The Ole Miss Rebels had done really well over the previous two seasons, in 2014 and 2015. The Rebels reached a New Year’s Six bowl game and won that game in the 2015 season. They defeated Alabama in both 2014 and 2015. They had figured a lot of things out. Then, in 2016, the program fell off a cliff. Ole Miss still played Alabama tough, but it blew a 21-point lead at home. It never recovered from that loss, and its defense was particularly ineffective at performing damage control. The team failed to get to the .500 mark. It failed to get to a bowl game. The NCAA pounced on the school, bringing about some scholarship limitations with the rest of its investigation still to come. How will this team respond next fall?
How will the offense perform with new coordinator Phil Longo and quarterback Shea Patterson?
This is the part of the Ole Miss plan in 2017 which should work out. Chad Kelly might be gone, and that’s not an insignificant loss, but Patterson has electric athleticism and copious amounts of talent. He showed off his skills in a bold and daring fourth-quarter comeback win at Texas A&M. He should be a very good quarterback. Longo might be a new coordinator stepping into the system, but Patterson didn’t play anything close to a full season. He’ll have a fresh voice and should be able to establish a good relationship with Longo. Plus, Hugh Freeze is an offense-minded coach, someone who will lend a lot of cohesion to this larger process. Ole Miss has a good quarterback. What might be tougher is Patterson’s ability to establish the right rapport with his receivers. That is what could prove to be more of a challenge. The other thing: Ole Miss has to be able to run the ball well to give Patterson some protection and furnish the Ole Miss offense with needed balance.
How will new coordinator Wesley McGriff affect the defense?
There are far more questions on defense than on offense. The Ole Miss defense hemorrhaged in much of the past season, and one important thing to realize is that the SEC’s quarterbacks and offenses weren’t very good this past season. LSU, Mississippi State, Auburn, and nearly all of the SEC East struggled at the quarterback spot. Even then, the Ole Miss defense found it hard to hold up its end of the bargain in support of a talented offense. Wesley McGriff probably won’t be able to overhaul the defense, but that’s what he’ll need to do if Ole Miss wants to get back to a New Year’s Six bowl game and a 10-win season.
What will come of the NCAA investigations into the football program?
When the NCAA came calling, Ole Miss applied some scholarship cuts as a way of acknowledging nine violations which occurred under Freeze, 13 overall. What Ole Miss did might convince the NCAA that it doesn’t need to hand down punishments of its own. However, if the NCAA is not satisfied, it could deal an even more crippling blow to the Rebels and Freeze. This is an unresolved situation, but the Rebels need the added damage to be minimal at worst, nonexistent at best.
What happens at quarterback now that Kelly is gone?
For the last few seasons, Ole Miss hasn’t had to worry about who their starting quarterback would be. As a matter of fact, they didn’t even have to worry about the level of play they’d get from the position. However, Chad Kelly has graduated and Shea Patterson is taking over. That’s a big change. Patterson was the No. 4 overall recruit in the country when Ole Miss scooped him up and Freeze does tend to run a system where quarterbacks are plug-and-play. And there will be less guessing with Patterson as he came in for an injured Kelly and started four games to end the year. Things started well with the 15-point comeback at College Station but they unfortunately went south from there with Vandy and Mississippi State. The hope is that a good offseason will get him ready but the Rebs are not as steady at this position as they have been in the past.
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