Rebels Must Have "Next Man Up" Mentality vs. LSU
The injury bug has come to pay a visit to the Ole Miss Rebels as they prepare to take on their SEC West rival the LSU Tigers.
The Rebels are now 5-1 (2-1 SEC) after taking down Tennessee in Knoxville last weekend 31-26 but were not able to make it out of Neyland Stadium unscathed unfortunately.
At this point in the season the Rebels are primed to make a run at the wide-open SEC West. With injuries piling up, mainly on offense, that goal will become harder and harder to reach.
“It was a very high play count game,” Kiffin said. “Offensive players played over 100 plays in the game for us. We were already extremely beat up. We’re not in good shape that way for this week. It is what it is. People from somewhere have to step up.”
Having a “next man up” mentality is going to be key for the Rebels if they want to book a ticket to Atlanta later this season for the SEC Championship.
Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral also took a beating last week and at one point had to come out of the game for a play. Corral totaled 426 yards last Saturday and ran for 195 yards on a whopping 30 carries. That is a lot of carries for any quarterback and Corral’s availability this Saturday against LSU is now in question.
“That’s not a stat (rushing) that I’m really excited about,” Kiffin said. “We’d like for that to be our running back and not our 200-pound quarterback. He’s not in very good shape, hasn’t been in the past two days. Hopefully he’ll play, but I don’t feel really good about that right now.”
The LSU Tigers are coming off a big upset win against the former No. 20 team, the Florida Gators. Even though their head coach Ed Orgeron will not be returning to the program next season, the Tigers will still be a force to be reckoned with.
“LSU always has great players,” Kiffin said. “They put it together on Saturday in the run game. I saw the back running people over, looking like Leonard Fournette. That’s a challenge.”
Ole Miss will get a chance to end the six-year losing streak to LSU this Saturday when the Tigers come to Oxford. The SEC West matchup will kick off at 2:30 p.m. CT and can be seen on CBS.
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