There’s a lot to digest about what happened Thursday night in the AllState Sugar Bowl, but there’s one important takeaway.
Ole Miss is the last SEC team standing in the College Football Playoff.
The Rebels advanced to the semifinals with a 39-34 win against Georgia, the No. 3 seed and reigning SEC Champion.
We’ll have plenty of coverage of what happened in Thursday night’s game, but here’s one writer’s initial reaction.
Second Half Reaction
What a second half performance by Trinidad Chambliss and what a fun, exciting second half that was.
The Ole Miss quarterback completed 13-straight passes in the second half and produced highlight reel moments that would’ve warranted more Heisman Trophy votes.
But his biggest moment came on the final drive of the game. Facing a third-and-5 with less than 45 seconds to play, no timeouts and the game tied 34-34, Chambliss completed a 40-yard pass to De’Zhaun Stribling to put the Rebels into field goal range.
Ole Miss kicker Lucas Carneiro, who already had two record-setting Sugar Bowl record kicks, made a 47-yard field goal (his shortest of the game) with five seconds left to send the Rebels further into the CFP.
Chambliss’s 13th completion was the touchdown pass that put Ole Miss up 34-24. Leading up to that, Chambliss had three-straight plays he had to scramble to avoid a negative play and completed passes of big gains.
Whatever happens afterwards, Chambliss is the real deal. His passes all night have been extremely accurate and spirals have been tight.
OLE MISS EXTENDS THE LEAD IN THE FOURTH QUARTER 😱 pic.twitter.com/U6Zwok8r6J
— ESPN (@espn) January 2, 2026
The Rebels’ defensive helped build that 10-point lead, too. They held Georgia to only a field goal in the third quarter and had a bulk of their tackles for a loss come in the quarter.
The Bulldogs, showing their elite talent level that comes with being a premier college football program, managed to make things interesting. They made the score 34-31 with a six play, 75-yard drive to start the fourth quarter and forced Ole Miss into a punt on the ensuing possession.
Things got even more interesting late in the fourth quarter when Georgia kept its most important drive alive with a big completion on fourth down.
However, the Ole Miss defense would only bend a little bit to Georgia. It didn’t break.
The Bulldogs drove down to the Rebels’ 39-yard line until they were faced with a third-and-9 situation at the two minute warning. Gunner Stockton’s pass fell incomplete, but a pass interference penalty on Ole Miss gave Georgia new life.
A second pass interference penalty put Georgia inside the Rebels’ 10-yard line. The Rebels’ defense forced the Bulldogs to kick a 24-yard field goal to tie the game with 56 seconds left.
First Half Reaction
That’s a really, really bad ending that could come back to haunt Ole Miss.
On third-and-long, tight end Dae’Quan Wright caught a pass in bounds with less than 10 seconds in the first half. Instead of running out of bounds, he went inside and was tackled short of the first down line. That ended a first half that produced mixed results for the Rebels with them trailing 21-12.
If Wright goes out of bounds, stopping the clock with less than five seconds, the Rebels would’ve had a chance at a long field goal. But considering Carneiro set Sugar Bowl records for longest field goal on back-to-back attempts, it was the best chance Ole Miss had at scoring points to end the half.
Georgia had been running the ball well, but the deciding play of the first half was a long fumble recovery returned for a touchdown by the Bulldogs. That put Georgia up 14-12 and Ole Miss struggled offensively the rest of the half.
The Bulldogs managed to get across the goal line one more time in the first half and went into halftime with a 21-12 lead.
This is being written at halftime, but neither team is inspiring a lot of confidence that it can be the better team in the second half.
