Ole Miss finally takes the field this afternoon to begin the 2024 season against Furman. Here are five things we want to ask.
Jared Redding
The wait is finally over. Ole Miss football is back for a 130th season, and none in recent memory have captured the hearts, minds and imagination of its fanbase like the 2024 teameven before things kick off.
Ole Miss enters Saturday as the No. 6 team in the country according to preseason AP and Coaches Polls. However, there is legitimate substance to that level of hype this time around. The Rebels return almost every core piece of last season's historic 11-2 campaign that was capped off with a Peach Bowl victory. Even better, the nation's No. 1 ranked transfer portal class will accompany them, alongside another top-20 high school/JUCO signing class.
Lane Kiffin enters his fifth season as Ole Miss' head football coach, now the longest head coaching tenure he's ever had since getting into coaching at the turn of the millennium. His staff is somewhat familiar in makeup, and it is beefed up even more with high profile support staff hires made this offseason.
For the second season in a row, the Rebels will kick off the season against an FCS opponent, with the Furman Paladins in town.Kickoff this eveningis slated for 6 p.m. CT and can be streamed on ESPN+/SECN+ or listened to on the Ole Miss Radio Network.
The Paladins going into tonight's matchup as the No. 9 ranked FCS program, coming off a couple consecutive 10-win seasons. Despite that, they'll be quite overmatched against a team many consider to be among college football's best overall at the time of writing.
"We're excited to get to the opener. We've had a really good camp, and I think our guys are excited to play someone else. It's been really competitive, especially with the improvements up front from the offensive and defensive line. Still have a lot of work to do this week. This is a really, really good opponent that has won a lot of games, plays really sound football and plays extremely physical… it'll be a really big challenge for us," Kiffin said earlier in the week.
As we get set for tonight's opener, let's ask five burning questions about what we might end up seeing...
The Arrival. What can we expect?
In case you're an Ole Miss fan that's been living under a rock over the last eight months and change, this is believed to be the season that Ole Miss has it's best shot to make an SEC Championship, a College Football Playoff and maybe perhaps a national championship in Atlanta.
Who knows what will happen? Because that's still a long way off from now. For now, there's 12 games to play before any of that can be decided.
What will Vaught-Hemingway Stadium be like? Based off social media, it seems like everyone and their mother will be there to soak everything in. While that's unrealistic in literal terms, will this be the most electric FBS-FCS atmosphere this weekend?
Ole Miss has gone to great lengths to market this season in the image of the award-winning ESPN documentary series The Last Dance, which highlighted Michael Jordan and the elite Chicago Bulls of the 90's. There will be more opportunities for Ole Miss to be championship contenders down the line, but that is in no way a guarantee, especially today.
All in all, this question is basically: what will the overall vibe and environment be like this evening? We know one thing: football is back in Oxford.
What can we expect to see out of the offensive line?
It probably won't matter who Ole Miss puts on the line of scrimmage this evening, the Rebels have far more talent and depth on the offensive line than an FCS opponent like Furman can handle. As a matter of fact, Ole Miss' offensive line, on paper, appears to be one of the best overall units compared to most of the SEC. But, games are played on the field, so we'll see about that as the weeks go by.
But, there's been a number of questions over the last few weeks about who the main five guys will be, with all that depth. That said, Ole Miss will be dealing with a couple of injuries in the interior. Sources were not the most optimistic last week about Gerquan Scott (knee) or Caleb Warren (knee) playing in this game. If they don't, expect to see Reece McIntyre or Brycen Sanders take snaps in their place. But, it's not their absence will be greatly missed, at least tonight.
Micah Pettus, Julius Buelow and Nate Kalepo appear to have starting spots on lock for the time being, but we'll see what everything else looks like at least tonight. As fast as Ole Miss moves on offense, it's not like offensive lineman can be rotated in after every snap. Expect almost everyone in that room to get some snaps.
This might give us a hint at what the coming weeks might look like.
Could Saturday provide another testing ground to see Jaxson Dart's primary backup option?
Until further notice, Jaxson Dart is the starting quarterback for the Ole Miss Rebels. That part is obvious, especially after last season's true breakout year and being the main catalyst for the Rebels to push all chips to the table on the portal trail.
What is still not 100 percent clear is who goes in if Dart goes down with an injury or Ole Miss blows the opponent out of the water early (like what's expected for this evening). Ole Miss has two viable options in former five-star and LSU Tiger Walker Howard or the young football-baseball prodigy that is Austin Simmons... but again, which one?
Both have flashed their potential through fall camp, and only Howardsaw game action last year albeit for a brief time. Does Ole Miss go with the experienced field general and more conventional option? Does Ole Miss go with the southpaw that is a rare talent both in his physical and mental abilities?
One can expect one or both to see the field tonight if Ole Miss sticks to the script and dominates early on both sides of the ball. Tonight may not answer the question all together, or will it?
Just how involved will the ground game be and what picture can we expect?
Lane Kiffin hinted as the ground game being pretty involved when meeting with the media earlier this week. Ole Miss has some minor injuries at wide receiver (notably Jordan Watkins and Antwane Wells Jr.) and it isn't quite clear how much they'll play tonight, if at all. That's what Kiffin was referring to when talking about the ground.
It's obvious that Ole Miss has to balanced to achieve its full offensive potential, meaning that Ulysses Bentley, Henry Parrish Jr. and possibly Rashad Amos will have to chip in heavily. If there's one thing that can be nit-picked from last season's 73-7 season-opening win, it's that the ground game left a lot to be desired. Tre Harris made everyone forget about it for a while.
Bentley is expected to be the feature back, but having the other two backs around begs the question if they'll turn the running back rotation into what it was in Kiffin's first two seasons back in 2020 and 2021. Kiffin previously suggested that they'll operate in the fashion that gives them the most success from week-to-week.
That said, it's an FCS opponent tonight, and expect everyone to contribute. However, it'll be interesting to see how they'll rotate.
This new-look secondary. What will we make of it?
With the exception of last year's leading tackler Trey Washingtonand then John Saunders Jr. in the back end of the defense, the secondary is basically all new. That story has been beaten to death, but it's time to see them all in action together against an actual opponent in an actual game setting.
As was the case last season, the Rebels chased experience in the portal and go it with faces like Trey Amos, Key Lawrence, Yam Banks, Louis Moore, Isaiah Hamilton and Oxford's very own Brandon Turnage.
The secondary had its flaws last season with so many new faces in it. But are things different this time around, especially when it comes to communication? There's definitely a lot of length and a lot of versatility to go around to make things look promising physically.
Once again, this is an FCS Furman team, it's not the toughest offense to go against, but it is an offense that has some playmakers at receiver. But finally seeing this secondary in game action will allow us to learn more about them than just prior film and practice. There's more layers to communication now, especially with the new technology permitted in game.
