Princewill Umanmielen gives blunt answer about his preseason recognition: 'I ain't earned it yet'

As Ole Miss gets ready to make a run at the College Football Playoff in 2025, it will once again rely on a number of transfers. Among them is defensive lineman Princewill Umanmielen.

Umanmielen is the brother of ultra-productive former Florida and Ole Miss defensive end Princely Umanmielen. All Princely did was rack up 136 tackles, 40.0 tackles for a loss, 25.5 sacks, four forced fumbles, a fumble recovery and a defensive touchdown in four years.

Princewill Umanmielen is getting some decent preseason accolades — he was named third-team preseason All-SEC by the league media — but he’s not sure he’s buying into the hype just yet. In fact, he’s definitely not.

“Yeah, I ain’t earn it yet,” he said. “I ain’t earn it yet, so I can’t say nothing on that.”

So far in his career, Princewill Umanmielen has played in 23 games. He has logged 35 tackles, 7.0 tackles for a loss, 1.5 sacks, a pass defended and a pass breakup. Ole Miss hopes to get far more out of him this fall.

To that end, Umanmielen is just doing everything in his power to prepare. The next month will be crucial.

“We’re just taking it game by game and trying to go 1-0, attacking the day,” Umanmielen said. “Just taking it day by day. Stack days. Got to win every day. Can’t take days off because it’s going to come back and bite me in the ass.”

As noted, Ole Miss will have definite playoff ambitions this fall after coming up just short a year ago. And one of the things that got the Rebels into contention last year was a suffocating defense.

The defensive front, in particular, was incredibly disruptive. There are a lot of key pieces gone from that unit. Guys like Princewill Umanmielen are being counted on to emerge.

But he thinks that will happen. He’s seen the work everyone has put in and the skill sets everyone brings to the table.

“I feel like there’s a variety of things that we can all do,” Umanmielen said. “Everybody got different bags, you know? It’s just deep. We can do whatever, and everybody’s versatile; everybody can play different positions. So that’s good. … We was doing a lot of things during the summer that was working on the details of our pass rush and other things well.”