Ole Miss 26 Mississippi State 14

Ole Miss defeated arch-rival Mississippi State 26-14 to finish its season 9-3. People are talking about outside shots to get into the playoff, but as far as I’m concerned the best Ole Miss can hope for is some bowl game that no one cares about, and we’re going to see a lot of players jump ship to declare for the NFL draft. As far as I’m concerned, the season is over. I’ll pay attention to the bowl game, of course, but the team that plays in that game won’t be the team that played today. That’s the point I want to make to open.

Fittingly, the very last play of the season was a handoff to J.J. Pegues to get a short-yardage first down and claim the victory. I hated this play all season long. Hated it.

The Rebels entered the season with the biggest hype of any Rebels football team in my lifetime. I think the team was ranked 5 or 6 in the preseason. Jaxon Dart was on the Heisman watch list and in his interviews he would sometimes talk about his goal of winning the national title. Expectations were at an all-time high. When the season actually began, though, it felt off to me somehow. That’s just me, and how I percieved things. Opening the season with four consecutive cupcake games was terrible. No one could get any kind of read on what kind of team it was going to be, four games into the season. The best we got was at Wake Forest, a game in which the Rebels played sloppy, penalty-ridden football. What a weird game that was, with Wake Forest cancelling the return-trip game scheduled for next year, for whatever reason. (The Rebels filled in the spot with Washington State, which is better, so that worked out okay).

Then, when the first SEC team came to Oxford, Kentucky, the Rebels choked and dropped that game 20-17. Kentucky game-planned a victory against Ole Miss, but really it was the Rebels’ sloppy play that put victory out of reach. In retrospect, that Kentucky loss hurts the most. It was when I understood that this wasn’t the championship type of team I had hoped for. The loss to LSU was just a hard to take, because it was LSU mostly, but the Rebels were the clear better team on the field, but that doesn’t matter when it makes costly mistakes. The Florida loss from last week was predictable. Florida was resurgent, and Ole Miss was Ole Miss.

The highlight of the season as the revenge victory of must-despised Georgia, which highlights just how inconsistent this Rebels team was this year. It defeat Georgia pretty easily, manhandled Arkansas, and shut down South Carolina, only to lose to Kentucky at home. You never knew what you were going to get with this Rebels team.

I think Tre Harris, or best receiver, played in only half the games this season with some kind of groin injury. The running game missed Quinshon Judkins quite a lot. Robert Parrish played well during the first half of the season, but he went down and Ole Miss had no answer. Kiffin would not play Ulysses Bentley for reasons no one understands. Bentley, when he did play, showed he was capable of explosive runs. At LSU, he ripped off a 60 yarder, and yesterday against Mississippi State he turned in a 95-yard touchdown run, the Rebels longest play of the season.

I want to point out that the Rebels scored 26 points three times this season. Twice against Oklahoma and Mississippi State, the Rebels won 26-14. Against LSU, Ole Miss lost 29-26. Just kind of weird.

What next year brings is anyone’s guess in this wild west. I know that if Ole Miss can retain Kiffin as head coach it will be competitive. Kiffin is good at selling the program, and he is a hollywood coach that the national media has decided it likes. In terms of players, all I know is that Jaxon Dart just played his last football game in Oxford, and it was fun watching him play and having such a competent quarterback in charge for three seasons. He’s one of the all-time greats for sure, and if things had gone even slightly differently, he’d be in the playoffs, and I’d feel pretty confident about my chances with Dart on my team. It was not meant to be.

Hotty Toddy!