Lane Kiffin had all the answers the last time Georgia and Ole Miss squared off.
The then-Ole Miss head coach was in complete command, diagnosing Georgia’s defense based on the formation and barking out signals on the sideline. Even after the coaches’ helmet communication to the quarterback cut off with 15 seconds on the play clock, Kiffin could be frequently spotted hollering at quarterback Trinidad Chambliss checking into the look he wanted.
It’s a big reason why Ole Miss ran up five touchdown drives on its first five possessions in Athens and had Georgia on the ropes, down by nine in the fourth quarter. Kiffin has a superpower-like ability to look at a defense’s alignment and know what coverage is coming.
That’s a big loss entering a rematch with Georgia, even with offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. still remaining as the play caller for this College Football Playoff quarterfinal matchup.
Lane Kiffin's absence will be felt for Ole Miss against Georgia
In their first matchup Georgia didn’t quite trust its young secondary to hold up in one-on-one man coverage against Mississippi’s receivers for large swaths of the game. The Bulldogs instead ran a heavy helping of zone coverage and rarely blitzed. Chambliss carved them up early in the game and had no problem finding receivers in the middle of the field which gave them plenty of room to run with his ball placement.
But a switch flipped in the fourth quarter for the Bulldogs. Georgia started running more press-man coverage in what felt like something of a necessity considering their zone-heavy scheme was getting abused.
It worked. Before the fourth quarter Ole Miss had amassed 338 yards of offense on 6.9 yards per play. In the fourth quarter however they had just 13 total yards on 1.2 yards per play. The Bulldogs shut them down and went on to win 43-35.
It was arguably the biggest coming-of-age moment for Georgia’s young defensive backs. The coaches took the training wheels off and let the secondary play ball which unlocked the entire defense. That unit has looked like a different beast for the Bulldogs since the fourth quarter of the Ole Miss game.
Smart may not be willing to assign one quarter of football as the impetus for an improvement that has been very gradual throughout the year. But it’s tough not to look at the end of the first Ole Miss game as something of a turning point.
And without Kiffin walking through that door with his almost clairvoyant ability to diagnose the defense, there’s reason to believe Ole Miss’ offense might not come out of the gate quite as scalding hot as it did back in Athens in October.
Ole Miss is still a problem without Lane Kiffin
Ole Miss still has plenty of explosive players who are going to make big plays, and Chambliss is one of the best quarterbacks in the country. But with the strides that Georgia’s secondary has made, and consequently its pass rush, it’s easy to imagine that Ole Miss may have a harder time sustaining long drives.
Mississippi could become more reliant on the explosive play than in its last matchup with Georgia. And that could play right into Georgia’s hand as a defense that prioritizes on stopping the run and putting its opponents in long down-and-distance situations.
“[We want to ] force more third-and-longs and create more negative plays on early downs,” defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann said via dawgnation.com. “Play tighter coverage, it opens up where you can do a lot more of your menu. And the last three years before this, we were really efficient on third down every year, and the group's in place that can still do that, but you gotta get it into the situations that allow you to use your third-down package."
Ole Miss is playing with a chip on its shoulder after all the Kiffin drama went down, and they sure looked hungry in its 41-10 victory over Tulane to open the College Football Playoff. This Georgia matchup will go a long way in determining just how critical he is to Ole Miss’ on-field success, and just how much Georgia’s defense has really grown since the last time these two teams met.