Nearly back to full strength the Ole Miss offense is once again the best in the SEC
Offense is the specialty of the day when it comes to Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss has been serving that dish at the highest quality for the last three-plus seasons.
This year the challenge to continue to have one of the best offenses in the country was difficult through the first few games with injuries depleting a lot of the weapons available for quarterback Jaxson Dart.
But last Saturday’s offensive explosion in the Rebels 55-49 win saw Ole Miss look as close to fully healthy on that side of the ball as it has all year.
The first look at a complete Ole Miss offense was promising, to say the least. Historic numbers were put up against the Tigers defense, including the most points against a team ranked by the Associated Press.
Receiver Tre Harris and Zakhari Franklin and tight end Caden Preiskorn played in a game for the second consecutive week after the latter two missed the first three games of the season. All three returned at Alabama having having a surgery procedure of some kind.
Harris secured the game-winning score with a 13-yard touchdown reception in the final minute last Saturday. Despite missing all but three minutes of the Tulane game and the entire Georgia Tech game Harris is currently tied for seventh in the country with touchdown catches at six. He is just shy from tying the current national and Southeastern Conference lead.
Having the full offense nearly back to full strength — it has been previously noted Harris felt 90 percent against LSU — did not mean the confidence within the Ole Miss locker room was not there before Saturday.
“We’re a very extremely confident offense,” Dayton Wade said. “I don’t think we lose confidence even when we’re not doing as good as people would expect us to. We never lose confidence as an offense. That’s our main thing.”
Ole Miss leads the SEC in scoring offense and second best in the league when it comes to total offense.
After last weekend’s 55-point total the Rebels are now averaging a SEC-best 44.6 points per game, edging out LSU’s 44 ppg. The average is good enough to be the sixth-best scoring offense in the country after five weeks.
For total offense Ole Miss has the eight best in the country, averaging 517.4 yards per game. They are behind the Tigers’ 551.4 ypg game.
With all his receivers getting back in the mix, Ayden Williams is still working his way back into the fold after being sick a couple weeks ago, Dart is performing as one of the top quarterbacks in the country.
Dart is currently 10th in the nation with 297 passing yards per game and his 1,485 passing yards is good enough for ninth-best in the country and third in the SEC behind LSU’s Jayden Daniels (1,710) and Georgia’s Carson Beck (1,497).
“We don’t just say ‘score from far’ for cool points or nothing like that,” Wade said. “That’s just facts. That’s just what we work on. We don’t just have it just to have it. We made that a thing. We didn’t come up with it like, ‘Oh, that’s a cool slogan,’ to make people get interested. That’s why I’m so excited to have everybody back.”
