The bye week for Ole Miss football came at about as good a time as possible, especially when there’re so many things that need to be addressed on the defense, according to head coach Pete Golding.
Following the No. 4 Rebels’ (3-1, 1-1 SEC) disappointing 52-28 loss to the No. 21 Florida Gators (4-0, 2-0 SEC) in Gainesville, the persisting issues on the defensive side of the ball became particularly apparent when it came to trying to stop star Gator running back Jaden Baugh.
“We’ve got to do a better job stopping the run,” Golding said in his postgame press conference on Sept. 26. “Obviously, we knew coming into it, ‘How many times could they hand it to 13 (Baugh)?’ It wasn’t like this was a surprise. So, you really got to look back and evaluate it. … It wasn’t anything we didn’t see on tape, we just didn’t get our players to execute it.”
The bad for Ole Miss football
With problems stopping the run comes a larger underlying issue that has plagued the Ole Miss defense so far in the young season – tackling.
“We’ve had a lot of guys trying to ankle bite, and diving at ankles and all those things,” Golding said. “There’s a lack of courage at times [tackling] that we were picking and choosing. … We look at it, and here it is. You tackle different guys differently, and that’s week to week. That was a big emphasis this week that, obviously, we did a poor job coaching because we weren’t able to get that done.”
While tackling is definitely the biggest blemish on the defense, Golding says it isn’t the only thing the Rebels are struggling with on that side of the ball.
“Consistency and execution is what this game is about to be an elite football team, at all three phases,” Golding said. “Right now, we haven’t been consistent on defense. Whatever 11 guys are out there, whatever 11 positions they’re playing up to this point, that’s our responsibility in the bye week to try to get that [fixed]. Like I’ve said, there are still flashes of winning football on that side of the ball, but there definitely wasn’t a lot [against Florida].”
The good for Ole Miss football
On the bright side, the offense still looked sharp at times under star quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, who completed 25 of 34 passes for nearly 300 yards with 3 total touchdowns against Florida. Despite a few turnovers, Chambliss seemed poised and unfazed by the mistakes and feels that the offense won’t skip a beat in the coming weeks.
“The confidence in my team has never changed,” Chambliss said in his postgame press conference. “I’ve still got the utmost confidence in my team. I feel like we can still compete for an SEC championship and a national championship, but we just got to go win one every week and focus on one game at a time.”
Another positive ahead of the bye week is the potential for star running back Kewan Lacy to heal up and return in time for the Rebels’ game against Vanderbilt on Oct. 10. Lacy was ruled out for the Florida game due to a shoulder injury, and the offense missed him, as the team had only 128 rushing yards, 44 of which came from the quarterback.
“Missing Kewan definitely hurts. He’s a dynamic player,” Chambliss said. “He puts a lot of pressure on defensive coordinators, and they’ve got to scheme for him and me and our whole offense to begin with.”
Lacy’s return will be pivotal to the Rebels’ success for the rest of the season, further underscoring the importance of the bye week’s timing.
What has Ole Miss football done during the bye week?
Golding alluded to the prospect of revamping their tackling drills during the bye week as an effort to overhaul how the defense operates.
“I think with anything when you’re not very good at it, you’ve got to continue to work at it,” Golding said. “That’s something we’ve emphasized this week. We’ve reset how we drill it, how we structure it. We go live on Tuesdays versus the scout team, but it’s continuing to show up, so we’ve definitely got to evaluate that this week.
“It’s a good time for the bye week for us to really evaluate how we’re [tackling]. The guys that are doing it, are they doing it consistently enough? Or do we have some guys that we need to look at to play better football? I think we’re wired the right way, but right now it’s not a good enough product, and that starts with me.”
While Golding says it’s on him to improve the team, defensive leaders like Will Echoles think it’s more on them to use what the coaches have already given them.
“It’s a mindset too, you know, you’ve got to be determined and willing to tackle the ball carrier, strike blocks,” Echoles said. “It starts up front, it starts with my position group, so we gotta be better at that. It’s just got to be ‘want to.’ [Golding] can call all the calls you want, but if we’re not going out there and executing our job or just having that want to stop the opposing offense, then it’s never going to work.”
Golding emphasized that he doesn’t want his guys to forget the loss to the Gators and move on. He says he’s glad for the timing of the bye week, largely so the players can remember the feeling and improve, so they don’t have to taste defeat again, rather than put it out of sight and out of mind and move on to a new game.
“I don’t want them to get this taste out of their mouth; that’s what I told them,” Golding said. “I never got the taste out of my mouth from Miami walking off the field. You know, part of the problem is sometimes we move on too fast. So when I say the sun’s going to come up tomorrow, the sun’s going to come up tomorrow and its a new day, but it’s a new day to go get better at what we don’t do well.
“You better have that burning in your gut in order to go fix something,” Golding continued. “I think we have guys like that, but we don’t have enough… I think [the bye week] is a great time for that, for them to sit on it a little while and go watch the tape like we do every week and go clean this up, then go really focus on the things we’ve got to improve to play winning football in this league.”