Ole Miss Rebels College Football Pregame Quote, 11/15/2021

Recapping the weekend: great weekend, awesome win, very excited for our players and fans. It was a very defensive-led win by a dominant defensive performance. Offense moved the ball well a lot of times, but a lot of mistakes in the red zone and little ones that were big ones. One guy here or one guy there missing an assignment and the game’s completely different. Our defense rose to the occasion, we scored twice on defense, and as usual we kind of overplayed our players where a lot of our defense outside of a few d-linemen played every snap. I think the temperature of it being a night game and their tempo on offense helped us and allowed us to do that. You’ve got to commend those guys for playing great on defense the way that we did.

On the defense’s turnaround:

I’m glad we don’t play up-tempo offenses, that kind of helps if you look at it statistically. I think [Jake] Springer has been a big part. I know it’s crazy for it to be one player but if you look at the games and even the second half versus the first half when he’s out, he’s been a big part of it. We’ve done what we’re supposed to do. We limit explosive plays and we get turnovers.

On returning players with extra years of eligibility:

We don’t have those until the end of the year. Right after our last regular season game we meet with those guys and we get their grades back. I don’t know that. We say don’t make assumptions but I’m making a pretty safe assumption that our quarterback (Matt Corral) won’t be back.

On Vanderbilt:

All you have to do is look around the country, it happens every week where an upset happens. Texas-Kansas, Florida-South Carolina, these big number favorites. This is an SEC game, and we’ve had issues at all three phases at some point in the year, so there’s no looking ahead. We’re excited to be playing at home. To me, it should be a challenge to our fans that Texas A&M didn’t use a silent count, which is pretty unheard of in this conference to be able to go on the road and be able to use a verbal count. It should be a challenge to our fans to cheer louder. Like you said, senior day and probably the quarterback’s last day, so hopefully we show up.

On if the short turnaround to next weekend changes the structure of practice at all:

Well we usually cut back on that kind of thing here. We did more normal last week with injuries and high play counts. We probably practiced the least last week than we ever have for a game, and I thought it showed. I thought our players had good juice and good energy, it obviously showed defensively. I think making sure they were fresh helped us in that game so we’ll do that again this week.

On Eli Acker:

I think Eli did a good job, especially for a big-time game against some very powerful inside players. I’m pleased with his performance, especially for the first time really playing.

On the players who filled in for Tysheem Johnson this weekend:

They did a good job. We talked about Ashanti Cistrunk making plays like he did. It was awesome, and we were not even playing the normal personnel when that happens. Tylan Knight was banged up from the week before and was limited, so really good job.

On if he expects Tysheem Johnson and Tylan Knight to be ready for this weekend:

We hope so.