Ole Miss beat Charlotte 41-9 on Saturday, and here is the honest truth about a 32-point win six days before LSU: it was not built to teach you anything. On Monday’s Locked On Ole Miss, I broke down why that game was almost perfectly boring on purpose, the one receiver who got away from the plan anyway, the 2023 blueprint for beating LSU’s defense, and the number hanging over Saturday night. Let’s get into it. Hotty Toddy.
They Showed You Nothing On Purpose
The play sheet never opened, and that was the story of the afternoon. It was 27-0 at the half — about a half-inch from 31-0 — with Trinidad Chambliss going 23-of-26 for 225 yards and two scores without an interception. Kewan Lacy carried it around 13 times for 87 yards and two touchdowns and then sat down. There were back-to-back long field goals from 57 and 41. Almost none of it was hard, and the game was never in doubt for a second.
That is a staff sitting six days from LSU refusing to empty the folder on a 32-point win. Everything you saw was something they were happy to put on tape for Baton Rouge. Get healthy, cut the breakdowns, win comfortably, get to Sunday — four goals going in, four for four. If you came out of Saturday saying you did not learn much, good. You were not supposed to.
Caleb Cunningham Is Going To Be A Problem
One thing leaked anyway. Caleb Cunningham caught six balls for 65 yards in the first real action of his career, and here is the part nobody else is going to tell you this week: every one of them was a hitch. The simplest route in the playbook. Nobody schemed him open — he ran five yards, sat down, and won the football six times.
Why was it there? Pete Golding answered it at the podium better than I was going to. Corners are softening off him because he is such an athletic dude, and, in Golding’s words, “that hitch can go 60 at any minute because he could break a tackle.” Sit with that: a defensive-minded head coach just told you a five-yard route is a 60-yard problem. And it is not the scheme, it is the body — 6-1, 215, long speed, a former five-star who wins the ball instead of winning leverage. This offense does not hit its ceiling if every receiver wins the same way, because then a defense only has one problem to solve. Cunningham is a different kind of problem, and Saturday was the first evidence it is going to get used.
The Secondary: Hold The Concern, Don’t Convert It To A Verdict
Charlotte threw for 179 yards, and I have already seen the reaction — the secondary is going to get this team beat, here we go again. I am not going to pretend the busts are not on tape. There were snaps where two defenders looked at each other instead of the receiver, and a big chunk of Charlotte’s yardage came off one concept they ran three times that Ole Miss never took away. That is real, and I am not diminishing it.
But this is the same shape as last year’s offensive-line panic. Same month, same volume, same certainty that it was going to derail the whole season — and by November nobody was talking about it. Not because the concern was fake, but because a September problem and a season-long problem are two completely different things, and we are terrible at telling them apart in September. So hold the concern. The busts need to stop, absolutely. Just do not convert it into a verdict yet. Saturday night will be the first real chance to find out if it is a flaw or a fixable thing.
The 2023 Peach Bowl Is The Blueprint For LSU
Here is where the film work pays off. LSU’s defense is hyper-aggressive — all gas, no brakes — and the closest thing Ole Miss has seen to it recently was Manny Diaz’s number-one Penn State defense in the 2023 Peach Bowl. Ole Miss won that game 38-25, and the how is the entire reason I bring it up. You do not outmuscle a defense built like that; it is designed to take that away. What you do is make it wrong, and make it wrong fast.
That means tempo in the back pocket, varied so they never know when the snap is coming, and above everything a quarterback who gets the ball out of his hand before the pressure can get there. Sound familiar? Chambliss going 23-of-26 without holding onto the football is exactly the skill the blueprint asks for. And John David Baker, who is calling this offense, was on that 2023 staff — so the answer to what is coming Saturday is not something the program has to go invent in a week of practice. They already have the checklist.
About That Number
LSU is a 2.5-point favorite in Oxford on FanDuel, with the total at 58.5 — tied for the highest on the Week 3 SEC board — and a near-coin-flip money line (LSU -130, Ole Miss +108). Strip the emotion out of it and that line is basically saying LSU is about a point better on a neutral field and Ole Miss gets 2.5 for being in the building. It is not disrespect and it is not a conspiracy. It is an assignment. Three SEC totals sitting at 58.5 or higher on a single Saturday tell you exactly where this league’s defenses are right now, and every season that has meant anything around here got built on winning a game the program was not supposed to win. Saturday, 6:30 Central, Vaught-Hemingway, on ABC.
Also On The Show
Ole Miss legend John Fourcade joined to go over the Charlotte tape, and his read matched the theme: the win was about fine-tuning the secondary and getting everyone out healthy, nothing more. He flagged Deuce Knight’s effortless hurdle for a touchdown as the play of the night — “a posterize for him for the rest of his life” — and made the case that Ole Miss holds the edge at quarterback, running back and along both lines this weekend. Add Lane Kiffin now on the LSU sideline and this Magnolia Bowl has a chance to be the biggest regular-season game in the state’s history.
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