Ole Miss is now the story and not its former head coach

NEW ORLEANS – Lane Kiffin built it, then he left it, and the Ole Miss coaches and players who stayed are hellbent on finishing it.

As in finishing a football season that’s been as insane as it’s been historic for the Rebels.

“I believed we could be here before the season started. I thought we had that kind of team,” Ole Miss linebacker TJ Dottery said. “Now, after our head coach left us right when we were about to go to the playoff, I don’t know that anybody would have believed it. It would have been hard to.”

In one four-hour-plus smorgasbord of football Thursday night, Ole Miss only strengthened its case as one of the best stories in college football in a decade or more with a thrilling 39-34 victory over Georgia in the Allstate Sugar Bowl in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals.

Perhaps fittingly, given the chaos surrounding Kiffin’s messy exit to take the LSU head job on Nov. 30, there was nothing conventional about the way the game ended Thursday. Two different times, the stage was pushed onto the Superdome turf for the postgame celebration, only to be pushed back off for the final seconds (and then the final second) to be played after Ole Miss kicker Lucas Carneiro drilled the game-winning 47-yard field goal with six seconds remaining.

It was one of three field goals for Carneiro in one of the best hat tricks you’re ever going to see from a kicker. He kicked a 56-yarder and 55-yarder in the first quarter.

“It’s different guys every game. We lean on each other. We trust each other,” Ole Miss center Brycen Sanders said. “We’re playing for each other, and that feeling is as strong as it’s ever been right now, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

After Carneiro’s 47-yarder to break the tie and seemingly give Ole Miss the win, all hell broke loose in a game that had already been wildly entertaining. To recap, a Georgia lateral on the ensuing kickoff went for a safety after it hit the pylon. Twice, Ole Miss players stormed the field thinking the game was over. Officials put a second back onto the clock after a review, and then Georgia on its free kick following the safety kicked onside and recovered — and somehow that final second never ticked off the clock — even though Ole Miss quarterbacks coach Joe Judge said by rule there’s supposed to be a mandatory one-second runoff in that situation, which would have ended the game.

But what ensued on Georgia’s final play was about a dozen laterals before quarterback Gunner Stockton was smothered to the ground, and that’s when the Hotty Toddy party in the Big Easy hit overdrive … and may be going on for days. Bourbon Street was a sea of powder blue as the clock ticked toward 3 o’clock Friday morning.

“We have the best fan base in the country,” Sanders said. “They deserve this as much as anybody. They went through a lot too. We want to put it on the line for them.”

The Rebels (13-1) have defied the odds at every turn. Their quarterback, Trinidad Chambliss, was playing at Division II Ferris State last season. They lost a ton of production on defense to the NFL, and then most of the month of November centered around whether Kiffin was going to be at LSU, Florida or back at Ole Miss next season.

The team was almost an afterthought.

“Probably too much has been said about (Kiffin). We’ll let our work speak for us and what kind of team we are,” defensive end Kam Franklin said.

Simply, it’s a team and a staff, at least the coaches who stayed and the ones still on loan from LSU — at least for now as crazy as that sounds — that has embraced the chaos, embraced each other and now finds itself two wins away from the school’s first national championship since 1960, the Rebels’ only football national title recognized by the NCAA.

Ole Miss moves on to face Miami on Jan. 8 in the Fiesta Bowl, the semifinal round of the College Football Playoff, with newly promoted Pete Golding two games into his head coaching career and now 2-0.

“I know some people were down at first and came here because of Kiffin,” senior defensive tackle Zxavian Harris said. “But after realizing how he was and when Coach Golding came in, they saw a difference in how a real head coach is supposed to be, and you’ve seen how we’ve come together.”

Kiffin did not attend the game and instead took in the LSU women’s basketball game to support Coach Kim Mulkey, but word spread among the Ole Miss players that Kiffin, according to sources, had sent out feelers to some at ESPN about potentially appearing in the broadcast booth during the game for a segment. ESPN wasn’t interested.

Harris said Kiffin leaving to take the LSU job was already “like a slap in the face and then a backhand. We took that personally.”

And even more so when the players heard about Kiffin reaching out about potentially appearing on TV during the game.

“That’s what Kiffin tried to do. He tried to be a damn announcer … trying to be a troll. We were going to troll him. We got something for him,” Harris said. “He was just trying to steal our shine. That’s all he tried to do.

“That’s all he’s been trying to do, is steal our shine.”

Chambliss, who was sensational for the Rebels with 362 passing yards and two touchdowns against the Bulldogs, said this team doesn’t need a label or any added motivation.

“I mean, we’re not really focused on destiny or anything like that,” said Chambliss, whose third-down pass to De’Zhaun Stribling for 40 yards set up Carneiro’s game-winning field goal. “A lot of people did doubt us before the season, and they still doubted us when our coach left. We just want to play ball and have fun, and I think that’s showing right now.”

These next few days could really get interesting, especially with the transfer portal opening Friday. The Ole Miss-turned-LSU assistants were expected back in Baton Rouge on Friday and hustled out of the Superdome after the Georgia win. Sources told On3 that it wasn’t clear how many of the coaches would be allowed to continue coaching Ole Miss in the playoff. In addition to offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr., running backs coach Kevin Smith, receivers coach George McDonald and tight ends coach/co-offensive coordinator Joe Cox all followed Kiffin to LSU and have signed contracts with the Tigers.

An Ole Miss source told On3 after Thursday’s game they continue to plan for some of the assistants not to be back and are ready if that does indeed happen.

“We knew we had to be prepared for anything when we went down this road,” the source said. “We knew (Kiffin) could pull them back at any time. Hell, they work for LSU.”

Several offensive players went out of their way Thursday to to single out Weis and how invested he’s been through his juggling act.

During the celebration on the field afterward, Weis jumped into the arms of offensive lineman Patrick Kutas, who squeezed the much smaller Weis and screamed jubilantly, “We did this, nobody else.”

Weis told On3 that he’s always planned on coaching Ole Miss throughout the playoff run and was upfront about all of it with Kiffin.

“All I can tell you is that I’m coaching, and I told everybody that from the beginning,” Weis said. “These are wild times, but all worth it.”

Weis’ offense has been red-hot in the playoff. Ole Miss rolled up 473 yards against Georgia, the second most gained against the Bulldogs this season behind Tennessee’s 496 in Georgia’s 44-41 overtime win against the Vols on Sept. 13. This was also a Georgia defense that had not given up more than 10 points in any of its last four games.

Ole Miss trailed 21-12 at the half, but won the line of scrimmage battle on both sides in the second half. Chambliss wasn’t sacked in the game and completed passes to 10 different players.

On defense, Ole Miss sacked Stockton twice and limited Georgia to 39 rushing yards in the second half.

“I definitely saw it toward the middle of the third (quarter) when we kept coming, kept taking them off the field,” Harris said. “I’d already seen it in their eyes. They didn’t want to play no more.”

It wasn’t lost on anybody late Thursday that the transfer portal was opening about the time the Sugar Bowl trophy was being awarded to the Rebels. Golding said one of the best things about this team is that it continues to play and compete in the moment.

“You’ve got to have the right guys,” Golding said. “What I mean by that is they’ve got to be tough. They’ve got to be competitive. They’ve got to love football. I think you’ve got a lot of guys on other teams that don’t love football. There’s one thing about this group. They love football.”

Judge, who decided to stay at Ole Miss after receiving some head coaching interest this offseason, said it’s been heartwarming to see this team rise above all the distractions and play its best football when it counts most.

Asked if he could imagine another team enduring what Ole Miss has for the last five weeks, Judge joked, “I hope not, but I’ll tell you what. Seeing the way that they’ve stayed together as a team and seeing the way that they’ve really let their character come out has been great.”

A former NFL head coach with the New York Giants, Judge said what this team has been able to do in the face of adversity is reinforce that the game is about the players.

“Players win games, and it’s as simple as that,” Judge said. “That’s what it’s about. It’s a players’ game. We’re here to teach them, put them in the right position and give them the opportunity, but they’ve got to go out there and win.

“And that’s what they’ve been doing.”