Ole Miss has plenty to sort through after last week’s 52-28 loss to Florida, and the problems went well beyond the defense.
The Rebels’ kickoff unit was exposed on Saturday in a way it hadn’t been all season. Florida’s return game ripped off an average of 37.8 yards per kick return, a massive swing from what Ole Miss had been doing coming in. Before that game, the Rebels were holding returners to 17.75 yards per return.
Then London Montgomery happened.
The Florida running back broke off returns of 74 and 41 yards, and both were gut punches. Those plays didn’t just flip field position; they handed the Gators the ball in plus territory, and Florida scored within five plays on each of those drives. For a defense already trying to steady itself, that was a brutal setup.
Pete Golding didn’t sugarcoat what he saw from Lucas Carneiro after the game.
“I don’t think he was hitting the ball really cleanly on kickoffs,” head coach Pete Golding said in a postgame interview following the game on Saturday.
That said, the breakdown wasn’t just on the kicker. Ole Miss missed too many tackles across the board, and that showed up again on special teams. Florida ball carriers kept breaking free and slipping out of contact, and the coverage unit couldn’t finish the job when it had chances to stop Montgomery.
It was also a test Ole Miss hadn’t really faced until Saturday. The Rebels had allowed just one return against LSU, none against Charlotte, and three against Louisville. Florida brought a different level of return threat, and Ole Miss didn’t answer it.
Carneiro, for his part, still has a spotless 71-for-71 mark from last season to this year, so this looks like the kind of hiccup that can be cleaned up. The bye week gives Ole Miss a chance to do exactly that, especially on kickoffs.
The bigger concern is that the coverage team can’t keep putting the defense in bad spots. Short fields make life harder for any unit, and Florida made Ole Miss pay every time it got that kind of advantage.
The Rebels have taken punches before and bounced back, and now they get a week to reset before Vanderbilt on October 10th.
In Other News...
Ole Miss Faces A Huge Identity Shift After Nearly 30 Years
Ole Miss is preparing for a major brand change, with the school finalizing an agreement to move its official apparel partnership from Nike to Adidas beginning in June 2027, when its current contract expires. The reported deal, secured by Chancellor Glenn Boyce and Athletics Director Keith Carter, would close the book on a long run with Nike and put the Rebels into a new look as the next apparel cycle approaches.
Neither Ole Miss nor Adidas has officially announced the switch, and the financial terms are still undisclosed, but the move fits into the broader tug-of-war between the two brands for power-program visibility. Adidas had recently lost Miami back to Nike, so landing Ole Miss would give it a notable win in the ongoing competition for major college partners. [Read more 🡒]
Ole Miss Just Exposed A Bigger Defensive Concern Than Missed Tackles
Will Echoles said the issues that showed up in Ole Miss loss to Florida went beyond missed tackles and into the kind of mental lapses that can unravel a defense in a hurry. The defensive tackle pointed to mistakes in execution and a tendency to chase perfection instead of staying locked into the basics, which helps explain why the Rebels left that game needing more than a simple cleanup job.
Pete Golding has since shifted the practice emphasis back to fundamentals, with the staff pressing the unit to fight through blocks and finish plays with better discipline. Ole Miss now heads into its matchup with Vanderbilt looking for a cleaner standard in tackling and pursuit, and the real question is whether those corrections show up fast enough to steady a defense that knows it has more fixing to do. [Read more 🡒]
Ole Miss May Need Fresh Faces To Fix Two Growing Problems
The Florida game left Ole Miss with a familiar split-screen feel: enough offensive firepower to see the upside, but enough defensive inconsistency to keep the bigger questions alive. As the Rebels head into a bye week, the conversation turns less to one result and more to how this team can smooth out the rough edges before SEC play tightens the margins even further.
Fresh faces may be part of that answer. Freshman receiver Cunningham has flashed the kind of potential that can widen the passing game, while former five-star talents Cook and Barney still loom as players who could change the ceiling if they start producing more consistently. Joshua Dye and pass rusher Barnes are also names to watch, because Ole Miss needs help in both the run game and up front on defense, and this break offers a chance for those pieces to emerge. [Read more 🡒]