Ole Miss May Have an Overlooked Strength That Could Decide Its Season

With Lane Kiffin now out the door and in Baton Rouge, it is easy to feel like his former Ole Miss Rebels are being overlooked. After all, new head coach Pete Golding will go into his first full season in charge and will be greeted with the challenges of a nine-game SEC schedule.

Despite the returns of key players like quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, running back Kewan Lacy, and defensive tackle Will Echoles, there are many questions still remaining about this team. How will Golding’s first transfer portal class fare? Can Chambliss take his play to another level? What about the new hires?

Many of those questions won’t be answered until the season is underway. Yet, for all the questions about what the Rebels' offense will look like without a Kiffin or Charlie Weiss Jr on the headsets. Or without having the No. 1-ranked transfer portal class, there is one strength about this Ole Miss team that is being overlooked.

Continuity

To say there is continuity in Oxford, after all the changes to the coaching staff and even the roster, it feels like a contradiction. How can there be continuity on a staff that has 10 new hires?

On the surface, it’s easy to say there isn’t much continuity. Yet, when you dig beneath the surface, you can find it. For starters, in the immediate aftermath of Kiffin boarding the plane to Baton Rouge, it was from within that the Rebels hired Golding.

They didn’t opt for an outsider who comes in with limited knowledge about the program and players on the roster. Golding was the insider who already built relationships with the players and had seen up close and personal what went well under Kiffin and where things fell short.

Sure, he doesn’t have prior head coaching experience. However, he showed during the College Football Playoff run that it didn’t stop him from winning games.

Then there are Golding’s hires on the coaching staff, but mainly his choice of coordinators. He promoted from within to serve as his defensive coordinator, elevating secondary coach and then co-defensive coordinator Bryan Brown.

Brown has spent the previous two seasons on staff with Golding, working within his defense, and will now take an even larger responsibility as the coordinator. Yet, it will still be Golding’s defense ultimately, as he will remain the signal-caller.

Then comes the offensive coordinator, where, yes, John David Baker did technically come from the outside. He spent the two previous seasons calling the offense at ECU, yet before moving to East Carolina, he was in Oxford for three seasons overseeing the tight ends and was the co-offensive coordinator for 2022 and 2023.

The voices of the offense, Kiffin and Weiss, may indeed be gone. Yet, there is continuity within the system, as David Baker isn’t going to reinvent the wheel. He’s coached on Kiffin’s staff and played a role as a co-coordinator.

Different Voices But Similar Messages

Aside from the players on the field, the coordinators will make the biggest impacts for Golding. Just like if he fails to put a roster together, it could cost him his job; failing at the coordinator positions could be detrimental to his tenure.

How his hires will fare is still yet to be determined. Going into any season with 10 new coaches isn’t easy. Yet, Golding does have the strength of continuity on his side.

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