Power Rankings: Concerns for the 2026 football season

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GLENDALE, ARIZONA – JANUARY 08: Head coach Pete Golding of the Ole Miss Rebels looks on during warmups prior to the game against the Miami Hurricanes during the 2025 College Football Playoff Semifinal at the VRBO Fiesta Bowl at State Farm Stadium on January 08, 2026 in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images) | Getty Images

Last week, Ole Miss Spring Football 2K26 began, marking the official start of the 2026 season and 5 consecutive months of speculation on how things will go in Pete Golding’s first full year as head coach.

Golding addressed the media on Tuesday and went almost 28 minutes, which is a continuation of his lengthy media appearances last season. The length, level of detail, and seemingly genuine interest in explaining why he does things the way he does is a departure from the style of Lane Kiffin, whose goal was to get media time over with as quickly as possible without saying anything of note.

Maybe because he had Snapchat messages or desperate Instagram DMs to send. Who’s to say?

Golding’s time at the podium on Tuesday did not reveal groundbreaking information, though it was clear he’s optimistic about what the 2026 team could become. As he noted, they have a lot of ground to cover to get there, but it’s unclear if he will give the team airbrushed Ole Miss Spring Football 2K26 t-shirts.

While many of us share Golding’s optimism, there are significant concerns as of April 2026 (no doubt he has many of these as well). Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing if these concerns will stop being concerns until we’re at least knee-deep into the 2026 season.

With that in mind, let’s fire up an Ole Miss Football Concerns Power Rankings, starting with the chief of all concerns.

1. Offensive Tackles

Obviously.

Diego Pounds and Jayden Williams, starting left and right tackles, respectively, from 2025 are off to the NFL or whatever is next for them. That means Ole Miss needs both blindside and frontside protectors for Trinidad Chambliss. Oh, and the pool of candidates has never done it before.

Starting candidates include:

Terez Davis
Tommie Kinsler
Carius Curne

It’s possible other names could get in the mix, but those three names are the betting favorites. Davis (Maryland transfer in 2025), Curne (LSU transfer), and Kinsler (Miami transfer) have limited experience in their previous stops, but now they’re being asked to be the guys.

If they can’t, hooooo boy. Get ready for a lot of Chambliss running for his life.

The good news is Chambliss, as we saw last year, is elite at avoiding sacks and getting the ball out quickly, so Ole Miss is not asking Davis, Curne, and Kinsler to be All-Americans. If they rise to the level of serviceable, that’s probably good enough.

2. John David Baker as The Guy

In December, I looked at Baker’s two offenses in his time at East Carolina. The TL;DR version is he vastly improved their garbage offense, the results were mostly fine to good, and some things could’ve been better.

However, the initial knocks against Baker I wrote still apply:

He has 2 years of experience as an offensive coordinator
He has 0 years of SEC experience as an OC
He has 0 years of Power 4 experience as an OC

He’s jumping into the deep end and will coach against better talent and defensive coaches who have experience living in a 24/7 pressure cooker as the face of one side of the ball. The number of Ole Miss fans yelling at him to RUN THE DANG BALL, and the intensity with which they will do it, will dwarf whatever he lived with at East Carolina.

The good news is he’s:

Coached in the SEC
Familiar with Ole Miss
Not overhauling the Kiffin/Charlie Weis Jr. offense
Going to have more talent than he had at East Carolina
Going to have access to an army of assistants, analysts, and support staff who will make his job easier

As much as I’d like to say he’s probably going to at least be fine, we won’t know until the games start.

3. Wide Receiver Production

One year after overhauling the wide receiver group, which worked out well in 2025, Ole Miss is doing a revised version of that construction project. The top three returning receivers in terms of receptions are Deuce Alexander (44), Caleb Odom (19), and Kewan Lacy (29), who you may recall had some degree of success as a running back last year.

To counter the loss of 2025 production, Ole Miss will need multiple people in this group to be reliable:

Johntay Cook (Syracuse transfer)
Caleb Cunningham
Traylon Ray (West Virginia transfer in 2025)
Horatio Fields (Auburn transfer)
Darrell Gill Jr. (Syracuse transfer)
Cameron Miller (Kentucky transfer)
Samari Reed
Isaiah Spencer (Virginia Tech transfer)
Luke Hasz (Arkansas transfer in 2025)

Some have produced at previous stops, but this is a different situation for them. Whether they can adjust to their new roles (reduced or expanded) and produce remains to be seen.

4. Defensive Additions

After watching an Ole Miss defense run out of gas against Miami in the Fiesta Bowl due to depth and injury issues, Golding and company used the transfer portal to upgrade the overall talent and depth to potentially get that combination in the best spot it’s been in years.

These are the transfers who will hopefully play either as starters or rotation players:

DE Jonathan Maldonado (Nevada)
DE Blake Purchase (Oregon)
DE Jordan Renaud (Alabama)
DT Jehiem Oatis (Colorad)
DT Michai Boireau (Florida)
LB Keaton Thomas (Baylor)
LB Luke Ferrelli (Cal)
LB Tah’j Butler (Georgia Tech)
LB Tony Mitchell (Mississippi State)
CB Jayln Crawford (Auburn)
S Joenel Aguero (Georgia)
S Sharif Denson (Florida)
S Edwin Joseph (Florida State)

That’s potentially 13 players of the 22-to-25-deep defensive roster. I would expect some of them don’t pan out, but Ole Miss needs most of them to be significant contributors, especially at linebacker and safety.

If all linebackers and safeties could be classified as transfer portal hits at the end of 2026, this could be a pretty good defense. But, as the theme continues, we won’t have a good handle on this group until the fall.

5. Pete Golding as The Guy

Kinda wild that the *mostly* first-year head coach checks in as the fifth concern heading into 2026. Granted, the sample size of him in charge is only three games (playoff games though!), but nothing indicated he was in over his head.

The preparation, performance, and in-game management were all mostly sound. The only major issue was the Dae’Quan Wright debacle right before half against Georgia when Wright inexplicably didn’t go out of bounds and cost Ole Miss a field goal attempt. Wright clearly screwed that up, but the coach is in charge and gets (and should get) the blame.

My one quibble was relying on Lucas Carneiro to keep hitting long field goals across two games (Georgia and Miami). Carneiro is great, but the percentages are not in his favor over that many attempts.

The question about Golding is now whether he can manage a program over a year and through the grind of a regular season while getting results.

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