Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding deserves all the credit after Lane Kiffin’s chaos

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The incredible Ole Miss Rebels season continued in thrilling fashion on Friday, as they mounted a fourth-quarter comeback to stun the Georgia Bulldogs 39-34 in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day. That win secured Ole Miss a spot in the Fiesta Bowl to face the Miami Hurricanes with a chance to make the National Championship Game on January 19th.

Following their regular-season finale against the Mississippi State Bulldogs, it’s been nothing but chaos for Ole Miss with the Lane Kiffin saga that resulted in Pete Golding becoming the full-time head coach ahead of the playoffs. Golding had served as the team’s defensive coordinator since 2023.

But even with all the changes, the Rebels haven’t been bothered on the field, easily getting past the Tulane Green Wave in the first round. Despite being down at halftime against Georgia in the quarterfinals, Ole Miss had an amazing second-half showing to pull off the upset and keep their historic season alive.

It’s clear that Golding, who has been thrust into an unprecedented scenario, has the locker room behind him, which we saw from the moment he was announced as Ole Miss’s next head coach.

Down 21-12 at halftime, the Ole Miss head coach had a calm message for his players, which clearly resonated with the team.

“The first half, we didn’t leverage the ball very well on defense and getting to the ball,” Golding acknowledged. “We just had a lot of missed tackles, and this was an issue when we played them the first time. We had double-digit missed tackles and understanding angles and all that. So we weren’t really concerned from a scheme standpoint. 

“There wasn’t anything at halftime where we were like, ‘All right, we got to change a lot of things.’ We just got to execute better and get the guy with the ball on the ground. And then offensively, they didn’t stop us in the first half. We turned one over and then did a poor job, obviously, with the clock at the end to not get three. So wasn’t concerned about that at all. I told them all, ‘take a deep breath, right? Let’s go play one at a time. And we got good enough players, we got good enough players to beat anybody. And so when they’re on the same page, we will beat anybody.’”

Right out of the gate, Ole Miss’s defense flipped a switch, forcing a punt and a missed field goal on its first two defensive drives, after which the offense got on board with a touchdown. Then, when Georgia finally got some momentum, the Rebels held them to a field goal on a ten-play drive, responding to that with another touchdown to take a 27-24 lead.

Then came the crucial strip-fumble, which allowed the Rebels to go up two scores. That was enough resistance, as Ole Miss got the game-winning field goal after Georgia mounted its own comeback, stamping its way to the Fiesta Bowl.

Golding, who never expected to get the job and wasn’t thinking about head coaching opportunities, has very quickly etched his name into Ole Miss history with two playoff wins.

“I was not in a rush to become a head coach,” Golding said. “CAA and them will tell you, I told them don’t contact anybody, I don’t want a head coaching job. Once I left Alabama to come to Ole Miss, I wasn’t leaving Oxford. I didn’t want to be the head coach at Ole Miss. I wanted to be the defensive coordinator at Ole Miss, and that’s the same thing that I told Kiff (Lane Kiffin)…When this opportunity presented itself, it’s nothing that I’ve been preparing for. You prepare for it every year because head coaches like Coach [Kirby] Smart, Coach [Nick Saban], Coach Kiffin, and all the guys that I’ve been under prepare you for these moments. And they involve you in meetings of why we do certain things, and you’re involved from a recruiting component and everything else.”

It’s been a fast rise for the 41-year-old Louisiana native, who spent the first six years of his coaching career at the D-II level, starting at his alma mater, Delta State, as a graduate assistant after a four-year playing career.

It was there that he got his first defensive coordinator gig, just four years into his coaching career. From there, he rode defensive coordinator roles at D-II Delta State and D-II Southeastern Louisiana before moving up to the D-I ranks, coaching defensive backs at Southern Miss from 2014-15.

After a defensive coordinator gig at UTSA from 2016-17, it was then that Golding joined Alabama as the co-defensive coordinator underneath Tosh Lupoi, getting elevated to the playcaller in 2019 when Lupoi left.

Golding did his time at Alabama, but joined Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss when he was hired in 2023, where he’s been since. So, it’s been quite the journey for the now-head coach, building his way up to one of the best jobs in college football.

Interestingly, Golding is also a Saban disciple, which means all four head coaches remaining in the College Football Playoff are from the Nick Saban tree.

Golding will face one of them next weekend when Ole Miss takes on the Miami Hurricanes in the Fiesta Bowl next weekend. However, that could be with a different coaching staff, as there are reportedly questions whether several offensive staffers will continue to be with the team or at LSU with the transfer portal opening Friday.

Athletic Director Keith Carter told Yahoo Sports’s Ross Dellenger that Ole Miss doesn’t know if the six coaches who signed contracts at LSU will return for one more week. It’s been reported that those staffers are expected in Baton Rouge on Friday morning with the transfer portal opening.

So, it seems there’s another week of uncertainty in Oxford ahead of one of the biggest games in program history. Still, taking a step back, it’s been impressive to see what Golding has done, navigating an impossible situation and extending Ole Miss’s season at least one week longer.

Now, not only does the head coach have a couple of big wins to kickstart his career, but he’s also got a come-from-behind victory over one of the best coaches in the sport. Not a bad start for a guy who wasn’t looking to be a head coach.

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