ATLANTA — Forget the X's and O's. Right now the Ole Miss football team is trying to hone in on the spares and strikes.
It's impossible to talk about Ole Miss football in 2022 without talking about the transfer portal. The Rebels have 16 transfer portal adds on their roster to go along with 15 scholarship freshmen and a junior college transfer.Ole Miss' transfer portal and signing class numbers read like the values of dueling blackjack hands, and taking that kind of gamble is the risk that will define the Rebels' future.
New talent is good. Coach Lane Kiffin didn't complain about signing 247Sports' second-best transfer portal class or about signing four of the 50 best-rated prospects in the portal class during SEC Media Days at the College Football Hall of Fame on Monday.
But with that much roster turnover comes the challenge of teaching almost half of your team how to fit into your schemes and culture and the fear of not having a built-in leadership infrastructure.
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"This portal thing is really good and really bad like everything," Kiffin said."It's really good on paper. You can plug in players like free agency. But you've got culture issues because you've got players coming from all over the place. They have different habits and styles and ways they think. So we have a lot of work to do in training camp that's a little unusual because it's not just X's and O's."
Last year, Ole Miss won 10 regular-season games for the first time. Players and coaches give a lot of the credit for that success to how close the locker room was. Veteran leaders like quarterback Matt Corral and defensive end Sam Williams used player-led meetings to create a trusting culture that translated from the locker room to the field.
Corral and Williams are gone. So are upperclassman starters at running back, receiver, center, linebacker, cornerback and safety. The Rebels have talented newcomers to replace them on the field. But replacing those presences in the locker room takes time.
Last year's closeness was cultivated in summer "Get Real" meetings, where players spoke freely about their anxieties, fears and shortcomings. Senioroffensive lineman Nick Broeker said those meetings and moreare still happening as the team tries to recreate last year's magic.
"It allows guys to really open up," Broeker said."Especially because there's a lot of new faces. We're trying to get some more off-the-field events set up so everybody can get to know each other off the field because that's just as important in my opinion. Bowling;we do easy things like going out to eat, fishing, stuff like that."
Junior defensive end Cedric Johnson said he feels it's easier building chemistry this year than it was last year. Sure, there are more new faces. But after going through the building process last year, this summer has been more about repeating what works.
Johnson said defensive line coach Randall Joyner has assigned him "leadership tasks," and he's putting pressure on himself to be a teacher for his younger teammates the way Williams was a mentor to him.
To Johnson, consistency is key. Leadership isn't about being perfect from the jump. It's about understanding that the best teams have the fewest bad days. And as senior receiver Jonathan Mingo puts it, the teams that are most likely to perform that way are the teams built around trust.
"Trust in the locker room translates to trust on the field," Mingo said. "When you play in a game, you need trust in your teammate that he has your back; and you have his back too. Nick Broeker, when it's third down and they send a blitz his way, I trust he's going to get the block so I can have enough time to get the ball. You've got to trust in your teammates. When everybody trusts and everybody holds each other accountable, it makes the team much closer and helps you get to the promised land you want to be at."
As obvious as they might be, Mingo and Johnson think the Rebels' goals need to be made clear and public. Getting 10 wins and a Sugar Bowl berth made last year a success. But just like how the 2021 Rebels turned an Outback Bowl appearance into a New Year's Six bowl, this year's squad wants to build off past success for more.
"We're trying to win," Johnson said. "We're trying to win a championship. We're trying to do big things. Keeping that goal in mind, I feel like that keeps everybody on track."
Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.
