Monday Down South: Ole Miss’ big portal bet is paying off – and changing the blueprint for a contender is built

Takeaways, trends and technicalities from Week 11 in the SEC.

Remember when the go-to complaint about the free-transfer era in college football was “the rich will get richer?” Anybody still getting any mileage out of that one? What if all the best players wind up on the small handful of teams with the most resources? As opposed to … uh, the status quo across every other era in the history of the sport? That line never quite passed muster, even before the evidence was in. The fact is, 4 years after the old restrictions were scuttled in response to the pandemic, the reality is closer to the opposite: The portal is turning out to be a great leveler.

Just take a glance at the top of the polls. You still have your blue bloods, your Ohio States, Texases, Notre Dames. Sure. What you don’t have, and have not had at any point this season, is a single team stacked enough to lord its air of inevitability over the rest of the sport.

The top spot in the AP poll changed hands 4 times in the season’s first 9 weeks. Instead, there’s a small insurgency of transfer-heavy outfits who owe their presence to the portal.

The consensus No. 1, Oregon, has aggressively upgraded the talent base under coach Dan Lanning, whose traditional recruiting classes and transfer portal hauls have both ranked in the top 10 nationally in each of the past 2 cycles, per 247Sports’ composite rating. No. 5 Indiana, a team in the midst of one of the most stunning overnight turnarounds on record, has pulled it off largely on the strength of a 31-man transfer class, nearly half of whom followed coach Curt Cignetti from his previous stop at James Madison. The top 2 teams in the ACC, Miami and SMU, both embraced a high-volume portal strategy to accelerate rebuilding projects under Mario Cristobal and Rhett Lashlee, respectively, which has paid off in Year 3. Colorado, which controls its own fate in the Big 12 at 7-2, is so famously committed to the portal under Deion Sanders that it has virtually abandoned traditional recruiting as a concept.

Lane Kiffin has not quite gone that far, yet. Ole Miss is still recruiting high school prospects, for now. Outside of Deion, though, no coach in America has embraced the portal as consistently, or realized its potential as fully, as Kiffin, who set out to assemble a roster that could compete with the championship tier of the SEC and, as of Saturday, has finally succeeded. The Rebels’ landmark, 28-10 beatdown of Georgia in Oxford was proof of concept for a vision 3 years in the making.

The team that took the field against the Bulldogs was a mercenary outfit through and through. Eighteen of Ole Miss’ 22 starters began their careers elsewhere, including the starting QB Jaxson Dart (USC); 3/5ths of the starting offensive line; and 9 of the 9 skill players who touched the ball on offense. (That’s not counting the Rebels’ leading rusher, Miami transfer Henry Parrish Jr., or leading receiver, Louisiana Tech transfer Tre Harris, neither of whom played Saturday due to injuries.) The effect was even more dramatic on defense, where 10 of 11 starters were transfers. (The lone exception, sophomore edge Suntarine Perkins, being the only 5-star prospect on the roster who signed with Ole Miss out of high school.) It also includes the kicker, Texas A&M transfer Caden Davis, was 5-for-5 on field-goal attempts on Saturday with a long of 53 yards.

The defensive line, in particular, historically a weak link in Ole Miss’ upset bids against the upper crust, was a testament to just how far the Rebels have come. A year ago, Georgia’s offensive line shoved Ole Miss’ front seven around at will, piling up 300 rushing yards and keeping Carson Beck spotless in a 52-17 blowout in Athens. At the time, that game was billed as arguably the biggest Ole Miss had played in a half-century, with conference championship and Playoff implications at stake. Instead, it was a wake-up call. The margin was the most lopsided of Kiffin’s tenure, and made it abundantly clear not only how large the gap remained between the Rebels and the league’s real contenders, but exactly where it existed: In the trenches.

“This game started a year ago when these guys beat us like that,” Kiffin said after the win. “We made a decision to go to the portal and we got some guys to come back and not go to the draft and they did a lot for this game. The guys said that this week, they came here for this game.”

Ah, what a difference a year makes. No, scratch that: What a difference a targeted multimillion-dollar investment makes. (Presumably some of the guys came for Ole Miss’ surprisingly formidable NIL bag, as well.) It’s not quite right to call the performance against Georgia a revelation: Ole Miss’ spare-no-expense d-line rotation was a known quantity before Saturday, boasting the national lead in sacks and tackles for loss coming into the game. In that sense, their sweltering performance against a short-handed, overmatched UGA front only confirmed what the locals already knew for a national audience. Collectively, Perkins, Walter Nolen (Texas A&M), Princely Umanmielen (Florida), JJ Pegues (Auburn), Chris Paul Jr. (Arkansas) and Jared Ivey (Georgia Tech) stuffed the Dawgs’ middling ground game and hounded Beck from start to finish, making Beck and his flailing o-line look uncharacteristically out of their depth. Beck was sacked 5 times, stripped twice and picked once, yielding a career-worst 55.9 QBR rating — almost exactly one year to the day that he posted a career-best QBR rating in the 2023 blowout.

If you’d asked an Ole Miss fan prior to this season to imagine what a hypothetical win over the likes of Georgia would look like on Kiffin’s watch, they’d have probably envisioned a shootout in the vein of the Rebels’ 66-48 loss to Alabama in 2020 (the most competitive game the Tide played that season en route to a national title, despite the final margin) or last year’s 55-49 win over LSU, two of the highest-scoring affairs in SEC history.

A defensively-driven, line-of-scrimmage win with Tre Harris still on the mend and Jaxson Dart visibly hobbled throughout the game by an ankle injury would not have been in the forecast. But this team, for once, is built different than the ones that have disappointed them so many times in the past. These Rebels have staying power, as well as a clear path to finishing the regular season 10-2 — almost certainly good enough to punch their ticket to the Playoff with a win over Georgia on their résumé to offset an inexplicable Week 5 loss to Kentucky.

Consistency remains a concern. The ceiling, finally, does not.

Superlatives

The week’s best individual performances.

1. Alabama QB Jalen Milroe. When Milroe is at his best, he looks like God’s gift to the sport, and he’s rarely been better than when he’s facing LSU. In 2 starts against the Tigers he’s accounted for 668 total yards, 8 touchdowns (all rushing) and 40 first downs, emphatically ending LSU’s Playoff hopes in both seasons. His 99.3 Total QBR rating on Saturday set a career high and, along with his stellar September outings against Western Kentucky and Georgia, gives him the top 3 single-game ratings of the season among SEC quarterbacks.

Of course, not every opposing defense has LSU’s well-documented issues containing mobile quarterbacks. But every glimpse of Milroe’s enormous upside is a reminder that, when the light is on, the Tide still have the juice to beat anybody in any setting.

2. Alabama LB/Edge Jihaad Campbell. On the other side of the ball, Campbell was the best player on the field in Bama’s best defensive effort of the year, by far. Splitting his time between off-ball linebacker and pass-rushing reps off the edge, he finished with a team-high 12 tackles, 2 sacks, a forced fumble, and a pass broken up, for good measure. In addition to the conventional stats, PFF marked Campbell down for a career-high 8 “stops,” defined as a tackle that represents a “failure” for the offense based on down and distance, as well as a single completion allowed (for -1 yard) on 28 coverage snaps.

3. Ole Miss Edges Jared Ivey, Princely Umanmielen and Suntarine Perkins. If you’d asked me Saturday afternoon to guess this group’s combined production against Georgia in real time, without the benefit of the box score or PFF grades, I would have come up with numbers a lot higher than 14 QB pressures, 5 sacks and 2 forced fumbles. By the time night fell, it seemed like they were in Carson Beck’s earhole on every snap.

4. Tennessee RB Dylan Sampson. The conversation re: elite running backs nationally tends to begin and end with Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty, for obvious reasons. But it’s about time for the rest of the country to get hip to Sampson, the week-in, week-out MVP of an offense that is not nearly as high-flying as its reputation. In 7 games vs. Power 4 opponents, Sampson has averaged 25.1 carries for a workmanlike 129.1 yards per game, and those numbers only keep inching up as the year wears on. On Saturday, he set career-highs for carries (30) and yards (149) against Mississippi State, churning out the majority of that total after QB Nico Iamaleava was sidelined at halftime of a 33-14 win. Iamaleava is going to be fine for this weekend’s season-defining trip to Georgia — Josh Heupel told reporters that his absence in the second half against MSU was a “precautionary measure” in a game Tennessee had well in hand — but at this point, if Sampson’s not on track for 100 on the ground, it’s hard to say who the Vols even are.

5. Missouri LB Triston Newson. Mizzou won the weekend’s strangest game, a 30-23 thriller over Oklahoma that featured a combined 25 points over the first 3 1/2 quarters and a combined 28 points over the last 3 1/2 minutes. The frenzy culminated with Newson, capping one of the most active nights of his career, forcing a fumble by Oklahoma QB Jackson Arnold, which Missouri’s Zion Young proceeded to return 17 yards for the winning touchdown. Altogether, Newson finish with 10 total tackles, 2.5 TFLs, and a team-high 5 stops, earning easily his best overall PFF grade of the season (78.8).

Honorable Mention: Texas QB Quinn Ewers, who between wide-open receivers downfield and screen passes that broke for big gains turned in one of the easiest 333-yard, 5-touchdown outings you’ll ever see in a 49-17 win over Florida. … South Carolina edge rushers Kyle Kennard and Dylan Stewart, who continued their season-long reign of terror with 11 combined QB pressures and a strip sack (by Kennard) in a decisive, 28-7 win at Vanderbilt. … South Carolina RB Rocket Sanders, who continued his late-season surge by accounting for 178 yards and 3 touchdowns against the Commodores. … Tennessee edge James Pearce Jr., who had recorded 6 QB pressures and a sack in the Vols’ win over Mississippi State. … Mississippi State RB Davon Booth, who ran for 120 yards on 6.3 per carry in Knoxville in a losing effort. … Ole Miss DB John Saunders Jr., who picked off a pass, broke up 2 others, and recorded a TFL in the Rebels’ win over Georgia. … Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart, who accounted for 249 yards, a touchdown and an 89.7 QBR against the Bulldogs on a visibly gimpy ankle. … And backup Ole Miss QB Austin Simmons, who went 5-for-6 for 64 yards on his sole possession in relief of Dart — a crucial early TD drive that answered Georgia’s initial salvo and swung the pendulum back in the Rebels’ favor for the rest of the afternoon.

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The scoring system for players honored in Superlatives awards 8 points for the week’s top player, 6 for 2nd, 5 for 3rd, 4 for 4th, 3 for 5th, and 1 for honorable mention, because how honorable is it really if it doesn’t come with any points? Standings are updated weekly with the top 10 players for the season to date.

Obscure Stat of the Week

Neither of Oklahoma’s 2 longest completions at Missouri came from the arm of a quarterback: Instead, they came courtesy of punter Luke Elzinga, who connected on a short jump pass on a fake punt that gained 43 yards in the first half; and freshman RB Taylor Tatum, who found QB Jackson Arnold on a trick play that went for an 18-yard touchdown in the 4th quarter. For his part, Arnold averaged just 3.1 yards per attempt with a long gain of 14 in a losing effort.

SEC Power Rankings

Updating the food chain.

1. Texas (8-1). For a clear frontrunner, the Longhorns still have a lot to prove against elite competition. It’s not their fault that most of the would-be heavy hitters on the schedule — Michigan, Oklahoma, Florida — have turned out to be mediocre or worse, and the ‘Horns have done their part in those games by putting all 3 out of reach by halftime. But no matter how impressive they’ve looked elsewhere, their wipeout loss against Georgia, by far the best team they’ve faced, looks even sketchier as the Dawgs fall back to the pack. | Last Week: 2 ⬆

2. Tennessee (8-1). It’s not surprising that Tennessee opened an underdog at Georgia, especially in a series that hasn’t been close at any point since Kirby Smart got it going in Athens. (Georgia has won 7 straight by an average of 26.4 points per game.) But I was surprised that the point spread was approaching double digits, with FanDuel Sportsbook listing the Dawgs as 9.5-point favorites as of Sunday night. Have the oddsmakers been watching the same Georgia team the rest of us have? Did they miss Josh Heupel’s assurance that QB Nico Iamaleava will be “ready to roll” after leaving Saturday’s win over Mississippi State with a minor injury? Keep an eye on that line, which I suspect could get a little wobbly. | Last Week: 3 ⬆

3. Alabama (6-2). The polls were reluctant to overreact to the Tide’s beatdown of LSU, bumping them up just a couple of spots to No. 9 in both the AP and Coaches’ polls. Advanced metrics like Bama a lot more: They’re in the top 5 nationally this week according to Bill Connelly (5th), Kenneth Massey (4th), and Jeff Sagarin (3rd), and No. 1 in a couple of longstanding metrics, ESPN’s Football Power Index and Sport Reference’s Simple Rating System. | Last Week: 4 ⬆

4. Ole Miss (8-2). Just a reminder that if Elijah Moore doesn’t lift his leg in the end zone in the 2019 Egg Bowl, the current timeline never happens. | Last Week: 5 ⬆

5. Georgia (7-2). On some level, watching Georgia get physically whipped in the trenches by a former underling in the food chain was shocking. But the flop at Ole Miss was just as remarkable for how not shocking it was, too. The Dawgs had been racking up one sloppy, underwhelming win after another since their opening-day rout of Clemson; it was only a matter of time before the offense failed to bail out the defense against a real opponent, or vice versa. Other than its reputation, what does this team have to hang its hat on right now? Carson Beck has struggled with interceptions (12, most in the SEC), his receivers have struggled with drops, the ground game has been an accessory at best, the offensive line just got exposed in ghastly fashion, and the defense — while potentially dominant; see the win at Texas — has been inconsistent. The Playoff is still a very real possibility, but with Tennessee on deck the Dawgs have one week to figure out who they are for the rest of the year. | Last Week: 1 ⬇

6. Texas A&M (7-2). The Aggies control their fate in the conference standings with Auburn and Texas on deck. Who will their starting quarterback be in those games? The future is a mystery to us all. | Last Week: 6 ⬌

7. LSU (6-3). I don’t feel any need to indulge the What Is Brian Kelly’s Buyout? discourse, but the Tigers’ big offseason fear certainly has come true: The offense has regressed compared to 2023 far more than the defense has improved. At least when the defense got lit up in big games last year, Jayden Daniels was around to keep it interesting. Now, with back-to-back blowouts against Texas A&M and Alabama on the books and the Playoff officially a pipe dream, the most interesting storyline over the coming month is whether LSU can keep massively hyped 2025 QB commit Bryce Underwood in the fold amid a strong closing push from his home state school, Michigan.

Underwood was in Tiger Stadium on Saturday night as it emptied out in the second half, soaking up easily the worst vibes of Kelly’s tenure to date. Losing big to A&M and Bama is bad enough, but hey, at least there’s something to look forward to. If the No. 1 recruit in the country slips through his fingers, that might be the one thing that could actually get Kelly sent to the gallows sooner rather than later. |  Last Week: 7 ⬌

8. South Carolina (6-3). Although the Gamecocks are an afterthought in the conference race at 4-3, they’ve outscored their 7 SEC opponents by a combined 67 points — the 3rd-best differential in conference play behind only Ole Miss (80 points) and Texas (73). Down-to-the-wire losses to LSU and Alabama by a combined 5 points are going to stick in their craw for a while, those 5 points being all that’s standing between the ‘Cocks and a dark-horse Playoff run. | Last Week: 10 ⬆

9. Missouri (7-2). Eli Drinkwitz had a good time after Mizzou’s wild, come-from-behind win over Oklahoma reminding the SEC Network audience that the win “keeps us in the Playoff hunt.” That’s right, he said it. Technically, he’s right: FPI gives the Tigers an 8.1% chance of making the cut, based on whatever that’s based on, while The Athletic‘s Playoff projections model gives them a 0.3% chance. I’m not even going to try to discern a path to to the SEC Championship Game if they’re among a pack of teams vying for a slot with 2 conference losses. But before they start doing the math, priority one is getting the quarterback situation ironed out ahead of a must-win trip to South Carolina. | Last Week: 8 ⬇

10. Vanderbilt (6-4). Although he was only sacked twice, Diego Pavia was thoroughly pummeled in the Dores’ loss to South Carolina, facing pressure on 20 of his 37 drop-backs with 7 hits, per PFF. Is he really sure he wants that extra year of eligibility that badly? |  Last Week: 9 ⬇

11. Arkansas (5-4). The Razorbacks have already pulled off one major upset in Fayetteville this season, ambushing then-No. 4 Tennessee in Week 6 for what remains the Vols’ only loss. They’re going for 2 this week against Texas, the first meeting between the Hogs and Horns as conference rivals since Arkansas hastened the demise of the old Southwest Conference by defecting to the SEC in 1991. | Last Week: 11 ⬌

12. Oklahoma (5-5). Oklahoma was in perfect position to steal a road win at Missouri, leading 23-16 late in the 4th quarter following a scoop-and-score by DB Billy Bowman Jr. Instead, they allowed a quick-strike touchdown drive by the Tigers to tie, followed immediately by QB Jackson Arnold gakking up a fumble that Mizzou took the other way for the game-winner with less than 30 seconds to play. Finally, an open date awaits coming off 4 straight losses vs. Power 4 opponents since the last one. | Last Week: 13 ⬆

13. Florida (4-5). I’m not sure I can even imagine a best-case scenario for a mediocre, injury-ravaged team stuck with a 3rd-string walk-on QB against the best defense in the country, but the Gators’ actual performance at Texas felt like the worst. This is why it was so important for Billy Napier’s reprieve to come down when it did — before the results made it impossible to justify. | Last Week: 12 ⬇

14. Auburn (3-6). Have Auburn fans mentally simmed to the end of the season yet, or is that just me? All I can think of when I look at the Tigers right now is which quarterback they’re going to pursue in the portal. | Last Week: 14 ⬌

15. Kentucky (3-6). Vanderbilt over Alabama is the season’s most historic upset, of course, but when it’s all said and done, Kentucky over Ole Miss is the one that’s going to make the least sense. | Last Week: 15 ⬌

16. Mississippi State (2-8). The Bulldogs are not winning (or coming particularly close), but they are still playing hard for first-year coach Jeff Lebby — hard enough to cover the point spread, anyway, consistently proving that they’re not quite as bad as gamblers think they are. State has covered in 5 of its past 6 games, most of them with plenty of room to spare. | Last Week: 16 ⬌

Matt Hinton

Matt Hinton, author of 'Monday Down South' and our resident QB guru, has previously written for Dr. Saturday, CBS and Grantland.