Ole Miss won by 32 points on Saturday night. Pete Golding walked into the media room and spent most of twelve minutes explaining what he did not like.
That is not a pose. There was real news in this one — two players back, one still out, and the bluntest thing the head coach has said about his own defense since he took the job.
The secondary
Start with the line everybody is going to quote.
“We’re going to continue to rotate guys and continue to find five in the back end that do s— right, because right now we don’t have five.”
That is a head coach saying, out loud, after a shutout half, that he cannot currently field a secondary. The frustration was specific rather than general: the same mistake kept happening, to different people.
“I was super disappointed on the same play reoccurring,” Golding said. “You feel like you get on the sideline and you emphasize it, something you emphasized all week. So the attention to detail and the eye control — and it being multiple people is the problem. We’ve got to learn from other guys’ mistakes. Everybody doesn’t get a ‘my bad.’”
He was asked whether the back-end problems trace to Antonio Kite and Shareef Denson being unavailable — two players who started throughout fall camp. He refused the exit.
“I’m not going to sit here and give that an excuse, because it can’t be,” he said. “That’s the one thing that we went out and got a lot of DBs to create depth. You need rotational pieces. So it’s not an excuse whether you were out there first or second. You’ve got to know where to line up and know who to look at and what’s your primary key, secondary key. You’ve got to do your job and you’ve got to do it consistently.”
He did allow that the absences created churn — “some guys are moving at different spots and we can’t put these two beside each other, we’ve got to put somebody else in between them” — before closing the door again: “With this game plan being very, very simple, I was hoping to see a bigger improvement.”
The injury news
This is the part that actually changes the week.
- Shareef Denson — “Shareef for sure will play this week.” Golding said the staff hoped to get him some snaps against Charlotte, then made a call on Wednesday to hold him, and he had an injection that day to be ready for SEC play.
- Antonio Kite — “hopeful for this week. I think we probably won’t know towards the end of the week.”
- Caleb Odom — out, and missed. “I think we missed Caleb Odom a little bit tonight. So getting him back next week and getting back healthy.”
- Tommy Kinsler IV — out. Golding referenced the line playing “with Tommy being out and some other guys getting banged up a little bit.”
- Everyone else — “I think we came out pretty clean. Nothing felt like an issue during the game.”
Those four names answer most of what the snap counts could not. Odom played 47 snaps against Louisville and none against Charlotte; Kinsler played 46 and then none. Both absences were availability, not demotion — and Odom is expected back for LSU.
With Kite and Denson out, Dorian Barney and Dante Core absorbed the reps. “Both of them needed a lot of reps,” Golding said. “Didn’t play perfect, but it was good to get them back out there.”
The third quarter is what actually bothered him
The first half was close to what the staff asked for: five scores on six drives, one punt, and a defense that kept Charlotte off the board entirely — helped by a field goal block from Kam Franklin and Jehiem Oatis.
Then the second half started, and it started exactly the way the Louisville game ended.
“Coming out of that game last week, there was an opportunity in the fourth quarter when we were up two possessions to really close the door and finish the thing, and we didn’t,” Golding said. “It was something we focused on all week and re-hit at halftime. And then we came out and they got points on the first drive, and then we go out on offense and go three-and-out and punt.”
Penalties drew the same treatment. “You get them in some third-and-longs and you go face mask, you go roughing the passer. We’re not good enough to do that.”
On tackling, he gave a qualified yes: better at the point of contact than against Louisville, with the same unsolved problem behind it. “I still think there’s an angle issue with some of these guys that we’ve got to continue to clean up. A couple of those explosive runs are guys overrunning the football and not having gap control.”
Chambliss talked his way into the second half
Trinidad Chambliss went 23-of-26. The better story is what happened at halftime.
“My plan going into the second half, until it was three possessions, was to let Deuce start the second half,” Golding said. “And he came to me pissed off — ‘Coach, man, I’ve got to play. I need to play.’ So he’s got that competitive character that we’ve always talked about. We’ve got a shot as long as Six’s got the ball in his hands.”
The starting quarterback, up 27-0, argued his way out of a scheduled benching. Then Charlotte kicked a field goal on the opening drive of the third quarter and the decision made itself anyway.
Why Kewan Lacy kept playing
Asked why a running back room the staff spent all preseason calling deep was mostly one man on Saturday, Golding gave the most useful answer of the night.
“Our goal was to go out there and really get rolling in the first half and have some decisions to make going into the second half,” he said. “And then on the first drive on defense in the second half, you let them score some points, and now it’s right back to a three-possession game. So that didn’t allow us to do some things earlier that we would like to.”
And, plainly: “We wanted to get [Lacy] in the flow of the game and get him really rolling so he could be healthy going into conference play.”
So the heaviest workload of his season, in a 32-point win, was the plan rather than an accident — and the backups lost their reps to a Charlotte field goal.
Caleb Cunningham, and nine receivers
Nine different receivers caught a pass. Golding framed the distribution as a reaction rather than a script: “You can have a plan for guys going into it — hey, we want to target this guy. But it’s based on what are they doing on the other side of the ball. I think we’re doing a really good job right now taking what people give us.”
On Caleb Cunningham, who had six catches: “Caleb is a big, strong — he’s got long speed, really physical presence. And so guys are softening off on him. And that hitch can go 60 at any minute because he could break a tackle. It was really good to get Caleb in the game, in the flow, because I think he could be a big piece of the offense.”
He also singled out Johntay Cook II — “good to see Johntay score and have a little juice” — and Horatio Fields, “Mr. Consistent. He shows up every week.”
What he actually said about next week
Almost nothing, which was the point.
“Just super excited for SEC play, and to be able to do it at home. The crowd tonight was awesome. The students were awesome. And it’s for real now, right? It’s SEC play. Every game counts for two. So we wanted to come in, have a really good week, and focus on ourselves. Still a lot to clean up, and then we’ll have to be at our best.”
The theme he kept returning to all night was the same one: “Right now, on both sides, it’s not the other side of the football. It’s us.”
LSU visits Vaught-Hemingway on Saturday at 7:30 ET on ABC.
Quotes from Pete Golding’s postgame press conference, September 12, 2026. Photo: Trinidad Chambliss gives direction prior to the snap during the second quarter, September 12, 2026, at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Petre Thomas-Imagn Images.
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