The best compliment you can give an offensive lineman sometimes is that nobody noticed him.
That’s especially true when a starting center leaves a game with an injury and his replacement steps in without the offense missing a beat.
It’s exactly what happened for Ole Miss against Missouri on Saturday.
Starting center Brycen Sanders went down with an injury during the Rebels’ possession that began with 12:13 remaining in the second quarter. That forced starting right guard Patrick Kutas to slide over and take his place.
Ole Miss continued moving the football, eventually finishing the drive with its second touchdown of the game.
Sanders wasn’t sidelined for long, but the situation demonstrated the preparation and versatility of the Rebels’ offensive line.
“It was fun,” Kutas said Tuesday. “It was good to get a little switch-up, kind of knock some cobwebs off. But I thought we had dudes that could plug and play really well, so that was very good to see.”
The fifth-year senior from Memphis normally lines up at right guard, but he’s hardly a stranger to playing center. He spent considerable time at the position during spring practice and fall camp and continues taking occasional snaps there during game weeks.
The last time he’d actually played center in a game, however, was his sophomore season.
Perhaps the most challenging part wasn’t the physical adjustment of snapping the football and blocking from a different position. It was handling the responsibilities that normally fall on Sanders.
“Probably more the mental,” Kutas said when asked which aspect was more difficult. “You kind of take Bryson for granted when he’s out there just because he’s dialing up everything, all the calls. And then you get thrown in, and it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, he’s doing a lot of the work.'”
It’s an important distinction.
Playing center isn’t simply a matter of lining up a few feet to the left. The position requires understanding defensive fronts, identifying potential pressure and communicating blocking assignments before the snap.
Fortunately for Ole Miss, Kutas approaches his regular position with those responsibilities already in mind.
“I play right guard, but I think like a center,” Kutas said. “Even though I’m playing right guard, I still like to know what’s going on with all the spots and calls and stuff like that.”
That preparation was just one part of an impressive afternoon for Kutas.
He graded out at 94 percent with 10 pancake blocks against Missouri, earning SEC Co-Offensive Lineman of the Week honors.
Kutas helped pave the way for an Ole Miss offense that rushed for a season-high 257 yards, averaging 6.8 yards per carry, and finished with 498 total yards. The offensive line also kept quarterback Trinidad Chambliss from being sacked.
Kutas, naturally, was quick to share the recognition with his teammates.
“I think I got that, but really, that represents all of us,” he said.
Head coach Pete Golding offered a similar assessment of the offensive line’s performance, particularly its ability to adjust when Sanders went down.
“Guys are going to be banged up coming into it,” Golding said. “So we’ve got to have the next guys on deck and ready to roll. I thought we were able to plug and play with the O-line and move Kutas over and not really miss a beat.”
With Texas coming to Oxford this weekend and another difficult stretch of SEC games ahead, that kind of flexibility could prove invaluable.
Injuries are inevitable over the course of a football season. What matters is whether a team has players prepared to handle the unexpected.
Ole Miss got an encouraging answer Saturday.
