ATHENS – The offensive numbers produced by Ole Miss this season could strike fear in the greatest of defensive coordinators. Fortunately for Georgia, it happens to have a few of those.
“DC” remains the primary vocation of head coach Kirby Smart, and he employs one of the best in the business in Glenn Schumann. The Bulldogs have a couple more working in the wings in co-DC Travaris Robinson and “analyst” Will Muschamp.
But even those grizzled gurus must admit some trepidation when it comes to what Lane Kiffin is doing with quarterback Jaxson Dart and the Rebels’ offense.
Ole Miss is coming off a 63-31 road win over Arkansas that featured a six-touchdown passing performance by Dart and 13 broken or tied school records. The Rebels (7-2, 3-2 SEC) will meet Georgia in Oxford on Saturday as the nation’s fourth-highest scoring offense (42.1 ppg). When it comes to the coveted category of explosive plays, Dart leads FBS in total passing yards (1,199) on completions of 20 or more yards. He’s completiong 45.9 percent of such passes.
It’s truly heady stuff. Just ask the head D.C.
“Super high pace; they get tons of snaps,” Smart said as he previewed Saturday’s game at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium (3:30 p.m, ABC.) “Lane does a great job of that. It’s not always tempo, although tempo factors into it. They want to get you worn down, tired. They want to go quick.”
All true. All impressive.
Then again, there’s a caveat. There’s a good argument to be made that the Rebels have not yet seen a defense quite like the one they’ll see from Georgia.
Most will say that the Bulldogs’ defense at this point in the season does not resemble nor is capable of playing at the level it did during the national championships runs of 2021 and ‘22, or even a year ago, for that matter. But the group Georgia will bring to Oxford still is better than any other the Rebels have seen this season. That’s a statistical reality.
To date, the best defense Ole Miss has faced is South Carolina’s. The Gamecocks are 20th in FBS against the score. The Rebels beat them 27-3 in Columbia on Oct. 5. That’s no small accomplishment Texas A&M might tell you.
They’ve also taken on the No 29 scoring defense of Kentucky and the 30th-ranked squad of Oklahoma, losing one and winning the other. The average ranking of Mississippi’s opponents in scoring defense this season is 67th, with an average in points allowed of 25.6. Georgia Southern, Wake Forest, Middle Tennessee and Furman are all 103rd or worse. Arkansas was 81st.
For what’s worth Georgia is 13th in points allowed (17.25) and 12th in total defense (295.2 ypg). Again, Ole Miss averages 42.1 and 555.4, respectively.
Something has to give.
“I’ll definitely say we’re battle tested just because of the things we’ve gone through this season and day in and day out at practice,” Georgia linebacker CJ Allen said. “The games on the road also. But those games are in the past and we’ve got to focus on Ole Miss.”
Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Few teams in America have endured the gauntlet Georgia has been through to date. The Bulldogs already have played No. 14 Clemson in a neutral-site game in Atlanta, on the road at Kentucky, No. 4 Alabama in Tuscaloosa and No. 1 Texas in Austin. Georgia won three of those games. The one it lost to the Crimson Tide, the Bulldogs rallied from a 28-0 first-half deficit to actually take the lead with 2:31 to play, only to lose it 13 seconds later in a what ended as a 41-34 defeat.
The atmospheres in those games against the Longhorns and Bama could not have been more intense. The thought is something similar might await in Oxford as the two-loss Rebels – who were ranked 16th by the Associated Press and 12th in the coaches’ poll – effectively cannot afford another loss and still be considered viable playoff contenders.
“We screwed two games up earlier in the year and when you do that you put yourselves in situations,” Kiffin said this week. “I don’t talk about playoffs normally and championships and all that because I think it really doesn’t matter; it’s about how you prepare and how you play. But I told our players, because they hear it all the time, you still have that (playoff talk) alive. In my opinion, anybody that’s going to win is going to go through Georgia. You have to go through Georgia at some point.”
The Ole Miss-UGA dynamic certainly is an interesting one. Kiffin credits the competitive realities levied upon his team in a 52-17 loss to the Bulldogs in Athens last year with fueling the Rebels’ strategy to hit the transfer portal hard in the offseason.
After winning a school-record 11 games in 2023, Ole Miss brought in 25 players via the transfer portal, which was the 11th-largest transfer haul in the FBS and the second-largest in the SEC behind only Texas A&M. It was the top-ranked transfer class in the country, according to 247Sports.com.
“Lane’s done an incredible job of getting talented players, big physical,” Smart said. “The improvement on defense for them is extremely noticeable. These guys are disruptive, powerful, fast. Tons of sacks, tons of tackles for loss.”
The Rebels have gotten that same transfer impact on offense. Virtually every offensive player of note started their career elsewhere. That includes the quarterback Dart (Southern Cal); leading rusher Henry Parrish (Miami); receivers Tre Harris (Louisiana Tech), Jordan Watkins (Louisville) and Juice Wells (South Carolina); tight end Caden Prieskorn (Memphis); and three of the five starters on the offensive line.
That group has the Rebels ranked in the Top 10 nationally in 13 offensive categories, including No. 1 in passing (377.1).
Dart, a 6-2, 225-pound senior from Kaysville, Utah, is the engine that makes it all go. In addition to slinging the football all over the field with a 71.7% completion rate, he’s the Rebels’ second-leading rusher (254, 3 TDs).
“We’ve played a lot of quarterbacks that are good runners this year,” Smart said. “You tackle the quarterback like he’s a running back. You have to approach it that way. He’s 225 pounds and he lowers his shoulders and he’s physical.”
Said Allen:, who is coming off an all-star effort against Florida: “It boils down to just doing your job. You just have to go out there and play and have your eyes in the right spot. Everyone has a job to do every single play.”
The good news for the Bulldogs is it won’t be the first time they’ve encountered Kiffin, Dart and company. In Georgia’s 52-17 victory at Sanford Stadium, Dart had 112 yards, an interception and no touchdowns on 10-of-17 passing, Harris and Watkins combined for 46 yards on 4 receptions and Allen led the Bulldogs with 9 tackles and a sack.
But that was then.
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