Inside Ole Miss’s Unprecedented College Football Playoff Run Amid Coaching Chaos

Lane Kiffin’s departure, a fractured coaching staff and portal uncertainty haven’t stopped the Rebels from pushing toward a national championship.

Ole Miss quarterbacks coach Joe Judge is remaining with the Rebels as they pursue a title. / Joe Rondone/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — As Mississippi sits just one game away from playing in the national championship going into Thursday’s College Football Playoff semifinal at the Fiesta Bowl, it’s hard not to view the Rebels as anything other than the living embodiment of Kevin Bacon in the cult classic Animal House, preaching into the void amid a tumult of people shuffling around in all directions.

Remain calm. All is well!

That kind of truth is stranger than fiction lately around the program, which has been dealing with the departure of head coach Lane Kiffin for the same position at LSU days before the team was placed into the playoff field last month—a move that is completely unprecedented at this level of the sport. 

Layered on top is the opening of the transfer portal mere hours after the team dispatched Georgia in the Sugar Bowl last week. Several notable Ole Miss players announced plans to stay with the team for the 2026 season after entertaining offers elsewhere in recent days. Plus, assistant coaches whose whereabouts are unknown to the administration for hours at a time as a handful of key names split time between a school on a playoff run and a bitter conference rival embarking on the offseason.

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There’s also the little matter of preparing to play a red-hot Miami, with just a handful of on-campus practices squeezed in before making the lengthy trip west to the desert. 

“My next-door neighbor was Aaron Hernandez,” deadpanned Ole Miss quarterbacks coach Joe Judge, a former New England Patriots assistant, on Tuesday. “This is still more chaotic.”

It may forever be a mystery as to how long Judge, who was not only neighbors with Hernandez in North Attleborough, Mass., but was among the first in the Patriots organization to learn the disgraced tight end was involved in a local homicide, had that line saved up to describe the current predicament. But it instantly underscores what this week has entailed for the Rebels.

“We’ve kind of doubled up in the rooms so that if they were not to come back, we still had coaches working specifically [with that position],” Judge said. “Look, it’s about the players, right? So show up, we got to give them the information, we got to get them in position. But we got [offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr.] here ready to call plays and, other than that, the players are ready to go.”

Senior offensive analyst Fisher Ray, for example, has shifted from working with quarterbacks alongside Judge to the tight ends room after doing something similar with the Rebels in 2023 during the Peach Bowl against Penn State. He has not only served as co-offensive coordinator and tight end coach Joe Cox’s shadow while the latter has gone back and forth between Ole Miss and LSU as part of Kiffin’s new staff, but is likely in line to coach the group in Thursday’s game with the expectation that Cox is no longer going to be involved in the playoff run.

Senior analyst Patrick Carter, similarly, appears in line to handle the Ole Miss receivers against Miami given the uncertainty around the presence of passing game coordinator/receivers coach George McDonald. Graduate assistant Sawyer Jordan, who coached the position group as well, already left for Baton Rouge to be the Tigers’ inside receivers coach. 

“They have every opportunity like they have up to this point to be able to make that decision,” Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding said Saturday of his assistants splitting jobs. “So week in and week out, I don’t dictate whether they do that or not, because they’re not employed by me. Up to this point, that’s how it’s been, and that’s my expectation.”

The matter-of-fact nature that most of the coaching staff has displayed externally to a unique predicament is owed in part to Weis, the key offensive play-caller both before and after Kiffin’s departure, who has remained fully involved in CFP game-planning and practices and delivered a masterclass in the second-half comeback against the Bulldogs. The fast-rising assistant has gone between Oxford, Miss., and Baton Rouge numerous times each week. He notably sent Judge to take what would normally be Weis’s spot at Fiesta Bowl media day on Tuesday so that Weis could remain at the team hotel to review the most recent footage of practice. 

Even the players have rolled with what they’re given. Quarterback Trinidad Chambliss barely noticed that Weis was balancing recruiting a new LSU quarterback and getting his current star pupil ready to face the Hurricanes’ fearsome pass rush.

Ole Miss running back Kewan Lacy smiles as quarterback Trinidad Chambliss asks him a few questions during the Fiesta Bowl media day. / Lauren Witte/Clarion Ledger / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

“It was definitely different at first just not having Coach Kiff around because we’re so used to seeing him in the building, seeing him at practice,” said Chambliss, who is awaiting a waiver from the NCAA to see if he can remain the Rebels’ QB next season. “It wasn’t too hard to transition from that because we retained a lot of the other coaches.”

Running backs coach Kevin Smith has stuck around and been insistent on remaining a part of this playoff run, even with a few trips to LSU sprinkled in as part of his new duties. Interestingly, former Tigers running backs coach Frank Wilson, who is basically swapping jobs with Smith, has been around the Ole Miss program since wrapping up his tenure in Baton Rouge a few weeks ago. He recently had several conversations with Rebels players to help convince them to remain for next season or beyond.

“We just focus on going out there and playing no matter who’s with us or who’s not with us,” said tailback Kewan Lacy, who announced a deal earlier this week to return in 2026.

Less understood is who will be telling the players their number is up or what adjustments need to be made in-game amid the playoff’s version of musical coaching chairs. 

“We are prepared, depending on who does, does not show up,” Judge said. “We’ve coached the entire week without them, basically planning for no one to be here, but we don’t know if that’ll be the case.”

Usually at college football games, it’s what will happen on the field which keeps coaches up at night going into a big game.

In the case of Ole Miss this week at the Fiesta Bowl, however, staying calm and figuring out who walks through the door to don a headset might actually be the thing that is top of mind.

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