☕ Morning Coffee
We asked around this week. Four voices, four predictions for Ole Miss at Vanderbilt, and one of them belongs to the guy who covers Vanderbilt every day.
Nobody picked Vandy.
That doesn’t make Saturday safe. Ole Miss lost the week after its biggest win, and Nashville has a way of getting weird. But the case for Ole Miss is the same from every angle: a rested team, the best quarterback on the field, and an opponent still looking for an offense. The question isn’t whether Ole Miss is better. It’s whether the run defense finally shows up.
🔮 The Prediction Board
| Who | Pick | The why |
|---|---|---|
| Steven Willis, Locked On Ole Miss | Ole Miss 38, Vanderbilt 24 | Cagey first half, then Vandy blitzes eight on third down and Chambliss breaks it open. |
| Tom Vanderford | Ole Miss 38, Vanderbilt 17 | “Vanderbilt games always make me nervous” — and he still has Ole Miss by three scores. |
| Corey Burton, Locked On Vandy | Ole Miss 31, Vanderbilt 21 | Vandy starts fast, then can’t keep the onslaught going in the second half. |
| Michael Katz, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal | Ole Miss by 10 to 17 | If Ole Miss stops the run, he can’t see Vandy scoring enough. |
The number: As of Wednesday morning, FanDuel had Ole Miss -10.5 with a 59.5 total. 21+ and present in select states. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.
🏈 Why Ole Miss Wins
The plan is simple: play clean. No turnovers. No holding penalty that turns second-and-2 into second-and-12. Run it just well enough to get the yard when you need the yard. Against LSU, Ole Miss ran for 63 yards and still won, because Trinidad Chambliss threw for 363.
Don’t take the ball out of the hands of the best player in college football.
Steven Willis
Vanderbilt’s plan, per Corey Burton of Locked On Vandy, is to keep hitting Chambliss. Ole Miss’s answer is to keep the ball in his hands anyway. If Vandy sends seven or eight on third down and he finds the hole, that’s the play that breaks the game open.
🎯 Bring On The Freshman
Vanderbilt is going with Jared Curtis, the five-star freshman who missed the Georgia game with a knee bruise. The reflex is to call that bad news. Steven thinks it’s the matchup Ole Miss should want: a defense with gap-fitting problems has more to fear from Blaze Berlowitz running misdirection option football than from a freshman in the pocket.
There is a world where Jared Curtis plays well and Ole Miss still wins. But I don’t think there’s a world where Jared Curtis plays poorly and Ole Miss loses.
Michael Katz, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal
Pete Golding has said all week he’s planning for both quarterbacks, and maybe both on the field at once. Katz’s advice: show the freshman everything, get in his face early, and get in his head before he settles in.
🧱 The Only Question That Matters
Florida ran for 302 yards on this defense. Golding volunteered the reason himself: 62 missed tackles for 482 yards, about 70 percent of the rushing yards Ole Miss has allowed. Katz’s reporting over the bye found Ole Miss missing almost five more tackles a game than a year ago.
The fix wasn’t a new scheme. It was a bye-week practice with one defensive call and nothing but tackling and running. Ask linebacker Tahj Butler and he calls it the “want-to.” Katz says he’ll believe it when he sees it. So will everybody else. Saturday is the first chance to see it.
🌧️ The Storm, Shrinking
The forecast keeps moving Ole Miss’s way. Steven watched the projected wind gusts drop from 40 to 45 miles an hour to 30 to 35 in one day, and he expects 15 to 25 by kickoff, with Nashville catching outer rain bands rather than the storm itself. That makes the rain a matter of luck. Ten minutes of downpour, then nothing for 45.
Katz thinks weather is “a little bit overstated” anyway: strong-armed quarterbacks cut through wind, and a sloppy field favors the offense. The one thing everyone agrees on: no lightning delays, please.
On the run game: Kewan Lacy is listed questionable but expected to play, and Golding has already said he won’t take 40 to 50 snaps. That means real work for JT Lindsey and Makhi Frazier.
📓 The Adidas Notebook
A week of Adidas talk across four shows, in one place.
- The deal: Adidas becomes Ole Miss’s footwear, uniform, apparel and sideline partner on July 1, 2027, for seven years through June 2034, covering 18 varsity programs. Nike since 1999. The money is reported, not announced: more than $20 million a year plus NIL funding.
- The control: Keith Carter said Adidas respects “our iconic colors, marks and uniforms,” and Ole Miss keeps creative liberties. Ole Miss took the bigger check and kept the pen.
- The $20 million color: Steven’s theory from Thursday: “Without the powder blue jerseys, Ole Miss is not commanding $20 million on this deal.” Adidas saw a chance to do with powder blue what Nike did with North Carolina’s light blue.
- The convert: Tom Vanderford used to knock Adidas. His explanation: “$140+ million will change a person’s mind.”
- The newspaper view: Michael Katz: “You can’t turn down that sort of money.” Ten years ago, he says, Ole Miss doesn’t get this deal. It’s not life-changing money, it’s program-changing money.
- The reset button: Football can’t change; everybody agrees. But every other sport gets a reset. Steven wants Chris Beard’s team in its throwbacks full time, and the Ed Murphy and Gerald Glass look back in the conversation.
- The football ask: Bring back the road jerseys with the red numbers and stripes. The fan base isn’t asking for a costume. It’s asking for Ole Miss to look like Ole Miss.
- Next week: Walker Jones of the Grove Collective joins the show to talk about how the Adidas NIL money works alongside the collective.
👉 Ole Miss Kept the Pen: Why the Adidas Deal Is Bigger Than the Money
Correction: Thursday’s Everydayer said Walker Jones would join the show Thursday afternoon. He’ll be on next week.
📻 This Weekend On Locked On Ole Miss
| Today | Why Ole Miss Wins, plus the Vanderbilt preview with Michael Katz of the Daily Journal |
| Saturday morning | Game day with Kevin Rogers of Locked On Bets |
| Saturday, 12:30 p.m. CT | Pregame show |
| Saturday, 2:30 p.m. CT | Ole Miss at Vanderbilt, ESPN, FirstBank Stadium |
| About 30 minutes after the final whistle | Instant overreaction |
| Sunday, about 11 a.m. CT | The Sunday reaction |
| Sunday, 7 p.m. CT | College Football Live |
🔗 Five Clicks
1. The first injury report
Where Kewan Lacy and Jared Curtis landed on Wednesday’s availability report.
2. Jared Curtis, probable
Vanderbilt’s freshman is back after missing Athens.
3. Ole Miss kept the pen
The full Adidas breakdown on the Hub.
4. The last time lightning stopped Ole Miss
September 2006, Wake Forest in Oxford, a 1-hour-45-minute delay. Steven was in the building; ask him about the scrimmage.
5. Ole Miss at Vanderbilt game page
Saturday, 2:30 p.m. CT / 3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN. Tomorrow.
💬 Join the Everydayers
The Vanderbilt game thread is open in the LOOM Private Discord, free to join. Drop your final score before kickoff. Closest pick gets pinned, and gets to tell Steven, Tom, Corey and Katz they were wrong.
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.
Game day eve. Hotty Toddy. 🦈
