Pete Golding used the word first, at halftime in Gainesville. A lack of courage — his description of defenders going low at a 225-pound running back instead of squaring him up.
On Tuesday, with nobody feeding it to him, Will Echoles walked to a podium and said his own version of the same sentence.
As you watch the film, we just put a lot of lack of violence on film.
Will Echoles
Lack of courage from the head coach at halftime. Lack of violence from a starting defensive lineman four days later. Two people at opposite ends of the same building reaching the same verdict, and neither of them reaching for the scheme to explain it.
He Did Not Hide Behind The Call Sheet
The easy move for a player in that chair is to point upstairs. Echoles went the other way and put it on his own room, by name.
“It starts up front, starts with my position group. So we got to be better at that.”
Then he took the scheme defense off the table before anyone could offer it to him. Golding can call whatever he wants to call, Echoles said, but if the defense is not executing the job or bringing the want-to, the call does not matter.
“You gotta want to do it. You gotta love doing it. And until we do that, we’re gonna get the same results.”
The Numbers Are Harsher Than He Was
Asked about the missed tackles, Echoles put the figure at “10-plus.” The charted number is 14. He low-balled his own unit, which is not the behavior of a man managing a number down.
And 14 is not a Florida anomaly. Ole Miss missed 14 tackles against Charlotte, 14 against LSU and 14 against Florida. Three consecutive weeks at exactly 14. The only week it became a story was the week the scoreboard made it one.
His own line is the starkest of all. Against Florida, Echoles rushed the passer 17 times and produced zero pressures, grading 66.8. Seven days earlier against LSU, on the same 54 snaps, he had seven pressures, a sack, and a 90.8 grade — the best single game by an Ole Miss defender this season. Same player. Same workload. One week apart.
The unit around him matched it: six total pressures and no sacks across roughly 112 pass-rush snaps, against 29 pressures and three sacks in 72 snaps versus LSU. Only two of those six came from the defensive front.
And on 53 Florida carries, Ole Miss recorded one tackle for loss.
What The Tape Has On Him
Accountability reads differently when it costs the person offering it, so this belongs in the same story.
Duke Clark’s 45-yard touchdown run — the longest of the afternoon — came after Echoles drifted off his gap assignment. He did not raise it. He talked about his room, his position group, the want-to. He did not talk about the snap with his own name on it.
That does not make what he said false. It makes it normal: players own a unit’s failure in general far more readily than the specific play, and nearly all of them stop at the general. What he said still matches what the film shows. It simply costs him more than the quote lets on.
Credit Where It Is Rarely Given
Echoles called this a self-reflect week and said Golding reduced the work to six things: striking blocks, getting off blocks, making plays, keys and reads, coming off the ball, finding the football. A simplified week, in other words — the staff already doing what a chorus of former players spent the week asking for.
He wants it to feel like it did before any of the schematics existed. “Just getting back to the old days like we was in peewee. You just out there playing, playing fast, fearless, and physical.”
He also said something starters almost never say into a microphone:
We’re only as good as our scout team, so getting a better look.
Will Echoles
That is a starting defensive lineman stating in public that his own preparation depends on the walk-ons and freshmen who do not play, on a Tuesday afternoon nobody watches.
On The Swamp, And Then Taking It Back
Echoles gave himself exactly one piece of context and then refused to spend it. He called Ben Hill Griffin the toughest place he has played in college — “probably the toughest place I done played in since I’ve been in college, honestly” — and immediately turned it into an obligation rather than an excuse.
“You got to create your own energy, man. You know, that starts up front, making plays. All it takes is one play, one big spark play to get the team rolling.”
Ole Miss is off this week and travels to Vanderbilt on Saturday, October 10.