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Ole Miss football predictions: How Lane Kiffin, Rebels will do with six games to play

david eckert, mississippi clarion-ledger
·4 min read

Falling nicely at the regular season's halfway point, the open week for Ole Miss football and coach Lane Kiffin provides the perfect platform to reevaluate these 2023 Rebels against preseason expectations.

The Rebels (5-1, 2-1 SEC) seem likely to surpass the preseason total of 7.5 wins set for them by bookmakers. Can they achieve even more?

Let's plot the path forward for the Rebels by predicting the outcomes for the remaining six regular-season games.

Ole Miss at Auburn, Oct. 21

If this were an Ole Miss home game, the Rebels would likely be comfortable favorites. But it's not. Ole Miss must go on the road to visit what should be a special prime-time environment inside Jordan-Hare Stadium, ramped up further by the offseason coaching storyline that connected Kiffin to the Auburn vacancy before the Tigers ultimately settled on former Rebels coach Hugh Freeze.

On the field, Ole Miss' offense belongs to a different league than Auburn's. And, though the Tigers own the defensive edge, the granular numbers indicate that the gap might be thinner than it seems at first glance. Ole Miss is allowing 5.3 yards per play against FBS teams relative to 5.4 for Auburn. This is absolutely a game where Ole Miss can stumble, but the most likely outcome is a win for the Rebels.

Prediction: Ole Miss 27, Auburn 20

Ole Miss vs. Vanderbilt, Oct. 28

Vanderbilt has yet to stay within a two-score margin against SEC opposition this season, failing to harness whatever momentum it might have generated from winning two out of three games to finish 2022.

The Commodores have done alright for themselves on offense, averaging 28.9 points per game, but they haven't stopped anyone, owning the SEC's worst defense. An Ole Miss loss in this game would be a shock.

Prediction: Ole Miss 49, Vanderbilt 21

Ole Miss vs. Texas A&M, Nov. 4

For the most part, we've decided to stick with the picks we made before the season. But we're making a change here. Texas A&M's defense is among the most talented in the country, but it is also among the units most vulnerable to big plays ‒ especially in the passing game, where the Rebels excel. Ole Miss ranks third in the nation with 45 plays of 20-plus yards through six weeks. This looks like a good matchup for the Rebels.

Prediction: Ole Miss 35, Texas A&M 31

Ole Miss at Georgia, Nov. 11

Now we arrive at the most significant remaining challenge for Ole Miss. The not-so-Final Boss, if you will. The two-time defending national champions responded to an underwhelming showing at Auburn with a 51-13 obliteration of Kentucky last week. Unsurprisingly, they own the conference's best defense by a 2.2-point margin. More notably, first-year starting QB Carson Beck is second in the conference in passing yards and has helped Georgia remain a top-three SEC offense. Perhaps if this game was in Oxford we might be tempted to predict an upset, but this still feels like a step too far for the Rebels.

Prediction: Georgia 28, Ole Miss 17

Ole Miss vs. ULM, Nov. 18

Terry Bowden's Louisiana-Monroe team began the season with victories over Army and Lamar, but has since dropped three straight ‒ most recently taking a 55-7 thrashing at home against South Alabama. There are certainly Group of Five teams that are capable of coming to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium and giving the Rebels a game. The Warhawks don't look like one of them.

Prediction: Ole Miss 42, ULM 10

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Ole Miss at Mississippi State, Nov. 23

It should be clear to everyone on both sides of this rivalry by now that Ole Miss is better than Mississippi State, which has looked dysfunctional in all phases of the game under first-year coach Zach Arnett. It should also be clear that results in the Egg Bowl are not always governed by logic. The team entering the game with the superior record has lost six times since 2010. Even accounting for the nonsense quotient, though, this should be a game Ole Miss wins.

Prediction: Ole Miss 34, Mississippi State 20

David Eckert covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.

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This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Our predictions for Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss football with six games left