What's the Delay in an Official Starting QB Announcement from Lane Kiffin?
"If you have two quarterbacks, you have none."
That adage is usually applied to teams who do not have a reliable option at quarterback, having to settle for the lesser of two evils in naming a single player as the starter. That is not the case for the Ole Miss Rebels entering the 2023 season.
Ole Miss currently has two quarterbacks, at least in public perception. Speculation and sourcing has indicated that Jaxson Dart remains the frontrunner to hold onto his starting spot with the Rebels this season after a strong spring and fall camp, but Lane Kiffin has not said that officially in any capacity, including in media availability on Monday.
Why the refusal to officially name a starter? There are a few options to consider, but is Kiffin playing coy with Mercer? Probably not.
Let's not mince words here. If Ole Miss struggles against Mercer in its season opener on Saturday, there are bigger problems than just at quarterback. Keeping your starter out of the public eye to make an FCS opponent prepare for two players really makes no sense. If that's the reasoning, the potential damage done to the psyche of your signal callers and locker room chemistry outweigh the positives in this scenario.
Could he be trying to keep both Dart and Spencer Sanders happy to avoid a transfer scenario? That seems much more plausible.
This is all speculation since I'm not inside the building (or Lane Kiffin's mind, of course), but if you really want your roster to be the best it can be, keeping both Dart and Sanders on the team is the best-case way to do that. Still, you run the issue of your quarterbacks becoming frustrated entering a season where your schedule does you no favors outside of Week 1.
That seems to have already happened, of course.
"Yeah, I think so," Dart said when asked if not being named the starter yet had put a chip on his shoulder. "Absolutely."
"I would say it's pretty good," Sanders said about his and Dart's relationship off the field. "I wouldn't say it's bad. I wouldn't say we go out and get ice cream together when we're at home, but we're cordial.
"Obviously, he's been here. He knows the offense. You know you at least have another person who was the best here before you got here. So, you learn things."
Finally, maybe Kiffin just doesn't know? I don't fully buy this, however, considering a game plan is already in place for Mercer in the first week of the season. Does that plan involve both quarterbacks like it did in the early portions of last season with Dart and Luke Altmyer? It's very possible, but Kiffin has to be leaning a certain direction in this competition by this point, right?
Whatever the reason, it's obvious that the quarterbacks themselves are not exactly pleased with the waiting game. Maybe that matters, and maybe it doesn't, but it's hard to imagine a scenario where both of these players are happy with their situation at Ole Miss at the end of the season.
One guy will be the starter, and the other one will have to deal with the backup role in case of injury. That's probably not what Dart and Sanders signed up for when they came to Ole Miss, but it appears to be the current state of things in Oxford.
