Ole Miss Football Faces Ultimate Test: Can They Silence the Doubters This Season?

With the Rebels gearing up for some seriously tough road tests over the next two weeks, the burning question is: are they the real deal this season, or just another mirage in the SEC desert? Ole Miss has danced tantalizingly close to greatness under Lane Kiffin before, only to stumble at critical moments—last year’s slip-ups and that 2023 fade against Alabama are still fresh scars. Now, undefeated but with an unsettled quarterback spot and a history that clings like a shadow, this stretch against Georgia and Oklahoma is the ultimate litmus test. Will the Rebels rise, or will old patterns repeat? Let’s dig into the nuances that might just tell us if Ole Miss is ready to shake up the college football landscape once and for all. LEARN MORE.

With road tests coming in the next two weeks, we’re about to get an idea of how good the Rebels really are this season. What should we make of them heading into this pivotal stretch?

How seriously should you take the Ole Miss football program?

Historically, that’s an easy answer: not very.

The longtime members of the SEC’s lower-middle class have worked themselves into frequent contention under Lane Kiffin, but they’ve always tripped over something at a bad time. Last year, it was a home loss to Kentucky (among two others) that kept them out of the College Football Playoff.

In 2023, it was a missed opportunity to upset a weakened Alabama in Week 4 (instead turning in a boring 24-10 loss) that kept the Rebels out of what was then the four-team field.

We’re back at a crossroads, though. Ole Miss is among the nation’s 11 undefeated teams as it visits Athens this Saturday for a date with Georgia. Ole Miss only has one compelling win so far (at home against an offensively challenged LSU team), and it almost faceplanted into a home loss against Washington State a week ago.

It also has an unsettled quarterback situation, in addition to the crushing weight of history bearing down upon it. With road tests coming in the next two weeks, not just against Georgia but also Oklahoma, we’re about to get a really good idea of how serious this program is.

What should we make of this team heading into this pivotal stretch? It’s a mixed story.

Cause for Optimism: The Quarterbacks

Jaxson Dart went off to the NFL after last year, but all of the scuttlebutt this offseason about his replacement was glowing.

Someone I talked to at Ole Miss over the summer could barely contain himself, raving about Austin Simmons, the two-sport athlete (he also plays baseball) who was set to take Dart’s place. Simmons was a great team player, I was told, and had been a practice star for Ole Miss over the previous year. I thought he would seize the starting job and never look back.

It didn’t work out that way. Simmons started two games and played well enough, putting good numbers on low-grade competition in the form of Georgia State and Kentucky. But an injury opened the door for his backup, Trinidad Chambliss, a transfer from the best program in Division II football, Ferris State.

Chambliss has been good enough that it is now unclear if Simmons, now healthy, will ever get his job back. Chambliss was dominant against Arkansas and Tulane and good enough against LSU and Washington State, even as the Rebels had to limp to victory against an outmanned Pac-2 team.

Ole Miss seems to think Chambliss is a more limited thrower than Simmons. A full 30% of Chambliss’ passes have been to targets at or behind the line of scrimmage, compared to under 10% for Simmons. But Chambliss has given Ole Miss an upgrade in two areas in a limited sample size:

Ball security: Chambliss has tossed interceptions on 0.8% of his throws (or, a total of one pick), while Simmons threw picks on 7.1% of his throws before going down (four picks in two weeks). Perhaps Chambliss has been a bit lucky and Simmons a bit unlucky: Opta data charts Chambliss at a 1.6% pickable pass rate and Simmons at 3.6%. But that’s still a substantial gap.

Legs: Simmons is a mobile QB, but not like Chambliss, who ran for 1,000 yards at Ferris State and has averaged 4.8 yards on 48 designed carries this year.

Despite any downfield throwing limitations Chambliss might have, Ole Miss has been able to make do. Chambliss has converted on 46.4% of third-down attempts when throwing, well ahead of the 41% national average.

He also has the fifth-best well-thrown percentage (83.2) among QBs who average at least 9.0 air yards per attempt with a minimum of 80 adjusted attempts (no throwaways or spikes).

For now, it’s working, even if Kiffin doesn’t want him chucking it downfield.

Cause for Curiosity: The Running Game

On the surface, the Ole Miss running game is doing well. Starting tailback Kewan Lacy is 15th in FBS in rushing yards, with nearly 600 in six weeks, while Chambliss has given the Rebels one of the sport’s more prolific quarterback runners.

You’d think this is a nationally elite running game, but the overall picture is a little bit more complicated. It’s hard to say just how much the run has helped Ole Miss to date.

With sacks filtered out, Ole Miss is averaging 4.9 yards per carry, tied (with 2023’s rate) for its lowest amount under Kiffin. The ground game has been somewhat efficient, with a 48.1% rushing success rate that ranks fourth in the SEC. The home runs haven’t been there, though: Ole Miss is ninth in the league in explosive run rate (6.3%) and its nine carries of 20-plus yards are tied for sixth in the SEC.

If the big plays start to come, Ole Miss will have one of the best run games in the country. Absent that, Lacy and Chambliss give Ole Miss a running attack that’s in the upper half of the conference, but maybe not so good that it will carry an elite offense if the passing game stops humming.

One note here: It’d be interesting to see what happens if Ole Miss gives more carries to Logan Diggs, the LSU transfer who’s averaging 7.7 yards on just 18 carries. Almost all of that was in Week 1 against Georgia State, and Diggs has essentially not been part of the Ole Miss offense since then.

But some breathers for Lacy, a Mizzou transfer who never had more than 23 carries in a college season before this year, might be useful.

Cause for Real Concern: The Pass Rush

Despite Kiffin’s offensive (in more ways than one) reputation, defense was the strongest side of the ball last season. In particular, the Rebels had a vicious pass rush, led by edge rushers Princely Umanmielen and Suntarine Perkins, who had 10.5 sacks apiece. Fellow edge Jared Ivey added another 7.0, and tackle Walter Nolen had 6.5.

Everyone from that group except Perkins is gone this year, and the results have been predictably unfortunate. The Rebels’ pressure rate has fallen from 43.3% to 36.4%, per Opta data, and their sack rate on opposing drop backs is down from 9.6% to 4.6%. That sack rate was the highest in the SEC last year; this year, it is 12th.

When Ole Miss won big games last year, it was the pass rush doing a lot of the heavy lifting. That was most true when the Rebels faced these very same Bulldogs and sacked Carson Beck five times, forcing fumbles on two of them. Georgia’s offensive line was in disarray last year, and Perkins, Ivey and Umanmielen (who combined for all five sacks) made the unit pay.

Can Ole Miss do it again, once more facing a UGA offensive line that has had problems? We’ll see. The Rebels have been hit-or-miss in getting to the quarterback. They had seven sacks between their wins over a terrible Kentucky team and Washington State. Otherwise, they’ve sacked QBs twice in four games.

Perkins amazingly does not have a sack this year after hitting double-digits in 2024. Umanmielen’s brother, Princewill, who transferred in from Nebraska, has been the best pass rusher on the team with a 25.5% pressure rate. But Ole Miss needs to eventually get home.

The Verdict

The Opta supercomputer believes the Rebels are about to start losing, but not that much. It projects Ole Miss for a final record of 9.69 and 2.31. The Rebels going 10-2 and 6-2 in the league would absolutely put them in the College Football Playoff and give them a decent chance, depending on the particulars, of playing in the SEC Championship.

Ole Miss has too many questions to be considered a title contender until further notice, but this does, finally, look like the time for Playoff Ole Miss.

Follow us on X, Threads, Facebook, Bluesky and Instagram for more!