WATCH: Kiffin, Ole Miss “did something (Monday)” to fix snap issues
Ole Miss is undefeated through its first five games, due in no small part to its offensive line giving up only two sacks.
But the front certainly has its issues.
The Rebels have already reshuffled the deck multiple times due to performance and injury. Redshirt freshman Jayden Williams has been a lineup mainstay at left tackle since early on in fall-camp practices in August. Another redshirt freshman, Micah Pettus, started for the first time in his career against Kentucky. He manned right tackle, which pushed veteran Jeremy James inside to right guard.
Center Caleb Warren is banged up, which prompted Ole Miss to start Eli Acker, the usual right guard, in his place. Warren didn’t practice at all last week, but he felt good enough in pregame warm-ups to dress for Kentucky.
“I don’t know where we’re headed,” third-year Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin said. “The good thing is we have guys that can play multiple positions like (James). Ideally, we’d like to get more than five. The game has changed. I think defenses have figured out the rotations up front to play tempo teams and they play their starting players 50, 60 percent of the game and they rotate.
“Look at our fourth-quarter scoring. There can’t be many teams, if any, that have a bigger first-half margin in scoring than we do against our opponents. I do think part of that is slowing down when we’ve been ahead, but the line, I’ve said it since the off-season, if we could rotate guys, we’d be a lot better. Play 75, play 80 at 300-something pounds and the guy I’m playing against has only played 40. I think there’s something to that, and I think it shows on the tape up front at the end of the game versus the beginning of the game.”
To Kiffin’s point, Ole Miss is in the Top 5 in the SEC in both points (37.2) and yards (470.2).
But the offensive production has consistently fallen off in the second half of games. Ole Miss has 16 combined touchdowns in the first two quarters but eight in the final two.
Good as the Rebels have been, Kiffin knows he has a problem, but to fix it, Ole Miss has to first address its center-quarterback exchanges. On play after play in the 22-19 win over Kentucky, Acker rolled the ball to quarterback Jaxson Dart.
It got so bad Warren, who Ole Miss hoped to avoid, had to come in as early as the second quarter.
“He was not 100 percent,” Kiffin said. “He was kind of in emergency-only situation and the snaps kind of put us in that situation. Now, we obviously communicated with him. He felt really good in warm-ups after not really doing anything all week. Said he was ready to go, so he went in there not 100 percent.
“Even with him, the snaps have been an issue. They were definitely an issue in the game. That’s hard to play quarterback … when he’s down here looking at the ball. The snaps are very important. We did something today I think will help. We’ll see if it does Saturday.”
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No. 9 Ole Miss (5-0, 1-0 SEC) next travels to Vanderbilt (3-2, 0-1) for a 3 p.m. CT showdown on SEC Network.
“We spent a lot of time this morning on that,” Kiffin said of the team’s approach to the Commodores. “You’ve got to prepare the same regardless. Last week, everybody built up the game and everything. It’s not just when you play a team that’s not ranked and you’re heavily favored with. It’s both ways.
“Hopefully they listen. It happens every week. I don’t think anybody thought Georgia was going to go in and struggle like they did at Missouri. Happens every week. Every game’s independent of each other. In our games, every quarter is independent.”
Here’s everything else Kiffin had to say in his Monday press conference, in a video provided by Ole Miss Sports Production.
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