Ole Miss Has Earned the Right to Expect More From This Season

Saturday felt different for Ole Miss fans.

The Rebels were favored over a Top-15 opponent in the Missouri Tigers, but based on Missouri's recent performances, that result wasn't a shoe-in. In fact, the Tigers had recently blown out the Florida Gators, the only team on Ole Miss' schedule to hand the Rebels a loss thus far, and an embarassing one, at that.

Ole Miss' response? A 31-3 blowout of visiting Missouri, one where the Rebels held control of the game for almost the entire 60 minutes.

That should bring at least some relief for Ole Miss fans who thought perhaps their team was destined for failure in 2026 (at least until another stiff road test at Texas arrives on Saturday), but the win should also provide more than that. In fact, the Rebels have earned the right to expect more from this season than just some SEC wins, and the win over Missouri proves it.

Pete Golding is Building Quite the Resume in His Early Oxford Days

Pete Golding has been the Ole Miss Rebels' head coach for nine games, three of which came in his team's College Football Playoff run at the end of the 2025 season. Out of those nine games, seven have been against ranked opponents, and Saturday's win over Missouri made him 6-1 overall in those contests.

That's pretty impressive for a first-time head coach, and even though this Ole Miss team is still far from playing perfect football, it's evident that the pieces are in place for this team to make a run, if it can avoid costly losses down the stretch.

The road doesn't get easier for Golding moving forward, however. The Rebels travel to No. 19 Texas this weekend (a team that was ranked No. 1 in the country just a few short weeks ago), and they will have tough dates against Auburn, Georgia, Oklahoma and Mississippi State remaining before the regular season concludes.

As has been evidenced by the last few weeks in the SEC, almost any conference team can beat another conference team on any given Saturday. Ole Miss already learned that the hard way against Florida earlier this season, so avoiding another letdown game in the weekends ahead will be critical.

Still, the win over Missouri shows that, for the last two weeks at least, Golding's team has its mojo back, and Pete seems to be built to face big-time opponents.

The Win Over Missouri Also Shows that Ole Miss Has Addressed Some Lingering Problems

The Tigers came into Saturday's game with one of the country's top backs in Jamal Roberts and a surgical quarterback in Austin Simmons. The Rebels held Roberts to just 39 yards of rushing after back-to-back games where he accumulated over 200 yards on the ground, and Simmons, despite finding some receivers downfield, was held in check for no scores.

Busted coverages and poor tackling were not the name of the game for Ole Miss on Saturday, something that could not be said a few weeks ago during the loss in Gainesville. It seems that Ole Miss has turned a corner the last two weeks on defense. The blowout win over lowly Vanderbilt was always going to be taken with a grain of salt, but putting together this performance against a Top-15 team in Missouri confirms what was suspected during the preseason: this Ole Miss defense has talent. It's just about meshing and finding the right scheme.

The Ole Miss offense goes through spurts of bogging down, as was seen in the third quarter on Saturday, but everyone in the country knows what quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy are capabale of when healthy. The offense wasn't a big concern for this Ole Miss team. Instead, it had become the defense, but if the Rebels can stay on the trajectory they've established the last two weeks, there's no reason to think that the College Football Playoff hopes are very much alive in Oxford as we reach the middle of October.

Again, anything can happen in the SEC this season, but Ole Miss putting together a win this dominating over a hot team like Missouri should give the Rebels hope that the rest of the season can be special as well, if they take care of business.

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