By Michael Bradley
Special to The Dispatch
OXFORD – It is not how you start but how you finish that matters.
This often-used phrase can certainly be applied to the nationally-ranked Ole Miss football team.
Twice this season Ole Miss has jumped out to three-touchdown leads in the first half, only to see those leads evaporate in the second half in eventual losses
No. 23 Ole Miss was determined to not let that happen again on Saturday against No. 12 Georgia.
The Rebels jumped all over the Bulldogs in the first half, building a 31-0 halftime lead. From there, Ole Miss did not let up during a 45-14 victory in front of 65,843 sun drenched fans at steamy Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. The win broke a 10 game losing streak against Georgia dating back to Ole Miss’s last win against the Bulldogs in 1996.
“Finish. That’s what it was about all week,” said senior defensive tackle and former EMCC product D.J. Jones. “I don’t think much was wrong (with the team’s spirits in practice this week). We had high spirits coming into the game,”
Jones and the Ole Miss defensive front did a good job of containing Georgia’s vaunted ground attack led by running backs Nick Chubb and Sony Michel, and consistently pressured Georgia’s true freshman quarterback Jacob Eason into making poor throws. Georgia rushed for 230 yards in the game, but much of it came in the second half, long after the issue had been decided.
Ole Miss sacked Eason three times and had pressure on the young quarterback on just about every throw. Eason (16-of-36 for 137 yards) was under heavy pressure when he threw an errant pass that Rebel senior Derrick Jones from Eupora intercepted and returned for a touchdown to give Ole Miss an early 10-0 lead in the first quarter. Georgia never seemed to recover from the play.
“Any quarterback would be frustrated when you can’t get a pass off and there is no time. Yes, he was frustrated,” Jones said.
Coach Hugh Freeze said that the coaching staff had a plan for rotating players to try and combat the fatigue factor that seemed to play such a large role in the comeback losses the team had suffered to No. 4 Florida State and No. 1 Alabama.
“I demanded it (substitution) in our staff meeting early this morning,” Freeze said. “They (defensive coaches) had to present it to me, because I knew how hot it was going to be.”
“It was hot out there today, so we played a bunch of people,” said Ole Miss defensive coordinator Dave Wommack.
When asked if rotating a larger number of people (at least 30 different people played on defense Saturday for Ole Miss) kept the team fresher for the second half, Wommack said, “I thought we were (fresher), …I didn’t know we had 30 people playing on defense on the team.”
When asked about the difference in how the defense performed in the second half between this game and the previous games in the third quarter, Wommack said, “I thought we did a great job of pattern matching the routes that they ran, they did the same things they had success with in their first three games,…but our D-line got tremendous pressure on him (Eason), at least twice they had people running free deep but he (Eason) was not able to get them the ball because of the pressure.”
On the offensive side, Ole Miss got another great day from senior quarterback Chad Kelly. Kelly was 18-of-24 for 282 yards and two touchdowns passing. Kelly also added a touchdown rushing when he scored on a 41-yard run that stretched the Ole Miss lead to 45-0 in the third quarter. Kelly also avoided the turnover bug that plagued him and the offense in previous games.
When asked about his play, Kelly said, “I was patient in the pocket. I felt good. The guys up front (the offensive line) did a great job of giving me time.”
When asked about the ease with which the Ole Miss offense seemed to move the ball against Georgia, Kelly said, “We were able to run the ball (180 yards on 31 attempts), and coach gave me more freedom to change the play call. I was able to put us in some good situations.”
Ole Miss (2-2, 1-1 Southeastern Conference) finished the game with 537 total yards on offense while holding Georgia (3-1, 1-1) to 464 total yards, a large number of which came against Ole Miss’s backups in the final half.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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