Sometimes a score tells the whole story.
Ole Miss entered Saturday night’s top-10 showdown with plenty to play for, but Georgia left Oxford with no doubt about who controlled the game, rolling to a 42-7 victory at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
Afterward, Rebels’ head coach Pete Golding didn’t sugarcoat what happened, calling the performance a “butt whooping” and taking responsibility for a team he felt wasn’t prepared to meet the moment.
Here’s everything Golding had to say following the Rebels’ lopsided loss to the Bulldogs.
Opening statement…
Golding: Yeah, obviously a very disappointing performance, really in all three phases. It started from the first play of the game, and it felt like it never stopped. Not taking anything away from Kirby and Georgia. That’s a really good football team. We just didn’t help ourselves. We’ve got to go back and look at everything, obviously, like you always do when you get your butt whooped. But I did not see that coming. I’m not going to lie to you. I thought we had a good week of practice. I thought the preparation was good, but we didn’t do a good enough job coaching. We obviously did not have them ready to play, and that’s not the product that we want to put on tape. That’s not who we are. So we’re going to have to go back to work and fix a lot of things. But that’s not who we are. Hats off to Kirby and Georgia. That was a butt whooping.
On the roughing the passer and pass interference penalties in the second quarter…
Golding: I’m not sure that it impacted the end of the game. I know that wasn’t your question, but it definitely felt like we could never get a rhythm of anything. We couldn’t put positive plays together in any of the phases. It did feel like, all right, maybe here’s a break. Here’s a spark. Great interception, and then here’s the penalty. Then we get them to third down, and you feel like you got another stop. They definitely don’t help. Obviously, that wasn’t the end result because of those two things, but we could never get any momentum in the game at any point, it felt like. Even in the second half when we came out, I was like, “Look, don’t focus on the scoreboard.” Then we go three-and-out, start driving on offense and end up turning the football over as well. We just could never stack anything in all three phases. Really didn’t catch a break and didn’t help ourselves. But those definitely don’t help, obviously, when you create a turnover and you get a flag. The hit was clean. The timing of it and all that. I’ll be interested to hear the response. I think it was more of the shoulder driving into the ground, I would assume, is going to be the response. But the target area was fine, and the timing of it was good. We’ll see what they say.
On his message to Ole Miss fans after the loss…
Golding: Obviously, we’ve got to put a better product on tape for them. They showed up and they were loud. That was an electric atmosphere to come into, and you could tell from the very first drive. But people want to cheer for things that look the way they’re supposed to and are exciting to watch. There was nothing about that that was exciting to watch. I can assure you nobody is more disappointed in that than I am. I know they’re disappointed, and it’s our job to go back to work and put a better product on tape.
On Ole Miss’ College Football Playoff chances after the loss…
Golding: I think that’s kind of how you set it up from an offseason standpoint. What are you putting up on the billboards? What’s your message and all that? We don’t ever talk about a national championship. We talk about a championship mindset and what it takes to compete for championships, what it looks like every day, how you’re going to be held accountable and how you’ve got to be responsible for the things you do Monday through Friday. It’s never been a banner up there. But obviously, they come here with the expectation of wanting to compete for a championship. In order to do that, you’ve got to do what champions do, and that takes a lot Monday through Friday. Our focus is going to go back to what we can control. That’s where we get lost around here, in my opinion, at times. We worry about things that we can’t control. All we can control is coming back in here tomorrow, evaluating this tape and getting it fixed. That starts with me. We can’t control right now what the playoff committee thinks. We’ve got to get ready for Oklahoma, and in order to get ready for Oklahoma, we’ve just got to fix what we put on tape because we’re going to get exposed if we don’t. I’m really big with those guys on focusing on what we can control. All we can control is our preparation, our plan and getting these guys ready to play a better football game.
On getting the team to focus on what it can control…
Golding: I think several different ways. Obviously, I think it starts with who you put in the building. I think we’ve got the right guys in the building. We’ve got really good coaches. I know it didn’t look that way tonight, but I love our staff. I think they do a really good job, and we’ve got good players. We have flashed at times throughout this season where it’s like, “Man, hey, that is it.” That’s the most frustrating part about it all, right? Does that make sense? Because, like anything with your kids, they show you what they can do, and that’s the expectation. I know they’re not perfect, and I dang sure ain’t perfect. But for us to play the way we do at times and then not do that consistently, that’s what’s driving all of us crazy around here. Obviously, you’re constantly looking at how you’re modeling the week and all those types of things. How can we become more consistent in our performance? This group is tough, competitive and they do love football. We’ve got to do a better job coaching so that we execute better on a more consistent basis. There were some things in that game, especially in the first half, that weren’t surprises. A lot of times when you play a really well-coached team, there are going to be surprises. A lot of times that ends up affecting the game. But there were some things in that first half that we didn’t execute in all three phases that we felt like we had worked throughout the week. We thought there was a clear understanding, and we just didn’t execute. On the flip side of that, when somebody continues to do something over and over, you’ve got to find somebody else to do that, whatever that is, whatever type of job that is. That was the disappointing thing as well. Some of the issues that occurred throughout the game, I think when we look at the tape, we’ll see if it’s a repeat offender. We’ve got to do a better job of putting guys in better positions, but also the guys that are in position have to be able to perform and play at a high level. Because when you don’t execute versus really good football teams, that’s what it looks like.
On Georgia’s defensive pressure…
Golding: No. I think obviously everybody’s into the 7-up presentation, and you have a plus-one. Then you’ve got your zone variations and your trap variations off of it. It’s kind of the fad right now. The NFL Vikings and all that, it’s kind of leaking into college. We’ll see it again next week. Oklahoma’s known for the same thing. That was a big part of their package last year over there. I think obviously everybody’s looking to present the same looks but have a complement to it. As you play more games, you continue to build upon that. I think a lot of those looks, like Trinidad mentioned, they’re prepared for. They’re still hard. They have an extra guy. If you don’t run the route on time, you don’t get the ball out, and if the back doesn’t pick up the edge rusher and hit him in the chest and not let him just come by, you’re going to have problems. You’ve got to make guys pay when they’re going to 7-up and plus-one. You’ve got to hit them. I think that was the difference. They got the same look last year at Georgia, right? Strip goes, what, 75? There’s risk and reward to it. They had a good plan, and it was very successful tonight.
On whether the performance was an off night or exposed bigger issues…
Golding: I think every week, regardless of the score, we’re going through and evaluating the tape and trying to do it better. The scoreboard doesn’t always show exactly what happens on the grass from a scheme standpoint and everything else. A lot of times, the worst thing is when you’re winning and you don’t evaluate the tape. You’re going to get exposed because you’re putting problems on tape. This will be real easy to get their attention tomorrow night. It’s normally hard when you win a game and it’s an emotional game, and you’re sitting here trying to tell them why this isn’t good enough and we’ve got to fix this and do all that. It’s like, “Coach, we won. What are you talking about?” I mean, we just got our ass beat. They’re going to be in this tape, and they don’t want to feel that way again, especially in that type of game. That’s a top-10 matchup at home. We talked about all week what home-field advantage means in this league, especially here. For our fans to show up the way they did and for us to perform like that, that’s not OK. That starts with me. I think they’ll be eager to get in here and evaluate the tape, and we’ve got to do a better job coaching it.
On whether he saw anything positive in the loss…
Golding: I think how they responded coming out of halftime. In a lot of those scenarios, if you don’t have the right type of guys in that locker room, you can feel it at halftime. You can feel it coming out, and you can see it from the very first series of that second half. It wasn’t that. We just didn’t execute well. It started from the very first play. Some things that we just can’t put on tape that weren’t hard, and we’ve just got to do a better job coaching it. To me, at halftime, it felt very much like Texas, where about everything that could go wrong in that first half went wrong. It’s like, “All right, here we go again.” There wasn’t this mass panic. There was a good look in their eyes at halftime, going through adjustments and going through corrections. There was ownership. “Coach, I don’t know what I was thinking. I screwed that up. I understand. Yes, sir.” My message to them at halftime was, “Look, man, I don’t care what this scoreboard looks like, but there better not be an effort or a toughness issue in the second half.” There was an execution issue, but there was an execution issue from play one to the last play. That’s what we’ve got to get fixed. I do think they came out and fought. We just didn’t execute well enough to give ourselves a chance.
On the offensive line’s performance and losing Patrick Kutas to injury…
Golding: Obviously, I didn’t get to watch that side of it. I was watching the other side of it. But losing Kutas in the game, he’s a big piece. He’s kind of the glue up front. Coach Garrison does a good job rolling those guys in. I just think they got some really tough looks tonight. Obviously, looking at the stats, I haven’t watched the offensive tape. We weren’t able to get much going, especially in the run game. That’s what we kind of talked about all week. If you can’t run the football versus those guys, you don’t stop the run and then you lose the turnover battle on top of it, it’s not going to be close. And it wasn’t.
