Ole Miss is walking into the season with a target on its back, and the preseason SEC poll made that crystal clear.
The Rebels were slotted third in the conference by the media, behind only Georgia at No. 1 and Texas at No. 2, and they picked up six first-place votes along the way. For a program that just reached the semifinal round of the College Football Playoff, that kind of respect is hardly a surprise. It also raises the bar for Pete Golding in his first full season as head coach.
Golding spent the offseason reshaping the roster, leaning hard into the transfer portal to rebuild the defense and adding a top-15 recruiting class for 2027. That work has helped fuel the belief that Ole Miss can keep pushing forward after last season’s breakthrough.
The recognition didn’t stop with the team ranking. Ole Miss landed three players on the First Team All-SEC list: Trinidad Chambliss, Kewan Lacy, and Will Echoles. Suntarine Perkins and Lucas Carneiro made the second team, while Patrick Kutas and Kam Franklin were placed on the third team.
Chambliss is at the center of it all. After a huge season, he’s set up to be one of the sport’s most electric players again, and pairing him with Lacy in the backfield gives Ole Miss a combination that should stress defenses in plenty of different ways.
Golding knows the challenge is bigger now. The expectations aren’t coming from one corner; they’re everywhere. Still, he sounds like a coach who understands exactly what this next step requires.
"I think obviously coming off the success of last year, when you're going into an offseason, you look at those lessons that you learned throughout the season when it didn't go exactly how you saw it going," Golding said. "You try to figure out how can we do it better?"
The schedule won’t make life easy. SEC play opens with LSU, and later matchups with Texas, Oklahoma, and Georgia are all waiting on the slate. There won’t be much room to ease into anything.
That’s why the preseason praise matters less than what comes next. Ole Miss has one of the most talented rosters in program history, and with the standard now set this high, anything short of getting back to the CFP will feel like a step back.
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The real pressure point may be the cornerback room, where Auburn transfer Jay Crawford is set to push for a starting job and could quickly become the player who steadies the group. Ole Miss has not exactly been known for churning out elite corners year after year, with Trey Amos standing out as a notable exception, but Goldings defensive background gives this battle a chance to become something more than just a depth chart decision. [Read more 🡒]