Traction, or a lack thereof, in the QB competition
Hello and welcome back. We have a lot of catching up to do.
Is this thing still on?
Hello, it has been a minute. It’s been a little over six weeks since I last wrote in this space. That was never really my intent. On the last Friday in June, as I boarded a flight to Kansas City to snag a rental car and drive to Omaha, Nebraska, to watch Ole Miss in the national championship series, I was less than 90 minutes removed from putting in my two weeks notice at my day job in Dallas. As it turns out, a job change, a couple of weddings, a bachelor trip and moving two states over (I took a job in Oxford) really did a number on my career as a part time podcaster and newsletter writer. I suppose the job change is my fault, but the wedding nonsense is pure selfishness by my friends. I am (sort of) kidding. It was also the dead of summer and I already planned to take a week or two off. That somehow turned into six weeks. Oh well.
Anyway, enough with the excuses and rambling about the unimportant happenings in my life. We are back and ready to launch for football season. I have quite a few different ideas for content that I think you all will enjoy this year. We’ll cover one or two of them in a bit. That’s the weird part about this writing/podcast/content thing, even when pen isn’t being put to paper, I am constantly thinking of different ideas and segments that readers/listeners might enjoy. At the risk of being corny, I guess that means I love doing this. It never feels like work and yet is always on my mind. Six weeks might be the longest time I have ever gone without writing anything since I started all of this. So, with that, I promise not to test that record again. Now, to the important stuff.
Ole Miss plays a game in less than three weeks
Depending on when you read this, roughly 17 days from now, Ole Miss will commence year three of the Lane Kiffin era and play a game that counts inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. The Rebels are preseason ranked in every poll, reshaped their roster via the transfer portal and boast an almost entirely new on-field coaching staff under Kiffin. I don’t know if Ole Miss will end up as one of the best teams in college football like it did a year ago with Matt Corral under center, but I am pretty certain they are and will remain one of the most interesting teams in the sport.
This program is nationally relevant again. You, the fan, should appreciate that. It wasn’t long ago that instead of reading content like this, you were likely clicking on think pieces about why Matt Luke is the man for the job because of his Mississippi roots and how Tylan Knight could be a difference maker for the offense.. or defense(??). No disrespect intended to either of those two. Both are incredibly nice people and probably didn’t deserve the stray bullet I just fired at them, but you get my point. It’s a lot more fun to anticipate football season than it was four years ago when the peak of your fandom for the year happened on opening weekend in a half-empty NRG Stadium in Houston against a terrible Texas Tech club with a bachelor-candidate for a coach in Kliff Kingsbury who couldn’t decide on which of his three quarterbacks to give a rose to. Who said Longo Ball couldn’t work in the SEC? It will always have that day(!)
Soak it all in. That smell you smell is called stability — a foreign concept to the Ole Miss football program for the last two decades.
The traction, or lack thereof, in the QB Battle
Believe it or not, Ole Miss is actually in the middle of its final week of preseason camp. Perhaps its the fact that I no longer have to stand on a practice field in 100 degree weather to earn a paycheck, or maybe it’s the fact that Kiffin has opened practices and scrimmages to the media (something neither Freeze nor Luke did consistently when I was around), but I can’t recall a year in which preseason camp has gone by as quickly as this year. The storylines have been plentiful for a team in which the common theme is new, but no single one is bigger than who will play quarterback for the Rebels this fall.
Jaxson Dart and Luke Altmyer have spent the last two weeks of practice jockeying for the starting job. At least from a public-facing perspective, it doesn’t seem like either guy has separated himself as the frontrunner. Ole Miss had its first scrimmage of camp last Saturday. The Rebels tackled for the entire 90-minute scrimmage, something Kiffin doesn’t normally do. Whatever version of ‘that day where you really get after it,’ that still exists in modern college football, Saturday’s scrimmage appeared to be just that for Ole Miss. Dart had a better day than Altmyer if you gauge by both the unofficial stats and the consensus opinion of credentialed onlookers.
But what does that actually mean? In my opinion, not much. When asked about the quarterback play after the scrimmage, Kiffin didn’t exactly reveal a whole lot — other than his affinity for the greatness of the MAIS.
“I thought the first two guys didn’t play great,” he said. “They took too many sacks. Even though we aren’t hitting them, those would’ve been sacks in games. I thought Kinkead (Dent) played really well. We play a little game in the quarterback room where we pick or guess the MVP for the day and I picked Kinkead. Now, the play calls for touchdown passes might have had something to do with me winning that bet, but he played well and made a lot of plays.”
The reporter gave Kiffin an out by asking for his assessment of ‘all three’ of the quarterbacks instead of the two realistically fighting for the job, but I think Kiffin complemented Dent for two reasons: 1. I am sure the kid did play well. He’s an MAIS athlete. 2. I don’t think he had a lot of positive things to offer about Dart and Altmyer.
Not that this really needs to be said, but Kinkead Dent is not winning this quarterback competition. He wouldn’t be running with the third team offense if he were getting a hard look at being the right man for the job. That isn’t a knock on the kid, it’s just a harsh reality. Time and reps are limited in preseason camp, which makes it difficult to make substantive evaluations. It’s hard enough to run a quarterback competition with two guys in such a truncated timeframe. It’s basically impossible with three. Dent is hardly dead weight. Depth is needed at the quarterback position. It’s partially why Ole Miss acted so urgently in its pursuit of Dart. Entering spring ball with two scholarship quarterbacks on the roster is sort of an unheard move. In its simplest sense, the program needed more bodies at quarterback. But let’s not lose sight of reality here: Dart and Altmyer are the ones throwing metaphorical punches for the job.
So, the question everyone is wondering: who wins out? I believe looking back at how things got to this point is a useful exercise in forecasting the future.
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How did we get here?
The obvious most obvious answer is that Ole Miss legend Matt Corral departed the program for the NFL, leaving a crater of a void to fill. In the immediate aftermath of Corral’s unceremonious and undeserved end to his Ole Miss career, as he limped off the SuperDome turf with an ankle injury, we got a brief (and somewhat opaque) glimpse into the future of the quarterback position for this program. Altmyer went 15-28 for 174 yards (11.6 yards per completion) with a touchdown and two interceptions. Is it fair to judge Altmyer’s ability to play quarterback in the SEC based off of those three quarters of football? Of course not. It was an impossible situation. Baylor’s defensive line manhandled the Rebels up front. Altmyer was thrust into the game cold off the bench, to the center of a massive stage, against a feasting defensive line, no effective running game and a subpar collection of receivers. I thought Altmyer acquitted himself pretty well. But at the same time, it wasn’t a performance that made you think “Oh, they’re set here for next year. I wonder who they will find to back Altmyer up.” It was far from that.
So, enter Jaxson Dart.
Dart arrived in Oxford having lived a lot of life (in a football sense) before his 19th birthday. Think about Dart’s path to Ole Miss for a moment. The Utah native was a bit of a late bloomer as a prospect. He entered his senior year without a single power five scholarship offer (yes, seriously). After transferring to a more football-friendly program in Corner Canyon High School, Dart blew up as a prospect. He committed and signed with USC. Three months removed from lacking a power five offer, Dart enrolled at USC and went through spring practice. He beat out (a highly-touted prospect) Miller Moss for the QB2 job behind Kedon Slovis.
Two games into his freshman year, Dart’s coach, Clay Helton, was fired. Four days later, Dart replaced an injured Slovis early in a road contest at Washington State. He threw four touchdowns and tore his meniscus, missed six weeks, and then came back to play the final five games of the season with a compromised knee. By virtually any standard, Dart was a budding superstar undeterred by a sea of dysfunction around him — that is until USC hired Lincoln Riley, who brought with him quite literally the only quarterback in the country that could’ve unseated Dart from his throne as the starting quarterback of the Trojans in Caleb Williams. Riley wanted his own guy who he had a history with at Oklahoma, and there wasn’t much more to it than that. This left Dart homeless, swallowed up by the cruel business that is college football. Six weeks later, he transferred to Ole Miss with his close friend Michael Trigg and went through spring practice. Utah, to Southern California and then a great escape to Mississippi is how a man evading an arrest warrant lives. This poor kid was just seeking stability and lost a job to no fault of his own. I cannot imagine Dart had any of that in his five year plan — much less all of it happening before he turned 19 years old.
The move to bring in Dart wasn’t necessarily rooted in a lack of faith in Altmyer. Ole Miss didn’t sign a high school quarterback in its 2022 class — a somewhat rare move. The Rebels needed bodies in that room. But they also needed another legitimate option to breed competition. So, here we sit.
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Two guys with polar opposite flaws
One of the things that makes this quarterback competition so fascinating is that the coaching staff is trying to pull opposite traits out of each player. Dart takes a lot risks, makes a lot of ‘wow’ plays, as well as a lot of mistakes, and at times plays too recklessly. Altmyer doesn’t push the football down the field enough, is conservative to a fault and sometimes lacks decisiveness. Which set of flaws wins out? Perhaps a better way to ask it is this: which approach does the coaching staff value more?
Ole Miss is loaded at the running back position and, on paper, will boast one of the better starting offensive lines the program has had in the last 15 years — even if depth is a minor concern. Add in the fact that Rebels have led the SEC in rush yards per game each of the last two seasons, it is easy to see how this team could forge its offensive identity around running the football over, around and through opponents. On the surface, you’d think that favors Altmyer, right? The guy with a full year’s experience in the program who has been thrust into adverse situations before and will keep the car between the lines.
Let’s use the Kentucky game as a general example to back up this assertion. The Wildcats might have the second best team in the SEC East and have a real shot to win 10 games. And while anything you read out of Lexington will tell you that they’ve finally got their quarterback in Will Levis and will open up the offense to feature more of a vertical passing game, Mark Stoops has built that program around an identity of running the football and playing good defense. I would be shocked if Ole Miss lost to Kentucky because it wasn’t explosive enough and couldn’t complete passes 10-plus yards down the field. I would not be shocked in the slightest if the Rebels lost because they turned it over four times, threw a trio of terrible interceptions to give the Wildcats short-field scenarios and somehow looked up when the clock hit zero wondering how they lost a game in which they won most statistical categories. The defense is no longer a liability. Ole Miss can win games scoring 20 or fewer points in the right scenario. Turnovers (à la Corral at Arkansas in 2020) and recklessness will cost this team games it should otherwise win.
But there also has to be a happy medium achieved. Being one-dimensional in the SEC has a ceiling of mediocrity. The best versions of that are Mississippi State with Nick Fitzgerald or Auburn with Bo Nix — good, but not dynamic. An inability to push the ball down the field in the passing game will make any offense easier to defend. It will also work to the detriment of the running game no matter how talented the running backs or linemen are. Part of what made Ole Miss so explosive in the running game the last two seasons was opponents having the fear of God instilled in them by Corral’s ability to push the football down the field. From the limited sample size we have, I think the best version of Dart could place that same caliber of fear in opposing defenses.
The scouting report on Dart is that he is a guy with an above average arm and is at his best when playing outside of structure, using his feet and vision when plays break down. If you’ve kept up with Neal and Chase’s terrific practice coverage, you might be wondering what the hell I am talking about. Because from the sounds of it, Dart has looked poised in the pocket throughout camp and far less comfortable when the pocket collapses. I have no reason to believe that isn’t the case, but I spoke with Dart’s trainer and a few other people back in the winter when he committed, and they all lauded his playmaking and mobility more than anything else. Naturally, there’s risk that comes with that. Dart isn’t scared to take risks with the football, which is fine to a point. But is he a calculated gambler or the last guy you’d ever want to sit at a blackjack table with? If he ends up being shades of 2020 gunslinger Matt Corral, do you live with the poor decision making and savor the talent and upside? Or is it too much absorb given the surrounding talent on this roster? It’s worth noting that this team has much higher expectations than the 2020 Ole Miss Rebels, and losing two games like that team did at Arkansas and at LSU that year could be potentially be the difference in another New Year’s Six Bowl and a head-scratching 7-5 campaign.
It’s also not a concrete fact that Altmyer can’t push the ball down the field and be an effective passer, just as it isn’t certain that giving Dart the keys is going to result in a barrage of turnovers amid 35 passing touchdowns. We don’t really know the full capabilities of either of these guys. Both are second-year college players with limited game experience.
All of that considered, how do I think this shakes out? I don’t really have a strong lean either way (thanks for subscribing. This is the analysis you seek). From a public-facing standpoint, there hasn’t been much traction in this race. That could be all complete bullshit. Kiffin could absolutely know who his guy is. If he does, I can assure you the last people he is going to tell are the local beat reporting group immediately after a practice.
I do generally believe that there is still uncertainty regarding who the guy is. If all things end up equal and no one grabs the position by the throat, I tend to believe that the coaching staff will go with the option with the most upside, which appears to be Dart. I don’t think Ole Miss aggressively pursued Dart for him to sit, and I think he has the potential to be one of the best quarterbacks in college football over the next three years. On the other hand, if Dart doesn’t win the job, where is he going to go? He’s already used his one-time free transfer. In this crazy age we live in, these programs have more control over a transfer than a high school recruit in terms of roster retention. There’s no risk in Dart departing if he’s not the starter.
Would it shock me if Altmyer won the job? Not really. He’s a talented prospect in his own right. He’s tougher than hell, is almost freakishly even-keeled and seems to be well-liked by his teammates. The well-liked part is true for Dart, too, for the record. I talked to Altmyer for about an hour this summer for an NIL interview and I was genuinely impressed by the maturity in the way he approaches football. Altmyer is a 4-star prospect and a former Florida State commit. He’s not some fifth-year senior developmental project who has waited his turn for his one shot to lead a team. He just might not have quite the arm talent and mobility of Dart. Neither of those two traits automatically equate to success.
Again, it’s about finding a happy medium between the two. This staff is trying to coax polar opposite tendencies out of each guy. That makes for a compelling battle that is likely nearing its entering its final days. I can’t imagine Kiffin and Charlie Weis Jr. want this thing to drag into the season — though that is certainly a possibility given the way the schedule sets up. While the idea of playing two quarterbacks against Troy and Central Arkansas might seem like a great way to acquire more data to make an informed decision, there’s a chemistry and cohesion factor that trumps any benefits of that idea. There’s so much new on this Ole Miss team, from coaches to receivers, tackles, defensive ends and kickers, certainty as to who your guy is at the game’s most important position can go a long way in quelling uncertainty elsewhere. It’s just a matter of where that certainty comes from.
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Five random thoughts to ponder
We’ll get into many more storylines tomorrow and into this weekend as I continue to play catch up here after this hiatus. There’s a ton to discuss, I can assure you of that.
When I was a reporter, I used to dread writing practice notebooks. I found them tedious, boring, and they were usually rendered completely obsolete by the next morning when I walked my happy ass out to the practice field to sweat through another shirt and jot down more random notes for that day’s notebook, none of which anyone reading would remember five days later. What if I wrote down the wrong number for the first team offensive line? What if someone was hurt I didn’t catch? How reliable are my two eyeballs than any other random schmuck that acquired a credential? I have terrible eyesight, am part colorblind and had a tendency to get distracted talking to recruiting staffers for over half the practice. The entire exercise of putting together a notebook gave me the hives. When I look at the readership numbers of this newsletter, part of me feels vindicated by my disdain for that necessary but painstaking part of beat reporting, but here is a bit of irony in me doing basically the same thing now, except instead of notes, it’s a random collection of thoughts I find interesting. But, hey, you’re here and signed up for this, so here is what’s going on between my ears.
This defensive line depth is real- On paper, Ole Miss should have the best defensive line it’s had since at least 2015 — and probably 2014. For the first time in the Kiffin era, the Rebels have real, SEC-caliber depth up front. Tavius Robinson, Cedric Johnson, K.D. Hill and Isiah Iton all return from a year ago. Ole Miss added Oxford native J.J. Pegues from Auburn via the portal — a guy who everyone has raved about in camp. Pegues was so dominant in the scrimmage last Saturday, he had to ‘constantly remind himself’ not to hit the quarterback. Guys like Brandon Mack, Georgia Tech transfer Jared Ivey and Tywone Malone are also viable, SEC-level defenders. There’s no menacing superstar like Sam Williams that commands a double team every time the ball is snapped — at least not yet. But there are a lot of really good players on this defensive line. It’ll help this team be better late in games and become more consistent in stopping interior running attacks. It will likely be the first time since 2015 that you’ll watch a game and think “damn, this team isn’t giving an inch up the middle.”
Ole Miss is also loaded at corner. There is an argument to be made that they have the second best cornerback group in the SEC. Virtually everyone returns from a year ago. Miles Battle has gone from a position-less talent to a legitimate asset and NFL prospect. DeAntre Prince had quite the redemption year in 2021 in his return to the program after a year away at junior college. Davison Igbinosun is a true freshman from New Jersey who has consistently made plays throughout camp. With true sophomores Tysheem Johnson and Trey Washington at the nickel corner slot, this is a pretty scrappy group. The Rebels aren’t bad at safety, either. The additions of Isheem Young and Ladarius Tennison make that room better than it was a year ago, though I would like to see who is playing where before crowning the safety position as the strength of the team.
Ole Miss is formidable on the defensive line and good on the back end. Those traits are similar to that 2014 group. Now, that defense, who ended up as the best in college football, was much more secure at linebacker than this team is, but it’s also not far-fetched to think that the Rebels’ portal additions and returnees at linebacker are good enough to be an above average unit. To be clear here, I am obviously not predicting this defense will rival the 2014 in any way, I am just pointing out that there is real talent at every position and that the discussion around this defense is different than it has been for the last five years because of that fact. Not long ago were the Wesley McGriff days. I wish I could be paid seven figures to regurgitate cliches like ‘eye discipline’ and ‘leaky yardage’ while simultaneously defying physics, logic and market demand in terms of how I do my job, but I guess I got into the wrong industry. Pour one out in remembrance of the Crime Dog Era — or, maybe shotgun it plus two more of whatever you’re drinking so you don’t have to relive that disgraceful product?
I am fascinated by the wide receiver position. It was so bad last year that Matt Corral carried the football 27 times in a single game (and broke a 14-year standing record for carries in a game previously held by a running back) and undoubtedly held the offense back. Once Jonathan Mingo got hurt early last season, it was a lot of Dontario Drummond… and, well, incompetence. Remember that Auburn game in which a gimpy Corral was hurling passes at guys you had to look up in your game program? That’s a suboptimal scenario on the road in the SEC. This receiver room has to be better this year. There is no superman present to mask their mistakes like Corral did last fall.
I believe there are more SEC-caliber receivers on this roster than there were a year ago. Louisville transfer Jordan Watkins, Mississippi State transfer Malik Heath and Mizzou transfer Jalen Knox are a significant reason as to why I believe that. Michael Trigg counts too. He’s a tight end on the depth chart, but is insanely talented and can be used in more diverse ways than a cookie cutter tight end — assuming he can grasp the playbook and scheme enough to not be a liability before the ball is snapped. But do those reinforcements ensure competency? No. Kiffin was frustrated after Saturday’s scrimmage with the receivers. He had to personally line Trigg up before a play on one occasion and got onto him more than once. Dannis Jackson, a fourth-year player, was misaligned on one play too. Heath has been the only transfer to garner consistent praise from the coaching staff. There are better options here than in 2021. A healthy Mingo will be a huge plus, but I am not sure I believe this group will be an asset as opposed to a liability until I see it in game action.
More on this tomorrow, but how different will Ole Miss look schematically with two new coordinators? Chis Partridge is one hell of a recruiter and a tough-nosed guy from New Jersey. He comes from the Don Brown school of ‘solve your problems with aggression’. Weis Jr. is a 28-year-old prodigy who wouldn’t say who would be responsible for play-calling duties during a media opportunity last week. As long as Lane Kiffin is roaming the sidelines, the offense will look somewhat similar to what it did the year prior. I can’t imagine there is a drastic change defensively, but I do wonder how much of the 3-2-6 that the Rebels used out of necessity last year will be used this year. These are impossible questions to answer until Ole Miss plays a game that counts, but it is interesting to think about.
Again, much more on all of this tomorrow and into the weekend, but those are some initial thoughts to get your brain back into football mode.
Buchanan joins the Rippee Writes family
I am pleased to share that Jackson Prep alum and 2012 MAIS AAA state champion (and former Ole Miss quarterback) Ryan Buchanan will be a regular podcast contributor this year. Ryan and I will talk quarterback play at Ole Miss, across the SEC and at all levels of football on Tuesday (or Wednesday) nights this season. We’ve done one podcast already. You can find it here. I have to admit, when I pitched my longtime friend on this idea a couple of weeks ago, I had a hunch I could pull some quality insight out of him, but wasn’t sure what his interest level was nor did I know how closely he watched football through the lens of quarterback play. The first episode alone is evidence enough that Ryan, who trains quarterback prospects in his spare time, is as dialed in as ever when it comes to football and the art of quarterback play. He’s also an incredibly polished speaker and an easy conversation. In my opinion, the first pod was terrific and I cannot wait to dive into deeper analysis this season.
Between former SEC quarterback Ryan Buchanan during the midweek and former Ole Miss recruiting specialist Weldon Rotenberg on Sundays, I challenge you to find an Ole Miss podcast outside of the MPW Digital Network with more perspective from guys who played and worked in this industry. It is going to be quality content and a fun year.
Some pods you may have missed
I took a summer hiatus from the newsletter, but kept the pod churning as best I could, mostly because I would like my sponsors to keep paying me. SPEAKING OF THAT: we have advertising slots available if you own a business and want to boost your marketing efforts. I am both dumbfounded and proud of the audience we’ve built here and I think we offer an attractive platform to advertise products and services.
Anyway, enough of that. Here are some summer pods that may interest you.
NFL agent, and my best friend, Michael Portner on how he signed Chiefs Pro Bowl left tackle Orlando Brown as a client, what he learned from his first NFL contract negotiations and how he cracked into such a cutthroat industry.
Ryan and I last week discussing what it’s like to be in a quarterback competition.
Outkick’s Mark Harris on the LIV vs PGA Tour battle and where it is headed from here.
Weldon Rotenberg and I previewed fall camp here and checked back in a couple of days ago here.
On the horizon
A slew of football content in the newsletter and on the pod
Opponent previews
A pair of feature stories
It’s football season. We are ready here at Rippee Writes. Send this to your friends and tell them to join in on the fun by smashing the subscribe button below. It is free. Inflation hasn’t changed that.