Ole Miss Rebels College Football Pregame Quote, 09/27/2021

Good to be back to practice after the bye week. Going out there normal Monday, continue to prepare for a great team, as we all know. Like I said last week, you don’t see any holes in this team. Kind of like I referred to free agency, if they did have them at receiver or linebacker, they filled them. It will be very challenging not just to play them but to play there. We’ve never really played in front of a crowd in years because of COVID. To go to a true road game, that brings challenges of its own. So we’ll have our hands full. We’re a huge underdog for a reason.

On Ole Miss’ previous upsets of Alabama:

Not at all. That has nothing to do with this. There were no players, no coaches here. Maybe Coach Derrick Nix. That has nothing to do with this game. Those were two big wins by Ole Miss. Any time you go play a No. 1 team, especially there, you’re going to have to prepare really well, you’re going to have to play really well, you’re going to have to get some breaks go your way to have those type of upsets. That’s why they rarely happen. You have to have a lot go right. Maybe we can get one of those passes where a quarterback gets hit, then they drop it and it tips up to us and we can go score. I’ll call Hugh (Freeze) and ask him what that play was called.

On coming off a bye week:

As you guys know, I say the same thing all the time, I don’t think the bye helped us. It is what it is.

On the source of Alabama’s run of success:

Nick Saban. Alabama has been around a long time. They haven’t won like this for a long time. It’s not like it’s just the school. It’s one person. He’s been able to maintain it through tons of different players, tons of different coaches. More coaching turnover than I bet anyone has ever had. It’s the way he works. Probably more important than anything, the way he recruits. They have great players. I think last year we played them here and they had six first-rounders, we had two draft picks. He’s dominated in recruiting and now free agency, he gets to add on to that. He said himself when first asked about free agency, he said it’s going to make the rich richer. And he was right.

On playing against the crowd at Alabama:

Just normal crowd noise, like we have for years. I don’t think there’s much more you can do. I think more than the noise itself is just staying poised when you’re in an environment in that. Not making mistakes just because of the energy level more than the actual crowd noise itself affecting your snap counts and plays.

On Bryce Young:

He’s got great weapons. He gets out of trouble. He’s been very accurate short- to mid-field. You could see last week, he had numbers that are hard to do on air when you’re going against nobody. He’s picked up really well. There’s another coaching change they’ve picked up through. That’s why they’re the No. 1 team in the country.

On rat poison:

He did not. That was new. Somebody must have given it to him after I left. I just think it’s really good, especially the way he explained it. It’s like drinking rat poison. That’s pretty good. I would say Lonnie or Dr. Elko must have given him that one. It’s pretty good.

On having a veteran QB in a hostile environment:

Hopefully it helps a lot. But again, he’s really not done this with us. Maybe he did the year before. So this is a new set of challenges for him too. With all the rat poison around his success so far, talking about Heisman Trophies which is ridiculous at this stage of the year. Like I told the players, there’s only one ranking that ever matters. That’s your final ranking. All the other stuff means nothing. It’s like being ahead in three rounds in a heavyweight fight where you’re going 12 rounds. It doesn’t mean anything. We have a long ways to go and a lot of work to do and a lot of things to work on.

On how Saban prepares for regular SEC opponents:

He’s a great coach. If you have issues the season before being there with him, especially on that side of the ball, he’s going to spend time studying that and spend time looking at what to do. We already heard he spent time in the offseason and they worked a lot of drop-eight against us. So we’re practicing expecting to see that.

On Matt Corral:

I think in that Florida game, having never played with him, and in that game, they were playing a lot of the same coverages and formations. So we were actually drawing things up on the sidelines. That’s hard to execute when you haven’t been with people and haven’t had reps. His ability to do that and change on the fly was impressive. He continues to get better this year protecting the ball. That’ll be huge again. I think I saw a stat somewhere on TV or something that the only teams have ever beat Alabama threw zero interceptions.

On Corral generating attention for the program:

For Matt, for this team, none of that means anything. Just like the final ranking‚Äîbeing in the top for some Heisman media talk now means nothing. It only matters if you win the thing. But sure, there is something to that about energy. Or you go on the road recruiting like this week and nationally everyone knows who Matt is and has watched us. I feel like they know our team more than probably a long time here. That Monday night game helped, having the spotlight like we did. Yeah, there’s a lot of energy around, but that can die out real quick if you don’t keep playing well.

On how this game can impact recruiting:

If you just look at recruiting and beyond, the most important thing is to play well. Even if that’s not in a win. This is just in the recruiting aspect. So recruits see, hey, we go there and we are close to playing with the No. 1 team, so maybe myself and a couple of kids can be the difference of taking us there. So I think that’s, from a recruiting standpoint, helped. You’ve heard me say before, we ain’t here to cover spreads or play close games, because that doesn’t matter in this room or within the program, but outside with recruiting, it is what it is.

On preparing for Alabama disguising coverages:

Like every week, whatever they do, we try to simulate. Our service guys have meetings and try to give them the same looks. With us, we never know because it’s a little harder to disguise with our tempo. We’re kind of never sure what people are going to do. A lot of times we get a completely different gameplan from what they’ve shown because we’re so different.

On Corral’s intangibles:

He’s here at 5:30 in the morning every morning. The way he prepares and comes to meetings, his approach to it and getting on the players when they’re not doing things right, even defensively. Those leadership things when you guys aren’t looking.

On Florida’s success running against Alabama:

It wasn’t a secret formula. They blocked them well at times. They made the safeties miss and had some good schemes. And the quarterback can run himself. That’s usually the formula against anybody, but especially them.

On what makes this year’s Alabama team special:

I think they’re even better. I said last year was maybe his best team ever. I think people think I was just saying that leading up to the game. Then you look and they run the table and not really close games. I think somebody said, in the last two years, only Florida and Ole Miss have scored more than 24 points against them. I think they’re better on defense with the Tennessee linebacker added in. (Linebacker Will Anderson Jr.) is older, he’s good as any rusher in the country. So we’ll have our hands full.