Ole Miss’ surprising run through the College Football Playoff was made possible by a few different factors. One of those factors, though, was the Rebels’ 34-26 win against Oklahoma last October.
It was also a point in the season the Rebels’ defense showed how good it actually was.
The Rebels needed stops late, and they got them. They needed to keep the Sooners from running the ball when it mattered, and they did.
That fourth quarter was full of moments where Ole Miss simply held its ground and forced Oklahoma to beat them some other way. The Sooners never did.
But if there was one message from Brent Venables at SEC Media Days, it was that Ole Miss shouldn’t expect the same version of Oklahoma this fall.
Venables didn’t hide from what went wrong. He didn’t sugarcoat the run game. He didn’t pretend the offensive line was ready for SEC football last season. Instead, he talked about experience, growth and the reality that Oklahoma’s front is no longer a group of freshmen trying to survive.
“We returned four guys up front. Last year we started three freshmen,” Venables said Monday at SEC Media Days. “What happens with freshmen guys that haven’t played in the SEC, their first snaps in college, you’re not as confident, aggressive, strong as a fourth- or fifth-year guy.”
That was the difference last year. Ole Miss won the line of scrimmage late because Oklahoma didn’t have the bodies or the seasoning to push back. Venables made it clear that won’t be the case again.
“A year ago on offense, we had nine first-year starters. This year we’ve got several returning starters, give or take seven or eight guys coming back,” Venables said.
The Sooners also added one of the most experienced portal tackles in the country, E’Marion Harris, and have Jake Maikkula settled after arriving from Stanford just before last season.
Venables kept coming back to the same idea: strength, confidence, chemistry. All the things Oklahoma didn’t have when Ole Miss squeezed the game in the fourth quarter.
“I think there’s going to be a better version of all those guys,” he said. “I think they’re stronger, more confident, there’s more chemistry, cohesion.”
And he didn’t shy away from the biggest issue.
“Make no mistake, we’ve got a lot of improvement to do there offensively speaking in being able to run the football,” Venables said about the entire season for the Sooners. “We have to run it a heck of a lot better than we did a year ago.”
Ole Miss saw what that looked like firsthand. Oklahoma had chances late and couldn’t finish drives. The Rebels forced a field goal after a short field. They forced a punt when the Sooners needed a response. They forced a turnover on downs inside the final two minutes.
Every one of those moments came down to Oklahoma’s inability to run the ball when the game tightened.
Venables knows that cannot happen again.
“We have to be more aggressive, more physical,” he said. “We have to be better technically sound. We got to have belief. We got to have the toughness that goes along with that.”
Ole Miss will still feel good about what it did last season. Those stops mattered. They defined the game. But the version of Oklahoma coming to town this fall is older, stronger and far more prepared for SEC football than the one the Rebels saw last year.
The challenge gets tougher. And Venables made sure everyone in the room understood that.
