The Good and the Bad from Ole Miss Football's Fourth Scrimmage
Ole Miss football scrimmaged for the fourth time this past weekend ahead of the season opener on Sept. 26, home for Florida.
This upcoming weekend it gets more real. The Rebels will have a mock game on Saturday, "so that our players get used to everything we do on a Saturday," Lane Kiffin said.
That pending scrimmage this upcoming weekend will feature a Florida scout team on both sides, the first real chance to start prepping for the Gators to come to Oxford.
However, the Rebel head coach also had some thoughts about the team's prior scrimmage this past weekend. Here's what we know about the good and the bad things out of the fourth Ole Miss football scrimmage:
The Good: Snap Counts Rising
As the team starts getting closer and closer to opening day, pure conditioning is going to be a factor, as it always is for week one. Each week, the Rebels have increased snap counts for presumed starters, with this week the number rising to 50 snaps.
But they're still not quite to where they need to be. Last year, Kiffin's FAU team was No. 11 nationally with 77.5 plays per game. Offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby's 2019 UCF offense ran 78.8 plays per game, No. 6 in the nation. These kids better be conditioned as the season starts.
The Bad: Turnovers. Lots of Turnovers
Both the offense and the defense made a number of explosive plays over the weekend, but the explosive plays made by the defense were far more costly.
The Ole Miss offense turned the ball over four times in this weekend's scrimmage. It was the second straight week that Kiffin said turnovers, particularly by the quarterbacks, were an issued. Offensive lineman Jalen Cunningham told us that most of these issues have been interceptions.
The Good: Defensive Backs Making Plays
Sure, turnovers are bad and the Ole Miss quarterbacks have to take better care of the ball if this offense is going to be competitive in 2020.
However, these are intrasquad scrimmages and for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. Kiffin said the defensive backs made a number of great plays on the weekend, many of them resulting in these four turnovers.
For an Ole Miss secondary that's struggled tremendously in past years, ranking outside the top-100 nationally in the past two seasons in passing yards allowed, it's a positive sign.
The Bad: Still Waiting to Hear From the NCAA on Otis Reece
It sounds like a broken record. But Ole Miss still has heard nothing from the NCAA as far as the eligibility of safety Otis Reece, a transfer from Georgia.
What does that have to do with scrimmages? Well if Reese is eligible, he's a day one starter. So he has to play in the scrimmages to get reps. But if he's ineligible, those starter reps need to go to someone else.
The longer the NCAA drags this out, the worse for Ole Miss in just about every way.
The Good: Zero Positive COVID-19 Tests!
For the first time since Ole Miss football returned to campus, they had zero positive COVID-19 tests this past week.
"That was great. We want to give a lot of credit to our kids for that. For a time that a lot of college kids are getting it, we need to continue to do a good job with that," Kiffin said.
There are still a few Rebel players in quarantine from either prior weeks tests or close contact of those from prior week's tests, but as Kiffin put it, "we're almost all the way back."
More From The Grove Report:
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