Rebels don’t look like a playoff team

• All things being equal, Parrish Alford says Ole Miss isn’t the two-loss team turning heads right now.

Lane Kiffin was informed Saturday following Ole Miss’ 26-14 win over Oklahoma that the Rebels had achieved bowl eligibility.

He acted as though he didn’t know, and he probably didn’t. Simple bowl eligibility doesn’t register on this season’s list of ambitions for the Rebels.

That topic made it into the postgame presser because it wasn’t that long ago that postseason security in October with four regular season games to better yourself was considered high cotton.

Sometimes – twice with Kiffin – the Rebels reached a New Year’s Six game.

If they can do that this year they’ll make the new expanded 12-team College Football Playoff.

Given the expectations, many consider the season to be the playoff or bust.

There will be two-loss teams in the field, something that gives hope to an Ole Miss team that really isn’t playing like a playoff team.

Ole Miss had an opportunity in a prime time ESPN game a couple of weeks ago to impress the committee and could not make the plays to pull away from LSU. The Tigers would come back to take the game in overtime. 

Then there’s the fact they dropped the ball at home to a Kentucky team struggling to win. The Wildcats were shellacked by a hapless Auburn team this weekend.

Every weekend is a playoff game

With those two losses, every weekend is a playoff game. Lose, and your top season goal goes up in smoke.

Against Oklahoma, the Rebels showed some of that two-way dominance that fueled preseason expectations, but they only showed it for a half.

For the first two quarters the Rebels, coming off an open date, looked inconvenienced, not energized by their first meeting with OU as an SEC rival. It was only the second time the two teams met in history.

They couldn’t run consistently, punted twice and dropped a pass here and there.

Fortunes might have changed in the first half if the Rebels could have gotten the Sooners off the field. Instead, an OU team that began the day last in the SEC in running the football with 112.1 yards per game, ran for 125 yards in two quarters.

OU on its first three possessions ran 10 plays, eight plays and eight plays.

Then the Rebels botched a fourth-and-1 from the OU 8, and the Sooners drove 92 yards in 2 minutes and 34 seconds to take a 14-10 halftime lead at the break. The Rebels, the team with playoff aspirations, remember, had been favored by three touchdowns.

The worm turned in the third quarter.

Ole Miss put up 13 points — missing an extra point. They limited OU to 23 yards in the quarter. The Sooners went three-and-out on three of their first four possessions and didn’t reach midfield until the middle of the fourth quarter.

There was some halftime wizardry from defensive coordinator Pete Golding, no doubt, but Kiffin offered no specifics.

“Adjustments a lot of times are overrated. I just thought at halftime, Pete’s really good. We thought they shot their shot with a bunch of different plays offensively and felt like they were going to have to settle down and run their offense. That worked to our advantage.”

Likely, the biggest adjustment was not in scheme but in attitude. Whatever was said, the Rebels responded.

They won their first playoff game.

Not the ‘hot’ two-loss team

All things being equal, Ole Miss isn’t the two-loss team turning heads right now. As far as at-large bids go a month from now, LSU would have an edge if it doesn’t lose again, certainly Texas A&M if a season-finale loss to Texas becomes its second loss.

Would Ole Miss fans, should the scenario arise, feel comfortable pitting their two-loss resume against a two-loss Alabama? Probably not.

But a two-loss team with a win over Georgia, and a narrow road loss against another possible playoff team, maybe that plays differently.

That’s why the Rebels can still have the discussion.

They won’t have it for long if they fall back into the mode of ignoring tight end Caden Prieskorn, whose five catches against OU were his most since Sept. 7.

Ole Miss protected better and spread around the football in the absence of Tre Harris, something they need to continue even if Harris returns.

Fayetteville sadness

The next playoff game is Saturday at 11 at Arkansas. Ole Miss wins in Fayetteville have $2-bill rarity.

There have been exceptions, but there have been so many lopsided outcomes, and they seem to touch every Ole Miss coach. Tommy Tuberville had the “wet hog” game, a 34-0 loss in 1997, David Cutcliffe and Eli Manning a 48-28 loss when a streaker ran onto the field in 2002, Ed Orgeron lost 38-3 in 2006, Houston Nutt won there in 2008 but lost by two touchdowns in 2010, Hugh Freeze took a seemingly more talented team there, though without Laquon Treadwell, and lost 30-0 in 2014.

Lane Kiffin is 0-2 in Fayetteville.

This Arkansas team seems to be all over the map, but the Rebels would do well to expect the better version and to play for four quarters.

If they come up short, they may begin to be more thankful for simple bowl-eligibility.