Pete Golding has a theory about why Ole Miss can’t string two good weeks together after getting manhandled in its own stadium Saturday night.
He shared it right after Georgia spent four quarters treating Vaught-Hemingway like its own scrimmage field.
“In my opinion, that’s where we get lost around here at times: we worry about things we can’t control,” Golding said following the 42-7 loss.
He left it there. Was he talking about fans? Players? Message boards? The guy in the stands two rows down with a playoff bracket on his phone? He didn’t say.
I’d bet on all of the above.
The College Football Playoff talk is a good example. Somebody asked whether the Rebs should hang on to the sliver of playoff math still out there after a 35-point loss. Golding passed. Smart man.
“We can’t control right now what the playoff committee thinks,” he said. “We’ve got to get ready for Oklahoma.”
The wrong kind of steady
To be fair, the Rebels did find some consistency Saturday. They were consistently unable to get much of anything done.
Georgia ran for 295 yards at 6.1 a carry. Ole Miss ran 31 times for 66 yards. That’s 2.1 per try, or about what I’d average 50 years ago if you lined me up back there.
The Rebels finished with 252 yards of offense. Georgia led 28-0 at halftime, and the rest of the night was a formality with a marching band.
“We could never stack anything in all three phases,” Golding said.
Twelfth-ranked Ole Miss is now 6-3 and 4-3 in SEC games. Don’t expect that ranking to hold up next week.
Golding tipped his cap to Kirby and Georgia. He also called the night what it was: “That was a butt whooping.” Hard to argue with the man.
Trouble from the first series
The opening drive gave everybody a preview. The Rebs had the ball first, and on third-and-9, Trinidad Chambliss threw high to Horatio Fields with Fields running free.
If you’ve watched this team much this year, you saw that coming. Slow first drives have become a weekly tradition, and not the fun kind like the Grove.
Georgia’s first offensive snap went 47 yards on the ground. The Bulldogs scored on that drive and kept right on going.
Then there’s the fourth-down call I’m still chewing on.
Trailing 14-0, the Rebels faced fourth-and-3 at the Georgia 39. Golding sent Lucas Carneiro out for a 56-yarder. The kick ran out of gas.
Fifty-six yards is a stretch for Carneiro. A failed fourth-down try would’ve left Georgia in about the same spot, and 3 yards is a whole lot shorter than 56. Last time I checked, anyway.
Then again, I didn’t have a headset on.
A flag that stung
The biggest momentum killer came on a play that should’ve been the Rebs’ spark. Jordan Renaud got to Gunnar Stockton just as the ball came out, and Ole Miss picked off the throw.
For about three seconds, Rebels fans had something to cheer. Then the flag came out for roughing the passer. The pick was gone, and Georgia had a first down.
It was clear on the broadcast what happened. Renaud hit him on time and didn’t slam him down. If that’s roughing, somebody needs to send me the updated rulebook. Golding saw it the same way.
“When you create a turnover and you get a flag, and the hit was clean…” he said. “I’ll be interested to hear the explanation.”
To his credit, he didn’t pin the loss on the officials.
“Obviously the end result wasn’t because of those two things,” Golding said.
What eats at him is how good this group looks some weeks compared to how it looked Saturday.
“What drives us crazy around here is that we know we have good players and we flash as really good a lot,” Golding said. “But we can’t seem to gain much consistency. Championship teams are consistent.”
He also took the blame.
“All we can control is coming back in here tomorrow, evaluating this tape and getting it fixed, and that starts with me,” he said.
Effort wasn’t the issue
Chambliss didn’t dress it up. The quarterback’s description afterward was “an embarrassing performance.” He probably won’t get an argument from anybody.
At halftime, Golding said he told his players he didn’t care what the scoreboard showed at the end, but effort and toughness had better not be a problem. He liked what he saw on that front.
“We just didn’t execute well enough to give ourselves a chance,” he said.
Oscar Bird probably deserves a game ball. He averaged 42.2 yards on six punts and put two inside the 20. When your punter is in the MVP conversation, the game plan didn’t go as drawn up.
Fields led the receivers with eight grabs for 96 yards. On a night with only 252 yards of offense, I’d still lean toward the guy kicking it away.
Georgia’s punter had a pretty good night too. His first one pinned the Rebels at their own 1, which is about as close to the goal line as you can get without just stepping into it.
Injuries and early exits
The Rebs also lost Patrick Kutas, their best offensive lineman, in the first half. He went down with what appeared to be an injury below the waist, and Troy Everett, who came over from Oklahoma, filled in.
“He’s kind of the glue up front,” Golding said. Ole Miss hopes Kutas can go against the Sooners.
Keaton Thomas is a tougher one to explain. The linebacker was banged up enough to land on the injury report this week, then got hurt with five minutes left and the Rebels down 35. Chambliss had already been taken out around the eight-minute mark. Thomas should’ve gone to the bench with him.
The crowd that showed up did its job. The red and blue light show looked sharp from up high, and the Navy parachute team nailed its landing. Somebody in the stadium was going to stick a landing Saturday night, and it wasn’t the Rebs.
Not everybody stayed to the end, though. Some fans were already filing out of Vaught-Hemingway by the second quarter. I know because my phone kept buzzing with texts and calls from folks walking out. Hard to blame them.
Then there were the few students who decided to toss stuff onto the field after a call went against Ole Miss. Real helpful. That has no place at the Vaught, no matter how ugly things get.
Golding said the fans deserve more for showing up the way they did.
“Obviously we’ve got to put a better product on tape for them,” he said.
Next up is Oklahoma, which Golding said brings a similar pressure package. Fix the tape, he warned, or “we’re going to get exposed.”
After Saturday night, I’d take him at his word.
