Heading into Saturday’s home opener against Charlotte, the assumption was No. 9 Ole Miss would do a lot of things right.
After all, the 49ers are coming off a season-opening, triple overtime loss The Citadel, an FCS school. Ole Miss aspires to play in the College Football Playoff. These are not two equal teams.
But we play the games for a reason because teams make mistakes, they do things wrong. Ole Miss is no different and has plenty of awkward moments coming up watching the film on Sunday. Most notably, the third quarter won’t be fun for any Rebel to watch.
There are other things, too. Here are three things that went the wrong way for Ole Miss in a 41-9 win against the 49ers.
What went wrong for Ole Miss
Defensive secondary made (more) mistakes
As mentioned in the positive version of this article, the coverage busts we saw last week against Louisville didn’t show up against Charlotte. But there were busts.
Or rather, there were plays defensive backs came too far up field to defend against a screen or bubble route. They bit too hard on the fake.
Charlotte wasn’t able to make the Rebels pay dearly for those mistakes. There were at least defenders around to make the tackle.
Way too many ill-timed penalties
One of the things that made the third quarter especially rough for Ole Miss was the penalties.
True freshman Landon Barnes got called for a facemask when Charlotte was facing second-and-12 that put the 49ers into the redzone. A couple plays later, Edwin Joseph pulled on the back of a receivers’ jersey, receiving a pass interference penalty and putting Charlotte at the Rebels’ two-yard line.
It wasn’t just the defense, though. Ole Miss had three false start penalties against charlotte. All three game on fourth downs, including two that resulted in change to kicking a field goal or punt.
Against a team like Charlotte, those mistakes are easily overcome. The 49ers ended up kicking a field goal after being two yards from the end zone and the Rebels offense had plenty of scoring drives.
Against a team like LSU next week, those mistakes are lot harder to overcome.
One third down conversion
Yes, this is extremely nit-picky. Ole Miss faced just three third downs in the entire game, but it only converted one of them.
The Rebels had 10 possessions against Charlotte and seven ended with points scored. That’s a solid offensive outing and the fact they had only three instances of needing to gain yards to keep a drive alive is good. There wasn’t much trouble moving the ball on first and second downs.
And two of those instances saw Ole Miss line up to try for a fourth down conversions afterwards. So, this isn’t really something that went wrong. Just not as well as it could have.
