Sportsbooks have set win total at 7.5 for Ole Miss football. The case for and against it.

OXFORD — For Ole Miss football to match its win total from last season, the Rebels will have to beat the line set for them by the sportsbooks in Las Vegas.

The bookmakers have the Rebels’ regular season win total set at 7.5. So, will Ole Miss surpass that mark or fall short?

Here are the cases for and against it.

Ole Miss football predictions: Why Rebels will win at least eight games

One of the main drivers for optimism this season on the Ole Miss front is Jaxson Dart, who looked fantastic this spring and will have plenty of room to grow in his second season as a full-time starting quarterback. This, of course, assumes he is not unseated by transfer Spencer Sanders. That would be a major surprise given how their reps were distributed this spring.

Dart’s performances last season were uneven, but he has the tools to be one of the best quarterbacks in the SEC. If he gets there, he can cover up some of the flaws and uncertainties around him that we’ll discuss later.

It also helps that Ole Miss has quality insurance policies at the most important position on the field. With Sanders and Walker Howard behind Dart, there is little potential for the kind of injury disaster that could ruin a season. Ole Miss will have competent quarterback play, at the very least, even in the worst-case scenarios.

In Quinshon Judkins, the Rebels have arguably the best returning running back in college football. They’ve got a pair of high-quality tight ends in Caden Prieskorn and Michael Trigg, too. At receiver, they probably threw a pair of darts at the board in Tre Harris and Zakhari Franklin, who both had great careers in Conference USA. There are weapons aplenty on this offense.

That brings us to the defensive side of things, where Ole Miss is moving from a three-man front to a four-man unit under defensive coordinator Pete Golding, who coach Lane Kiffin hired from Alabama.

He’s accompanied by the second-highest rated defensive recruit in program history in linebacker Suntarine Perkins, as well as a bevy of transfer portal additions meant to facilitate the system change.

Don’t underestimate the addition of special teams coordinator Jake Schoonover, either. He oversaw one of the best special teams units in college football last season. The Rebels had one of the worst. In the SEC, where margins tend to be small, that could make a difference.

Ole Miss football predicions: Why Rebels will win seven or fewer games

The biggest impediment to Ole Miss beating the 7.5 win mark is the schedule. There is a world where the Rebels are one of the 20 best teams in the country and win only seven games because they’ve got an SEC slate that includes three likely preseason top-five teams – two of which the Rebels will play away from home. They’ve also got another road trip to Tulane, which won the Cotton Bowl last season, and the cornucopia of middle-tier SEC West programs that can beat anyone on any given week.

The gauntlet is familiar, but that doesn’t make it any less tough. ESPN’s FPI metric rates it as the most difficult in college football. Alabama, Georgia and a rejuvenated LSU will be what most folks use as their justification to bet the under.

JUDKINS: Ole Miss football's Quinshon Judkins is 30-1 to win the Heisman. Here's his path to get there

The Ole Miss defense offers plenty of potential to improve and make the Rebels better. Under Kiffin, Ole Miss has never finished above eighth in the SEC in points allowed per game. There's upside there.

Still, that defense feels loaded with the kind of uncertainty that could also generate the opposite outcome. Will the large scale changes take? Is the new-look personnel good enough?

The Rebels are implementing an entirely new defensive system with three of their most difficult games on the schedule coming before the end of September. They lost AJ Finley, Tysheem Johnson and Davison Igbinosun from their secondary. And many of the defensive transfer portal additions Ole Miss made either came from a lower level of competition or did not start – or both.

Kiffin’s offense is going to do its thing. If the Rebels don’t win eight or more games, it’ll be because they’re bleeding points.

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: Why Ole Miss football will —and won't — beat its win total projection