The Ole Miss Rebels are 3-0 and have steamrolled every team they’ve come across.
OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI HAS SELDOM seen hope like this. The Ole Miss Rebels are 3-0 and have crushed any competition that has stepped on the field against them. A 76-0 clobbering of FCS Furman, a 52-3 demolition of Middle Tennessee, and a 40-6 dismantling of ACC counterpart Wake Forest in Winston-Salem.
Ole Miss has seen starts like this before– this isn’t unfamiliar territory. For the past four years, the Rebels have started the season 3-0 with proper dissections like this current season. But it is with the manner of wreckage they have begun to construe that give every fan draped in red and blue a little bit of light that they haven’t seen in the past.
Being an SEC team and one in the middle of the pack for so long, dreams of Southern domination run rampant among the Magnolia State. Yet, none have came to fruition in recent memory. With the conference being so top–heavy with perennial blue bloods like Alabama and Georgia, that gives little room for the Rebels for upward mobility. For so long the dream has been stuck in purgatory.
This is the year a certain demographic in Oxford believes it can all change. While the team has seen opening gate sprints before, it’s the manner in which the Rebels have smoked through their opposition with relative breeze that has instilled new sparks in chests.
Coming into the season with supercharged hype around their offensive battery– Jaxson Dart at quarterback and Tre Harris at wide receiver, the Rebels have become somewhat of college football darlings.
“I do believe we are the best,” Harris said. “We have a really, really good chemistry that we worked on constantly throughout the offseason. Constantly putting in routes, him throwing me the ball and things like that. And, you know, even off the field we are constantly with each other talking about the team, how we can improve the team. Whenever we have to, we have those times where we just checking up on each other.
“That’s one thing that us as a leaders we always keep, we always keep that in mind is that we always want to check up on each other. Check up on your brother. Just see how you’re doing, mentally, without even talking about football. That’s something that he does for me, really, really well, and that’s something I do for him.”
Through three games– albeit against an FCS and a Group of Five opponent, the Rebels have rarely missed their mark. Throughout all three games, the defense hasn’t so much even relinquished a touchdown and the worst outing against Wake Forest was headlined by sloppy penalties– a tail they shrug off simply by looking at the box score.
Dart has thrown for over 350 yards in all three games, with 1,172 total. Paired with eight touchdowns and an 82.9% completion percentage, Dart has looked like a Heisman candidate.
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Hotty Toddy might be the unanimous chant across the State of Mississippi right now, but any Landshark fan knows that the true test comes in the big games. In 2021, the winning streak came to an end against No. 1 Alabama. In 2022 it was unranked LSU, but still a bona fide giant in the conference. Come 2023, it was the Crimson Tide again, this time ranked No. 13– but still managed to careen the Rebels off a 10-24 cliff.
While teams from Tuscaloosa seem to be the Rebels’ kryptonite, Ole Miss avoids them altogether on this year’s slate. Games against Georgia Southern and Arkansas headline the schedule as notched off and winnable games. The true test is when the Bulldogs from Athens come to town. A one-loss Rebels team isn’t the end of the world, in fact, it might be the best case scenario.
With the expanded College Football Playoff format to 12 teams this year, the SEC has a comparative advantage in strength and firepower to the committee that sets the rankings. Ole Miss can easily sneak in with even two losses if they can play their cards right.
Still, head coach Lane Kiffin has no doubts about the Rebels’ shots this season and has advocated for his team this season, even after a “sloppy” performance at Wake Forest.
“I thought we played really good run defense against a good offense. Too many penalties, holdings on defense,” Kiffin said. “It’s good. This could have been another 60-point win, and probably wouldn’t have their attention. It’s good for us to have stuff to clean up. They’ve done a great job here of winning a lot of games at home against a lot of ranked teams, so this was a big challenge for us.”
Even if Wake Forest isn’t exactly the face of tough road battles– humiliating a Power Five team on the road bodes well for both team confidence and rankings later in the season. With a relatively easy schedule– keyword relatively, the Rebels have much room to grow but are a dark horse firecracker in the making.
