every week, played at a playoff-caliber level and given Ole Miss a chance to win games. Why is that?
This offense team has not practiced what Kiffin preaches
Kiffin’s slogan since he got to Ole Miss has been “pro mindset.” While I am not sure what that actually means, it is abundantly obvious at this juncture that this team has not adopted a pro mindset. It has become an emotional rollercoaster that has not handled increased expectations well at all.
The core of this 2024 team was formed through an 11-2 campaign in 2023 that saw a resilient group erase fourth-quarter deficits against LSU, Arkansas and Texas A&M. This year’s team hasn’t displayed the same resolve. Why is that the case? Is it the stakes? The wins in 2023 were important, but there wasn’t a looming preseason “playoff or bust” expectation hovering over each game. The team’s postseason hopes did not hang in the balance in any of the aforementioned games in 2023 because there was no realistic expectation of the Rebels making a four-team playoff. Now, when the stakes have risen, this team has mostly shrunk. The offense has looked off, from play calling, to personnel usage and overall production.
A team is often a reflection of its head coach. For as much as Kiffin talks about Nick Saban, Kirby Smart and the time he spent at Alabama, he doesn’t behave in a remotely similar manner to either of those men. And while I realize that is an impossibly high standard to hold him to, he’s the one mentioning it repeatedly. I always found the narrative of “Kiffin can’t win the big game” to be silly and lazy. After this season, a far more accurate narrative is questioning whether a Kiffin-led program can handle business on a week-to-week basis to make it through an SEC schedule with a resumé worthy of making a 12-team play. The Saban model he looks up to was successful because it didn’t lose to teams it was favored over by double digits. Kiffin did that twice in one season.
This season was a failure, but this program is not failing
Two things can be true at once. This season was a failure, but this program is not failing. In fact, it is operating at as high of a level that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. Assuming Ole Miss beats a hapless Mississippi State team on Friday, it will have won 10, 8, 10 and 9 games in the last four seasons. That is one hell of a run. Kiffin deserves immense credit for that. So does the administration and the fanbase that provided him with the necessary resources to accomplish that. High school recruiting has picked up for the Rebels’ 2025 class. Kiffin has mastered the portal better than any other coach in his profession. Assuming the financial resources remain available, he will likely have another good portal class. All of that will be needed for what is a significant roster rebuild entering next season.
The perception of a healthy program should not be diluted by the disappointment of a season that fell short of expectations in excruciating fashion. This is why I never understood the “Last Dance” moniker this team bestowed upon itself after the Peach Bowl win over Penn State last winter. While I realize this was created by guys like Dart, Prieskorn and the aforementioned core from the 2023 team, and that this was quite literally their last ride in college football, I thought it was a calculated error that Kiffin, and/or Ole Miss, didn’t reject that moniker. If this is truly The New Ole Miss and the program has graduated to a different tier in the rigid college football ecosystem, then this season should’ve been just the first of many the Rebels compete for a spot in the expanded playoff, rather than some all or nothing campaign that only magnified the anguish of Saturday’s loss and left many fans wondering where the hell the program goes from here.
If Ole Miss is truly a big boy program now, then the messaging must change. It failed to make the Playoff this year, but it must present itself as capable of regrouping, assessing what went wrong and reloading for another run next year. This is arguably the most consequential offseason in Ole Miss history in that respect.
Before all of that, one more game looms
For as much time as we’ve spent writing the obituary of this 2024 Ole Miss team, the Rebels are not technically eliminated from making the College Football Playoff, though I would describe those odds as miniscule. Regardless, one more game looms against a completely hapless Mississippi State team. While many claim this game doesn’t matter and there is a deflated sense of importance bred by the ‘all or nothing’ expectations perpetuated by this Ole Miss team, this game absolutely matters.
Two years ago, Kiffin torpedoed the end of the 2022 season after losing a heart-breaker to Nick Saban — a man he became borderline obsessed with beating — and allowed Ole Miss to get dismantled by an average Arkansas team and then lost an Egg Bowl at home to a Mississippi State club the Rebels had zero business of losing to. We’ve seen what a distracted and uninterested Kiffin team looks like. I’d argue that you will find out more about the character of a Kiffin-led program, in terms of how committed he is to winning here despite this season’s failure, by how Ole Miss comes out in the Egg Bowl.
It would take a minor miracle for Ole Miss not to win the game outright. The Rebels are 27-point favorites. The Bulldogs are a completely incompetent program not designed for the modern era of college football due to their simple-minded leadership that only cares about keeping Ole Miss at the bottom of the proverbial crab bucket with them to validate their own insecurities. I mean seriously, Mississippi State’s season was made by the Ole Miss loss last week, yet none of them realize what a self-own it is to think: “haw, haw, Ole Miss dared to go try to be good, silly them. They’re just like us. They wasted money on this team.” Most of it can be attributed to their lack of a rudimentary understanding of the modern college football landscape and their cultish atmosphere that forces a brainwashed portion of their media contingent to lie to them about being left behind.
Anyway, all of that aside, this week’s game against a completely feeble in-state rival Ole Miss is on the verge of burying for good in this modern college sports landscape, will be telling about the character of this program, Kiffin’s willingness to motivate his team despite falling short of its goals and the culture he (mostly accurately) proclaims to maintain within his own program.
At the end of the day, this all rests at the feet of Kiffin
Lane Kiffin is an offensive-minded coach. Like any good coach, he gives autonomy to his assistants, lets them do their jobs and stays out of the way. But he is ultimately responsible for the results in the bottom-line business that is college football. From the debacle that is the running backs position and the running game, to the disjointed offense that was the cause of the Rebels being 4-3 in the last seven games, Kiffin must answer for that.
This offseason will be different. It can’t be explained away by saying Kiffin needed more resources or better players. There’s nothing he lacked that prevented him from beating Florida, Kentucky and LSU.
There was nothing preventing Ole Miss from making the college football playoffs other than Ole Miss. The Rebels’ own ineptitude and missteps are what will ultimately cause them to be watching the Playoff from home.
Again, the best version of this team beat Georgia handily and held the fifth best odds to win the national championship just three days ago. Now, Ole Miss is a three-loss team with its Playoff hopes on life support. Examining why anything close to the version of the Rebels that beat Georgia could not be replicated in the three losses will require some introspection from Kiffin. It will require a change in the way he approaches handling heightened expectations, being the hunted instead of the hunter.
How does Ole Miss prevent falling short again in the future? That’s the task of the man running the program. Every coach has flaws. It’s silly and unrealistic to crucify Kiffin for not being flawless in year five of a program he’s taken from a 4-8 punchline to one that people see as a place where winning at an elite level can be accomplished.
This offseason will be about Kiffin’s willingness to look inward. Whether or not he does that remains to be seen.
This was a great article. One of the best I've read after the Florida debacle.