Ole Miss Rebels College Football Pregame Quote, 11/11/2019

I’m excited. This is why you coach and why you play for games like this. It’ll be a great atmosphere at Vaught-Hemingway playing against the No. 1 team in the country. It will be a great night for recruiting, for our fan base, and we’re looking forward to the opportunity.

On LSU:

Watching tape, it’s what you expect. They’re really good obviously, led by Joe Burrow, 78.9 percent completion percentage, that’s pretty amazing. He’s a leader and very good player, and we’ll have our work cut out for us. We’ve got to find ways to slow them down and bow our neck in the red zone, try to hold them to field goals. You can’t totally shut these guys down, you try to find ways to slow them down and make it a four-quarter game. Defensively, they’ve been very good at stopping the run, which obviously has been our strength. We’ll have to find a way to run the football. When people have hurt them in the passing game, it’s been making plays 1-on-1 down the field. That’ll be huge for us, we’ll have to make a couple of those. It should be an awesome atmosphere and a great college football game, so excited about that.

Injury report:

We’re in pretty good shape. Scottie (Phillips) is still questionable, we’ll find out more about him tomorrow. (Tariqious) Tisdale and Jaylon Jones we’ll also evaluate on Tuesday. I’d say those two are probable right now.

On preparing for Joe Burrow:

We’ve got nine games worth of tape to watch to try and find out ways to slow him down. We’ve got to get some pressure on him to get him out of his comfort zone a little bit. When the plays are there, we have to make them. When we have an opportunity for an interception, we’ll have to take it. Field goals in the red zone will be huge. Every play will be critical. Coming down the stretch, we’ve got to prepare. When those plays come in the game where we can make a play, we’ve got to win those 50-50 calls. We’re playing at home, we’ll feed off that home crowd. We’ve played well on defense, and I expect that to continue.

On excitement for the game:

This is why you coach, this is why you play, to be in games like this. When you coach in the Southeastern Conference and play in this league, this is why you do it. We’ve played several top-10 teams this season and played well against them. I’m just excited about the opportunity and for our fan base. It will be packed with a bunch of recruits here. It’ll be a good night for Ole Miss.

On his time on staff with Ed Orgeron:

I did work for a year with him. I’ve got a lot of respect for him and his work ethic. Obviously on the recruiting side of it, he does a good job. He has done a really good job there of being himself. They’re the No. 1 team in the country for a reason because he’s done an outstanding job.

On the LSU run game and Clyde Edwards-Helaire:

He plays with his heart. You can see it on the sidelines when you watch the TV copy of the game. He’s all into it emotionally, and he’s hard to tackle. He’s a shifty back and he’s a great compliment to what they do in their passing game.

On what teams have done well against LSU’s defense:

They’ve been really good against the run, but Alabama did hit them with some big plays and so did Texas. Those were the two that you saw. You still see a very good defense. They have been very solid against the run and in most games, have played really good defense all around. We’ll have our work cut out for us, but we’ll have to find ways to run the football and create some one-on-one matchups. And when we do get them, we need to hit them.

On his family’s connections to the LSU rivalry:

For my dad, this was the rivalry for a long time. The winner of this game was the SEC champion. Hearing stories of Coach (Johnny) Vaught growing up with the Billy Cannon run, LSU was the rivalry for him. It was obviously very important and a game I always grew up watching. It is very important to a lot of Ole Miss fans, and it is very important to us.

On potential positions to target in the transfer portal:

I think, based on needs in recruiting, the transfer portal is always an option now. It’s just part of it. Obviously, tight end may be one because we have two seniors there, and obviously you look at the defensive line. Where you have a lot of seniors graduating, that is where you look for immediate needs.

On the importance of the game for recruiting:

It is big. Recruiting is going really well right now, and I think all of the players love seeing the direction we are heading and I think that’s good. But when they show up and see a good atmosphere and see the electricity in Vaught-Hemmingway and see The Grove, that only helps. People realize Ole Miss is a special place, but when they come here and see the electricity and the atmosphere, it will only help.

On the senior class:

It is a special class. It is a unique class. The fact that they’ve been through the ultimate high, and they’ve been through a bunch of stuff. I think they are a mentally tough group, and they’ve been through a lot. I think that they’ll look back when they see this program continue to move forward and be very proud of what they’ve been able to fight through and accomplish. It’s not really the situation that you get dropped into, it’s what inside that counts. And I think that this group has been very tough-minded and have battled their way through it.

On potentially making a bowl game:

I think it’s huge. That was the goal coming into the season, to try and get this program back to the postseason. We have two games left and that’s what we want to do, we want to win both of them. It starts for us to focus on this week. If it comes down to it at the end, we’ll focus on it then. But right now, we have to focus on LSU and find a way to win this football game.