08/29/2026
Three takes for this season, and you can hold me to all three of them in January.
ONE: Ole Miss is going to win a game 17-13, and it's going to be the most important win of the season.
For a decade this program has been an offense with a tag-along defense. Score 40, hope they score 39, everybody goes home happy and exhausted. Kiffin built an amusement park at Ole Miss and the ride was the offense. That's over.
Here's the number that tells the whole story, and I got it from Tom Vanderford: the 2025 transfer class was roughly 70% offense and 30% defense. This year it's about 50/50. That's an entire offseason in one number. That's a program deciding what it wants to be.
And here's what they bought with it: you're no longer having to buy Great Value brand transfer portal targets. You can go get the name brands now. A starter from Florida State. A starter from Georgia. A starter from Florida. A starter from Auburn. That's shopping at the big boy rack.
Now here's why it matters, and it comes from a man I worked for. When I was at Ole Miss in the early part of my time there and the very end of his, Coach Cutcliffe used to always say: you never know when the play is going to happen in a game that's going to determine the outcome. You have to be ready every single play.
Twenty years later, go look at the Fiesta Bowl. Everybody will tell you Ole Miss lost because they couldn't stop Miami's run, and that's a little bit true. But what actually got them beat was a defensive back having a bust and a missed tackle — and both resulted in touchdowns. Two plays.
That's why they bought four Power 4 starting defensive backs instead of two. Because Golding's ideal defense doesn't blitz — it's designed to generate pressure with four or fewer and drop everybody else back. And you can't do that unless the back five can hold up completely alone.
TWO: September 19 is a trap. GameDay in the Grove, Kiffin walking back in if he's not suspended, $800 a ticket to get in the door. But LSU is, best case, the fourth-best team Ole Miss plays this season. The game that decides it is at Texas — game 8, on the road, five games into conference play with no emotional lift left. And it's a homecoming: Johntay Cook is from DeSoto, Kewan Lacy is from Texas, Landon Barnes is out of Duncanville.
THREE: this is the best roster Ole Miss will have for three years. Ceiling 12-0. Floor 9-3. And 9-3 is the version where you look back in January and realize the year got away by a possession here and a bad half there. It's not getting blown out that should scare you. It's getting close. 🦈
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