2026 Missouri Football Opponent DEEP DIVE: Ole Miss Rebels
NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...
Welcome back to Rock M Nation’s annual opponent preview series of the upcoming season. Each week we will break down one opponent from the schedule in chronological order. Given that rosters are ever fluid – and this is done by a hobbyist rather than a pro – there could be some errors in history and current roster makeup. All mistakes are done on purpose and with ill intent because Nate Edwards doesn’t like you or your team.
Catch up on previous 2026 opponent previews!
I think Ole Miss would like to have a little peace and quiet. At least for one season. Especially given that they were under the CFB media microscope for nearly the entire year. Think of all the story lines they had crammed into last season!
- Dramatic head coach who loves to stir the media pot.
- High-profile starting quarterback injured in Week Two.
- Backup quarterback f***ing rocks.
- School and administration gets accused of not caring about football…by the current head coach.
- Enter November ranked and with only one loss.
- Head coach is openly courting another job and is holding the school hostage.
- Head coach leaves for other job despite the fact that the team is in the Playoff.
- Said head coach still wants to coach the team through the Playoff despite the fact that he left on his own accord.
- Backup quarterback is in the Heisman race.
- Former head coach raids current coaching staff and makes them leave during Playoff run.
- Team still makes it to the semi-finals and nearly beats the national runnrs-up.
Is that everything? I think that’s everything.
That could be, like, four different football seasons and they lived it all in one.
Wild stuff, man.
Oh, and here’s the actual football results of what Ole Miss did last year:
It’s funny that the 2025 version of Ole Miss made the Playoff because the 2024 squad was the team that was built to do so (and was slightly better in SP+). ’25 was supposed to be the “rebuild” year and, yet, Kiffin and Chambliss and a resurgent defense was enough to get them into the field of 12.
But this was definitely a lesser product than ’24. So how did ’25 make the Playoff cut? I think going 5-1 in one-score games is a big caveat. The Rebels got caught with a less post-game win expectancy of under 90% 5 times and only lost one of those games. That matters when there’s only a 12-game sample set.
At some point that close games luck runs out, especially with a new coaching staff and roster in place. But the difference in roster approach vis a vis the Ole Miss roster construction of ’24 and ’25 just goes to show that you can spend all the money and get every player you want and, if you’re not lucky, it still might not work out.
Coaching Staff
Pete Golding – 1st Year – 0-0 (0-0)
Pete Golding’s career has been meteoric in the last eight years thanks to the keen talent eye of Nick Saban.
Golding started at his alma mater and worked the usual low-level circuit that most coaches go through. His work at Southeastern Louisiana got him a gig at Southern Miss before landing the DC job at UTSA. But it was those Roadrunner defenses – particularly the 2017 unit that finished 34th – that led to Saban plucking him out of Conference USA and onto the biggest, baddest team of the SEC.
And you know what? He was worth it.
Golding ended up being the punching bag of the Bama faithful for any and every loss that the Tide endured but his defenses stayed within the Top 10 of SP+ (except for the “unacceptable” 11th finish in ’22) and he fit the Saban system perfectly. However, he took a seemingly lesser offer to get out of Tuscaloosa once Lane Kiffin came calling, and Godling proceeded to drag Kiffin’s defenses up from 96th and 51st all the way to 23rd, 3rd, and then 20th in this past year.
Going from CUSA coordinator to multi-national championship winning DC to head coach at Ole Miss in eight years is an incredible trajectory. Now we’ll see what if his head coaching chops can follow through.
Assistant Staff
Of all the items you would file under “messy bitch” in Lane Kiffin’s HR file, giving the existing Ole Miss staff an ultimatum of “you either leave with me now or you don’t have a job at LSU” during Ole Miss’ Playoff run ranks fairly high in the power rankings. And while he backed off of that slightly, in the end he did take a solid chunk of the Rebels coaching staff with him, including:
- Offensive Coordinator Charlie Weis, Jr.
- Quarterbacks assistant coach Dane Stevens
- Running Backs coach Kevin Smith
- Wide Receivers coach George McDonald
- Inside Receivers analyst Sawyer Jordan
- Tight Ends coach Joe Cox
- Head Strength Coach Nick Savage
- General Manager Billy Glasscock
Add to that the natural attrition of the defensive side of the ball and Ole Miss has nearly a brand new coaching staff at every spot.
However, Golding did manage to keep Joe Judge who is, essentially, the head coach of Ole Miss’ offense (as well as primary quarterbacks coach). And John David Baker has experience in Oxford from a previous stop. But Golding had a lot to fill on offense and did so with a bunch of new guys that don’t have much familiarity with the school. At least the defensive side has more continuity thanks to the promotion of some analysts.
Also, check out the new wide receivers coach at Ole Miss. Yeah, it’s that L’Damian Washington. Pretty cool that the Mizzou star has been able to work his way through the ranks and is a bona fide SEC receivers coach now. Bravo, L’Damian!
Roster Movement
21 transfers out seems low. Yes, that’s a crazy sentence to write but that’s just how roster management work in 2026. The fact that Missouri nabbed 14% of Ole Miss’ portal departures is a fun tidbit to notice. As is the fact that Lane Kiffin only successfully poached four of his former players to his new roster.
Lane Kiffin seems to be a very modern college football coach in that he knows how to work the transfer portal really well, netting the 2nd, 1st, and 4th-ranked transfer classes over the past three years. But it seems that Pete Golding is continuing that run of portal excellence as his first haul as the top guy in Oxford ranked 2nd overall, with 29 additions over every non-specialist position on a team. The hit the lines hard, however, as they took four offensive lineman and five defensive linemen in this class. Also, Ole Miss brought in Syracuse’s best receivers which a.) seems really mean to Syracuse, but b.) is a great addition for Chambliss’ array of targets.
If former Cal linebacker Luke Ferrelli’s name rings a bell, it’s because he’s been the subject of some offseason coach drama. You see, Ferrelli entered the portal on December 31st and then committed to Clemson on January 7th. However, before he could pack his bags and move across the country, on January 22nd he decided that Clemson wasn’t for him and that he would be playing for Ole Miss in 2026. Well, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney – famously anti-player agency (transfer, payments, all that stuff) – calls a press conference and throws a tantrum, accusing Pete Golding on record of tampering with Ferrelli’s recruitment. Golding’s response was, essentially, “take it up with enforcement” and now the NCAA has opened up an investigation into Clemson’s tampering allegations.
Oh, also, in case you were curious, one-time Mizzou portal addition – receiver Horatio Fields – ended up transferring to Ole Miss, so I guess we will see Mr. Fields running around Faurot after all!
Ole Miss might prioritize portal acquisitions but that doesn’t mean they ignore high school recruiting. As is the case for most SEC teams, Ole Miss’ high school recruiting efforts were Top 25 in the nation and rank 10th in the SEC. A litany of other high 3-star prospects will be moving to Oxford this summer along with eight impact blue chip recruits, including Top 75 edge rusher Landon Barnes and the mismatch-receiving-machine Jase Matthews.
Offense
It’s hard to think of Ole Miss’ offense and not default to Lane Kiffin and Trinidad Chambliss but…yeah, that’s the shorthand for any college football casual. Kiffin has never struggled to field elite offenses and get his quarterbacks to the NFL, so now that he’s gone and his old signal caller is still in Oxford it will be interesting to see how the Rebel offense functions.
While Lane Kiffin was the brains of the structure, deployment, tactics, and play calling of the offense, let’s also give departed offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, Jr. his flowers as well. Weis has nearly a decade of working experience with Kiffin and knows how Lane builds and calls his offenses, and it was Weis – not Kiffin – who led Ole Miss through the Playoff run. Weis is, of course, LSU’s OC now but the point stands that not all offensive magic must generate from Kiffin’s headset.
However, with Kiffin and Weis now working in Baton Rouge, what can we expect from Golding’s handpicked replacement, John David Baker? Baker was most recently the OC at East Carolina and, if you’re automatically dismissing that fact as anything but relevant, think again!
ECU was 2025’s quietest success story, going 9-4 and a two one-score games away from stealing a Playoff bid from Tulane. Their secret was (of course) a high flying offense that ranked 33rd in SP+ thanks to the 16th-best passing offense that relied on efficeicny over explosiveness. If you’ve read enough of my previews you know that efficiency is a much better predictor of offensive success, and the fact that the Pirates were so good while also being terrible at explosive plays tells me that Baker can absolutely succeed here, especially with the Toys that Kiffin and Weis left behind.
Quarterback
You all should know Trinidad Chambliss by now. Got his start at Ferris State. Transferred to Ole Miss in the 2025 portal cycle. Replaced an injured Austin Simmons and never relinquished the role. Finished 8th in the Heisman vote. Helped lead his team to the semi finals in the College Football Playoff. All that good stuff.
He’s back. And not as LSU!
The nearly 4,000-yard passer will get a full season of competition this year (barring injury) and really showed very few flaws in his game to make anyone think he was a fluke. Maybe the real fluke is how he wound up at Ferris State in the first place, but that’s the beauty of our modern portal age. If you have talent, you will be found and given a shot!
Running Backs
You all know Kewan Lacy as well. The guy who got 23 carries and 104 yards at Mizzou transferred to Ole Miss at the conclusion of the ’24 season and proceeded to lead the nation in carries (306) and rack up over 1,500 yards with 24 touchdowns on the ground. We all know that Eli Drinkwitz and Curtis Luper have a real eye for running backs and Lacy has done nothing but prove them right…at a different school. Sigh.
Receivers
Syracuse was a terrible offense and a terrible team last year but they did have two bright spots in receivers Johntay Cook and Darrell Gill, Jr. and WHOOPS now they play for Ole Miss. The Rebs lost 5 of their top 6 receiving targets so the additions of Cook and Gill were necessary, as was the smattering of other power receivers who didn’t get many targets last year. Deuce Alexander is the lone returning receiver with over 30 targets and will be looking to continue his excellent catch rates and yards per target production. Also, keep an eye on Caleb Odom: small sample sizes and all that blah blah blah but he was a reliable receiver with very impressive yards per target as well.
Offensive Line
In my Texas A&M preview I cited how the Aggies had five o-linemen they trusted and basically only played them for every game.
Ole Miss was the exact same way.
Every starter played every game and all of them were on the field for over 1,000 snaps except for Delano Townsend who was covered for by P.J. Wilkins (now at Wisconsin).
Unlike A&M, however, Ole Miss returns three of those starters, and grabbed a few tackles from LSU and Miami to fill in the gaps. The LSU addition – Carius Curne – is a big one for talent and will absolutely be looked to start this fall. Which is lucky, given that he had a nasty run in with the law earlier this year that he managed to mitigate in a manner which kept him out of jail and back on the field. Pro tip: if you choose to drive 15+ miles over the speed limit and get pulled over, don’t try to outrun the cops, especially if you have any recreational drugs in your possession.
Defense
The 2024 Ole Miss defense was the best defense put on the field in Oxford since 2014 so there was always going to be the likely tumble for the following year’s unit.
Did they not rank 3rd or better in 2025? Yeah. Were they still a Top 20 defense? Also yeah.
The secret behind Pete Golding defenses is that they don’t have massive deficiencies or boast elite play in specific areas: they’re just really good across the board. Last year’s rushing defense was a little spotty at times but the pattern held: good at stopping efficiency, good at limiting explosives, strong in keeping points per scoring opportunity low, good in standard downs and 3rd downs.
The fact that Golding gets back his major havoc machine in defensive end Suntarine Perkins is a huge win, as well as fellow line disruptors Will Echoles and Kam Franklin. Adding destructive linebackers Keaton Thomas from Baylor and Luke Ferrelli from Cal seems unfair at this point, especially since “linebacker havoc” was a big area of opportunity for this group. Throw in three experienced portal safeties to partner with Antonio Kite and Jaylon Braxton on the corners and you have a recipe for another deadly disruptive defensive unit to partner with whatever offensive hell Chambliss and friends can whip up. I’m not saying Ole Miss will absolutely be the best defense in the SEC, but the potential is there.
So what does it all mean?
Pete Golding could be viewed as a bit of a cohesion hire, especially given the amount of drama and turnover Ole Miss experienced in their coaching staff. But don’t pretend that Golding got this gig just because there were good vibes at the end of the year: he coached the team that beat the Georgia team that beat Ole Miss in the regular season. With half the staff most teams have, Golding’s Ole Miss team nearly beat Miami to make it to the championship game. Golding has risen to the top through merit (and opportunity) and I’m certainly not going to bank against a lucky star like that.
Circle September 19th, by the way. Lane Kiffin and LSU travel to Oxford, MS to play Ole Miss. The drama around that game will be palpable.
As for Missouri, they’ll get Ole Miss at the start of the Rebels’ season defining four-game stretch of at Texas, Auburn, Georgia, at Oklahoma. And Missouri gets them at home.
Missouri hasn’t played Ole Miss all that often. In fact, despite being conference mates for 14 years now, the Tigers and Rebels have only played four times since the year 2000, with Missouri being the victors in 2006, 2007, 2013, and 2019. This is one of a handful of teams that Eli Drinkwitz has not coached against yet and could be a blockbuster of a first for Drinkwitz if he gets to this point with one or zero losses. If Drink wants to break the perception of “can’t win the big games” (whether you believe that or not), beating a Trinidad Chambliss Ole Miss squad would go a long way to fixing that.
More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos