Everything Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin said to open LSU week

Ole Miss sixth-year head coach Lane Kiffin met the media Monday for his weekly press conference and ahead of the Rebels’ rivalry showdown with LSU. 

The Rebels (4-0, 2-0 SEC) and Tigers (4-0, 1-0) kick off on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. CT on ABC.

Here’s everything he had to say.

ON THE LSU DEFENSE

KIFFIN: Second year in a system defensively helps a lot of times. They’ve improved their personnel also. You’ve got three or four starting defensive linemen who are portal guys. Three of the four in the secondary are portal guys. They’ve done a great job with that. They’re heavily financially invested into the portal and made that decision. That’s no secret. Coach [Brian] Kelly’s talked about that, how much money they’ve spent, and it shows. Those three guys that were heavily recruited and probably the three most expensive portal DBs in the market and they got them all. 

So, they did a great job with that, and now they’re coaching them really well and they’re playing great.

ON LSU’S WORK IN THE PORTAL

KIFFIN: LSU’s done a great job. They’ve always assembled great high school talent regardless. The last three coaches won national championships there. So, if you probably look back at, what, 20, 25 years of players coming out, you could argue they’ve had the most talent of anybody in the country. You see it all over the NFL now. You’ve always had that high school recipe of being LSU and being able to get top players in the country and keep your own home. Now you add portal into it, which they’ve embraced this off-season, done a great job at, highly invested into it and spent a lot of money, and it shows.

These guys have one of the best rosters in America and also some veteran players coming in when you add portal guys on top of all the great high school players. It’s a big challenge. We’re excited for it.

ON THE EVENNESS OF THE SERIES THE LAST FOUR YEARS

KIFFIN: Stats would show they had a lot more draft picks probably over that time, but they’ve been good matchups all the way back to the first one down there. We were ahead and should have won in the last one down there. We were ahead the entire game last year. 

So, really competitive matchup. Glad that it’s competitive, because looks like we’re going to keep playing this matchup. So, exciting for the fans.

Lane Kiffin: Austin Simmons is the starting QB for Ole Miss, when ‘100 percent’ healthy

ON OLE MISS’ PERMANENT OPPONENTS

KIFFIN: I didn’t actually know they came out today. I didn’t know that was reported. But, you know, they make decisions, they put together things and I don’t know. We’ve got to win this week and perform really well and continue to just play whoever they schedule us to play and whatever time of day and night they schedule us to play. But it’s going to be highly exciting. Two of the, what, five most historic programs in college football you match us up with?

ON PREPARING FOR GARRETT NUSSMEIER COMPARED TO TAYLEN GREEN, ETC.

KIFFIN: There’s a difference. Obviously not the quarterback runs like that, but Nussmeier does a great job of getting out of trouble. Really quick feet moving around. I mean, he saved the game last year. You know, [Suntarine] Perkins has him to go to, what, fourth-and-24 or something? He gets out of that. That probably would have ended the game. 

So, he did a phenomenal job saving that game last year, and really great, savvy player. 

ON IF KIFFIN WILL HAVE A WATCH PARTY FOR HIS ESPN DOCUMENTARY

KIFFIN: No, no plan. I’m sure I’ll be here working. So, no, I’ve not seen it. And so, I really didn’t know that it was going to be that big a deal. I just thought we have a lot of people come in and do interviews, and game day will be here tomorrow. So, it gets a little bigger than I thought. 

ON THE OLE MISS QB SITUATION FOR LSU

KIFFIN: Health, for sure. To see if Austin’s [Simmons] at 100%. These guys are really good, and they’re loaded on defense, and they’re the best they’ve been on defense since we’ve played them, obviously with the acquisitions that we talked about, and really shutting down the run. So we’ll have to evaluate his health, and then make a decision.

Today was just a walk-through, so not enough to evaluate. But at 100 percent, he was our starting quarterback, but we don’t know what percentage he’ll be. 

ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE OLE MISS OFFENSIVE LINE

KIFFIN: I thought they played consistent and played well and really the one sack was [on Trinidad Chambliss]. He ran out like a half-yard short out of bounds. So, you know, didn’t have a lot of negative plays, which was good. We didn’t have a lot of third-and-longs. That paid off.

This will be the biggest test by far of the season Like I said, these guys got premier players. They’ve added three premier NFL draft picks in the secondary. 

ON THE LSU POSITION GROUP THAT HOLDS THE BIGGEST TEST

KIFFIN: I just don’t think they’ve had the numbers that they were probably thinking, but that happens sometimes early in the year. I look at the players more than scheme when I watch things, and I see elite players. So, you know, we’re going to have to play really well and be really challenged. 

ON OLE MISS’ RIVALRY WITH LSU

KIFFIN: You’ll keep getting the rivalry. I always love when you guys say that, like, oh, okay, now we’ll go actually, like, try and game plan really hard. 

It’s okay. My boss says the same things when we play Arkansas. ‘Hey, I really need this one.’ Oh, okay, well then we’ll actually like try this week. We were just going to not try. 

ON THE LSU OFFENSIVE LINE

KIFFIN: Yeah, I think Brian said four of them went to the NFL. So, those guys did a great job protecting them a year ago. 

But you look at them again, they’re big and really good players. I mean, like I said, they’ve done a great job. I mean, we walk by the TV copy that plays out here and they show the offensive huddle, playing Florida. And it looks like an NFL huddle of guys. And so they’ve done a really good job. And very typical of LSU teams.