Explaining what happened to Ole Miss on Saturday may be easier and simpler than we think.
All it really takes is looking at the first plays by the Rebels and Georgia in the Bulldogs’ 42-7 win at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
Ole Miss’ first play was a one-yard run by Makhi Frazier. Georgia’s first play was a 46-yard run on a simple zone play.
Hindsight being what it is, those were two perfect examples of how the rest of the game would play out. Georgia dominated the Rebels in every phase of the game and Ole Miss only barely avoided an even more embarrassing shutout loss to end a 16-game home win streak.
On Monday, Ole Miss coach Pete Golding helped explain why the first plays of the game show what went wrong and the answer is just one-word.
Execution.
“Go back and watch the first play on both sides of the ball and the lack of execution on the very first play of the game,” he said at his weekly press conference.
Start with the Rebels’ first offensive play. It was a run-pass option play and Trinidad Chambliss handed off to Frazier. However, you can see it in the replay, it looked like he tried to pull the ball back to throw a backside pass.
“It’s a pull throw. It’s a bust in coverage,” Golding said. “We’ve got (Alexander) on the RPO, and there’s indecision with the back, and he clamps.”
Frazier ends up bobbling the ball after the handoff and gains just one yard.
On the replay, Alexander is wide open with a defender a yard behind him and another one 15 yards downfield. It could’ve easily been a 10-yard completion and maybe more with Alexander’s speed.
Instead, it was a missed opportunity.
Georgia’s first play from scrimmage wasn’t a missed opportunity.
Nate Frazier took the handoff from Gunner Stockton, found a wide open hole on the left side of the offensive line and took off running. He wasn’t touched until he already gained five yards and that was on a missed tackle by Keaton Thomas.
The Rebels were fortunate to have defensive backs downfield to stop him.
“It’s a zone cut, just an easy concept we worked on all week, and it’s a misfit,” Golding said. “We don’t execute. Then we have a missed tackle at the second level.”
Two mistakes gave the Bulldogs a 46-yard run and from that point on, we should’ve known what was coming next.
But as Golding pointed out, those two plays highlight the lack of execution that led to the Rebels losing by 35 points at home.
“We talked about how you’ve got to limit the explosive plays versus Georgia’s offense. You have to make them drive the field. We didn’t do that,” Golding said. “They had 11 explosive plays for 299 yards. Some of them are balls up, and we mistime a pick. Now it goes from a pick to a touchdown. You’re going to have some of those. But the layups, where we had a lack of execution versus a really, really good football team that’s the No. 2 team in the country, but probably No. 1 this week, you can’t do that.”
And that’s what makes Saturday’s loss so frustrating for Ole Miss.
Georgia didn’t need some elaborate offensive scheme to break off a 46-yard run. Ole Miss didn’t need a perfectly designed play to have an open receiver with room to run.
Both plays were relatively simple. Both were opportunities for Ole Miss to execute something it had practiced all week. And both ended with the Rebels coming up short.
Of course, two plays don’t explain every mistake in a 35-point loss. But they provide a pretty good picture of how a game expected to be competitive turned into a blowout.
Golding and his staff have plenty to fix before Saturday’s trip to Oklahoma. Some of those problems might be complicated. Others, as the opening plays against Georgia demonstrated, really aren’t.
The Rebels just have to execute and Saturday showed what happens when they don’t.
