Ole Miss football 'gave up' in 2022, one Rebel says. How Lane Kiffin can prevent that in 2023
NASHVILLE — Ole Miss football, the odds suggest, will lose a game sometime in 2023.
Maybe that first loss will land in the second game of the season at Tulane. Perhaps it will come against LSU or Alabama in the fourth or fifth game. If the Rebels survive that gauntlet, maybe that first loss comes in their penultimate SEC game at Georgia.
Unless the Rebels achieve a feat they haven't managed since 1962 and run the table, they're going to have to rebound from a loss. And to have the kind of season they're hoping for in 2023, the Rebels are going to have to bounce back better than they did last season.
Both coach Lane Kiffin and the trio of players who represented Ole Miss at SEC Media Days on Thursday offered a degree of candor about their end-of-season slide in 2022 that they previously hadn't. When the Rebels suffered their first loss on Oct. 22 against LSU, they allowed one loss to become several in the weeks that followed. Ole Miss started the season 7-0 and went 1-5 down the stretch.
"I think we let one game lose the rest of those games for us," Ole Miss cornerback Deantre Prince said. "I feel like we gave up after that one game for the rest of the season, which is something we worked on from January to now to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Kiffin, who became embroiled in speculation about the Auburn job after the Tigers fired Bryan Harsin on Oct. 31, was critical of how he managed his locker room after the Rebels started their downturn.
It's a problem that Kiffin believes coincides with one of the major issues facing college football coaches around the country: How do you manage chemistry with rosters that are rapidly changing year-over-year, with NIL money causing compensation inequity, too?
"When you have culture issues, just like when in professional sports like the NBA, you see these dream teams put together," Kiffin said. "Then when the season doesn't go well, it's very challenging for them to play really well. I think that happened some with us. I think we're 8-1 with the ball going into potentially go 9-1 and beat Alabama, then we lose four straight.
"I think that's a big challenge when you have so many new guys. Once things don't go the way that they want them to go, keeping everything together because you don't have years of that team being together."
Ole Miss, much like many of its peers, wore out both ends of the transfer portal over the offseason. The Rebels overhauled most of their defensive coaching staff, too. Roster instability has been synonymous with Ole Miss over the last few seasons, and the Rebels will have to conquer their consequences in order to surpass the eight-win total that Kiffin said wasn't good enough last season.
The first step in correcting that dynamic is identifying it as a problem. Quarterback Jaxson Dart, speaking to The Clarion Ledger after a youth camp last week, said he's been working to improve Ole Miss' culture. And he's optimistic about what he sees.
"It's been great," Dart said. "I feel like as a team we've come along really fast. It's tough when it feels like half your team is brand new at times. I feel like people are buying in really fast. This year, it's been established that we need to create a great culture, because culture is what replicates success. We've had a lot more player-led meetings this summer, making sure everyone's on the same page.
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"We have a lot of leaders on this team. It's really cool to have a lot of these transfers because a lot of them are vets and they're only here for one year. There's not a whole lot of time for us to mesh, so we gotta get this done quickly."
David Eckert covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Ole Miss football 'gave up' in 2022. Lane Kiffin can prevent it in 2023
