(Photo from Ole Miss Athletics)
- Hopefully for Ole Miss, Saturday will bring big plays that will be again remembered as a day the Rebels drained The Swamp – and this time left themselves one win away from a playoff berth.
I first saw Jevan Snead play quarterback for Ole Miss in a spring scrimmage in 2007.
Snead was an old-timey transfer, one who had to sit out a season before becoming eligible, but Ed Orgeron knew the sun was setting on his time as Rebels head coach and trotted out Snead, the former University of Texas signee, as if to say, “Look what’s coming if you keep me around.”
After 2007, Snead stayed, but Orgeron did not.
Snead, who would tragically take his own life in 2019, led the Rebels to one their biggest wins in their rich and colorful history at Florida in 2008, the day after the school gained national attention as host site for the first presidential debate between Barak Obama and John McCain.
Snead and the football team gave Ole Miss a lot more national attention by beating No. 4 Florida – the eventual national champion – 31-30 at The Swamp.
Though they would become great, the Florida game didn’t propel the 2008 Rebels to greatness. They lost at home to a middling South Carolina team the next week.
It’s not the only big win Ole Miss has had at the Gators’ home, the Swamp.
They need another one this week.
Two weeks from tearing down goalposts after beating Georgia, Ole Miss needs to win at Florida to remain in playoff contention.
Napier, Gators revived
The current Florida team will not be confused as national champions, but reports of their death have been greatly exaggerated.
They showed that with spunk against the same Georgia team, then without starting quarterback DJ Lagway, got hammered by Texas but Saturday, in Lagway’s return, used big plays in all phases to beat the LSU team that beat Ole Miss.
Earlier in the season, if social media was to be believed, this was to be the debut performance of Florida’s new coach – Lane Kiffin – to Gators’ fans.
The widely held belief for many was that Billy Napier had no chance of retaining his job as Florida coach and that Kiffin was the No. 1 candidate to replace him.
There has not been a season with Kiffin as coach that has not included talk that he was about to leave Ole Miss. Sometimes there’s been something to the talk, other times not.
In the case of Kiffin and Florida, not.
Florida AD Scott Stricklin, formerly the AD at Mississippi State, announced on Nov. 7 that Napier would return, citing the “resolve, effort and execution” of the “young men” in the program as well as confidence that Napier will right the ship.
In the first win since Stricklin’s vote of confidence, Florida did something the vaunted Ole Miss defense could not, and that’s pressure LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier.
The Rebels rarely got Nussmeier off his spot. The Gators had seven sacks and 11 tackles for loss.
LSU might have been one of the worst games for the Ole Miss offensive line, but they’ve protected well of late.
In the last two games Jaxson Dart has been sacked a combined two times, and tackles for loss are at nine.
It’s a trend the OL needs to continue, but Dart needs to help too … with his legs.
Dart, after turning an ankle on the game’s second play, was big in the run game against Georgia. He picked his spots, had a couple of long gainers and made the Bulldogs respect him.
Ole Miss had a strong defensive front in 2008, guys like Peria Jerry, Gregg Hardy, Kentrell Lockett and more.
Silence of the Gators
Lockett’s block of a Gators’ extra point with 3 minutes, 28 seconds left proved to be the difference but not before that defensive front swallowed Tim Tebow on fourth-and-1 with 41 seconds left.
It’s the most quiet in my career I’ve ever heard more than 90,000 people. I was on the sideline by then and could hear the players talking on the field.
Tebow, big-bodied and athletic, took a shotgun snap and looked for an opening in the middle, but before he could gain momentum, Marcus Temple, a freshman in the game as the fifth defensive back, blitzed off the edge and made first contact. It didn’t bring down Tebow, but it stunned him and gave that defensive front more than enough time to get the necessary push to keep Tebow behind the chains.
I remember Tebow picking himself up off the pile yelling, “I got it, I got it,” but the Gators’ crowd, telling by its silence, knew different.
It took a second or two for people to accept that Florida would not win. Then the silence was broken by the scant section of Ole Miss fans who began cheering wildly.
Sixteen years later the Rebels need to make plays like that and more to remain in the hunt. They’ve been a changed team since the third quarter of the Oklahoma game on Oct. 26. In Gainesville, a win is a must, and style points would be helpful.
“I always hear about that play. That’s what people remember me by,” Temple told me a few years later.
Hopefully for Ole Miss, Saturday will bring big plays that will be again remembered as a day the Rebels drained The Swamp – and this time left themselves one win away from a playoff berth.
