Ole Miss won by 32 on Saturday, and the least useful thing you can do with that game is try to learn from it. That was the thread running through Monday’s Locked On Ole Miss: a 41-9 win over Charlotte that was built to teach you nothing, the one receiver who got loose from the plan anyway, a blueprint for LSU’s defense that’s hiding in a two-and-a-half-year-old bowl game, and a number on Saturday’s line that most of you haven’t looked at yet. Six days to LSU. Let’s get into it. Hotty Toddy.
A 41-9 win that was supposed to teach you nothing
The play sheet was the story of the afternoon, and it never really opened. It was 27-0 at halftime — should’ve been 31 — and the game was never in doubt for a second. Trinidad Chambliss went 23 of 26 for 225 and two scores without an interception, and almost none of it was hard: quick game, defined reads, ball out on time. Kewan Lacy carried it about 13 times for 87 yards and two touchdowns and then sat down. The field goals from 57 and 41 fell in line too.
You don’t empty the folder on a 32-point win when you’re six days from Baton Rouge — or, this year, from LSU in your own building. Everything Saturday was something the staff was happy to put on tape: do as little as possible, show only what you want seen, get healthy, get to Sunday. Four goals going in, four for four coming out. If you walked away feeling like you didn’t learn much, good. You weren’t supposed to.
Caleb Cunningham is the one who got loose
One thing leaked anyway. Caleb Cunningham had six catches for 65 yards in the first real action of his career — and here’s the part nobody else is telling you this week: every one of them was a hitch. The simplest thing in the playbook. He ran five yards, sat down, caught it six times. So why was he getting them? Because corners are softening off him. As Pete Golding put it at the podium, the hitch can go 60 at any minute, because Cunningham can break a tackle and go. He’s 6’1″, 215, with long speed — a five-star in high school for exactly that reason. He wins the football instead of winning the leverage.
That’s why I’m spending this much time on a six-catch afternoon. This offense doesn’t reach its ceiling if every receiver wins the same way, because then a defense only has one problem to solve — and eventually somebody solves it. Cunningham’s body type isn’t a luxury; it has to be part of this thing. Saturday was the first evidence that it’s going to be. He’s going to be a problem for people this season.
The 2023 Peach Bowl is the blueprint for LSU
LSU’s defense under Blake Baker is hyper-aggressive — pressure and simulated pressure from everywhere, all gas, no brakes. The closest thing Ole Miss has seen to it is the December 2023 Peach Bowl against Penn State, and that game is the one I keep coming back to. Different personnel, same posture: come get it. Ole Miss scored 38 and won it 38-25, and the way they did it is the whole point. You don’t outmuscle a defense like that — it’s designed to take that away. You make it wrong, and you make it wrong fast: tempo in the back pocket, varied so they never know when the snap is coming, and a quarterback who gets the ball out before the rush can get home.
Here’s the piece that turns a fun comparison into something that actually matters. John David Baker was on that 2023 Ole Miss staff, and he’s calling the offense now. The answer to what LSU is about to throw at them isn’t something the program has to go invent in a week — they’ve already run it. And Chambliss going 23 of 26 without holding the ball is the exact skill the blueprint asks for. Ole Miss has the better quarterback in this game.
The number nobody’s looked at: LSU -2.5 in Oxford
Here’s the one most of you haven’t sat with. The FanDuel number has LSU -2.5 (call it 3.5 with the hook) in Oxford, with the total at 58.5 — tied for the highest on the entire Week 3 SEC board. The money line is LSU -130, Ole Miss +108, about as close to a coin flip as it gets. Strip the emotion out and read what it’s actually saying: on a neutral field, LSU is the better team by roughly a point, and Ole Miss is getting a couple points back for being in the building.
That’s not disrespect and it’s not a conspiracy. It’s an assignment. Three SEC totals sit at 58.5 or higher on the same Saturday, which tells you exactly where this league’s defenses are right now. And every season that’s meant anything around here was built on winning a game this program wasn’t supposed to win. Ole Miss has every intangible it could ask for — the better quarterback, the better back, the atmosphere, all of it. Saturday night, 6:30 Central at Vaught-Hemingway, it comes down to whether they can handle Baker’s defense and score enough to make the rest of it hold up.
Also on the show
Louisiana legend John Fourcade joined the show to talk through the Charlotte tape and LSU week. His read on the secondary busts cut right to it: a guy not covering the man he’s supposed to cover is a blown assignment, not a talent problem — and that’s the kind of thing you clean up against Charlotte before it costs you against a real offense. He also aired the gripe a lot of Rebel fans have been sitting on: this game belongs on Halloween weekend, the way the Magnolia Bowl always has, not squeezed into early September with both teams only two games in. It’s here anyway — and he expects the building to be as loud as it’s ever been.
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