☕ Morning Coffee
Pete Golding said it at halftime in Gainesville. A lack of courage — his word for defenders going low at a 225-pound running back instead of squaring him up.
Four days later, with nobody prompting him, Will Echoles stood at a podium and said his own version of the same sentence.
When you watch the film, we just put a lot of lack of violence on film.
Will Echoles
Lack of courage. Lack of violence. A head coach at halftime and a starting defensive lineman on a Tuesday, arriving at the same indictment from opposite ends of the building. Echoles did not soften it: “It starts up front, it starts with my position group. So we got to be better at that.”
And then the part that makes it real rather than rhetorical. His own numbers are harsher than his quote.
Against Florida, Echoles rushed the passer seventeen times and produced zero pressures. He graded 66.8. Seven days earlier against LSU, on the same fifty-four snaps, he had seven pressures, a sack and a 90.8. Same player, same workload, one week apart.
He put the unit’s missed tackles at “10-plus” when he was asked. The charted number is fourteen. He low-balled his own room. That is not a man managing a number down.
🏈 The Numbers
| 17 / 0 | Echoles’ pass rushes against Florida, and his pressures |
| 7 + 1 | His pressures and sacks a week earlier vs LSU, same 54 snaps |
| 6 / 0 | Team pressures and sacks on roughly 112 pass-rush snaps |
| 1 | Tackles for loss, on 53 Florida carries |
| 14 / 14 / 14 | Missed tackles vs Charlotte, LSU and Florida. Three straight weeks |
| 142 & 126 | Jadan Baugh and Duke Clark’s rushing yards — two 100-yard backs |
That last line is the one nobody has said out loud. Florida put two hundred-yard rushers on the field in the same afternoon. Ole Miss had not allowed that since 2024. Clark did it on twelve carries.
🎙️ Two Rooms, Two Voices
Ole Miss made exactly two players available this week: a defensive lineman and an offensive lineman. Todd Wade, on Thursday’s show, was asked whether that was deliberate and said flatly that it was not — and then explained why it works anyway. The big men lead the team. Television pushes the quarterback; a locker room looks up at the two lines.
Echoles took the defense. He called it a self-reflect week and said Golding reduced it to six things: striking blocks, getting off blocks, making plays, keys and reads, coming off the ball, finding the football. He wants it to feel like peewee again — fast, fearless and physical. And he gave credit where almost nobody does: “We’re only as good as our scout team.”
Patrick Kutas took the offense, and he led with what went wrong rather than the vibe. Sluggish first and second quarter. Start fast, sustain it, finish fast. Then: if we do that, we can be one of the best offenses in the country.
He is not guessing. Against Florida every Ole Miss offensive lineman improved his pass blocking from the LSU game — Terez Davis to 89.4, a season best, and Delano Townsend from 29.3, the worst grade by any Rebel this season, to 75.9. Ole Miss lost by 24 on its best protection day of the year.
Asked whether sitting in a loss for two weeks is hard, Kutas said: “Difficult but necessary. It sucks, but you can’t just wash it off. It’s going to sit with you until you play the next game.”
🔎 The Hard Part
Accountability reads better when it costs something, so here is what the tape actually has on the man who stood up and said it.
Duke Clark’s 45-yard touchdown run — the longest of the afternoon — came after Echoles drifted off his gap assignment. He never mentioned it. He talked about his room, his position group, the want-to. He did not talk about the snap with his name on it.
That does not make the accountability fake. It makes it ordinary, which is the point: a player owning a unit’s failure in general is easier than owning the specific play, and almost every player stops at the general. What he said still lines up with what the film shows. It just costs him more than the quote suggests.
Two corrections while I’m here. On the show I called the backbreaker a 70-yard touchdown. The long touchdown run in that game was Clark’s 45. And I said on tape this week that Vanderbilt “50-burgered” Tennessee — the third time I’ve rounded that number up, and the second time after correcting it in this newsletter. It was 45-24. I am going to stop saying it wrong eventually.
🔮 Next
| Oct 3 | Open date |
| Oct 10 | at Vanderbilt, FirstBank Stadium |
| Oct 17 | Missouri |
| Oct 24 | at Texas |
| Oct 31 | Auburn |
| Nov 7 | Georgia |
Nine days to Nashville. And one thing worth holding onto: Buster Faulkner, who just put 302 rushing yards on this defense, is Florida’s offensive coordinator. Vanderbilt runs a lot of the same misdirection, with Jerry Kill as chief consultant. Vanderbilt is not a new problem arriving in nine days. It is the same problem arriving again.
📻 The Day on Locked On Ole Miss
The Flagship — both Tuesday pressers taken apart with the charting next to them: Echoles’ seventeen rushes and zero pressures, the three straight weeks at exactly fourteen missed tackles, and why the offensive line was never the problem.
The guest episode — Todd Wade. The last legend on the Florida autopsy, and the only one who put a formation on it. The C-gap, the 4-2-5, and a personnel question about a starting defensive end that nobody else has asked out loud.
Friday: Tim Thomas on Rebel Hoops.
🔗 Five Clicks
1. Why the Ole Miss defense gave up 302 rushing yards
Where the “lack of courage” quote lives, and where Clark’s 45-yard touchdown gets traced back to a gap.
2. Ole Miss’ tackling problem has become a question of courage
Written three days before Echoles said his version of it at the podium.
3. Duke Clark is Florida’s RB2
126 yards on twelve carries, from the backup. That is the number that should bother you.
4. Jerry Kill’s Vanderbilt staff page
Chief consultant, not offensive analyst — I’ve had that title wrong on air.
5. The 1997 Motor City Bowl
Todd Wade’s Randy Moss story on Thursday’s show. Ole Miss won it 34-31.
💬 Join the Everydayers
The bye week thread is open in the LOOM Private Discord — free to join. This morning’s argument: four legends gave four different diagnoses of the Florida game. Unlearning, too many calls, a lack of violence, or the C-gap. Which one actually explains 302 rushing yards?
Everything else lives at olemisshub.com, and if you want the show ad-free plus the members-only room, take your fandom to the next level with the Everydayer Club.
Hotty Toddy. 🦈
