Ole Miss beat Vanderbilt 52-17 in Nashville, leading 42-3 at halftime. Pro Football Focus charted 19 pressures, three sacks and four quarterback hits, and the defense forced four turnovers. At Florida two weeks earlier it produced six pressures, no sacks. Missed tackles had been 14 against Charlotte, 14 against LSU and 14 against Florida; against Vanderbilt, six.
Locked On Ole Miss host Steven Willis argued none of the fix came from scheme. Pete Golding told the show there was not one new call in the game plan. What changed was effort, leverage and, in the coach’s words, being more violent in contact. Willis called that a mindset fix, not a scheme one.
Blake Purchase had two sacks, three tackles for loss and the strip that Suntarine Perkins carried five yards for the first touchdown of his career, turning 28-3 into 35-3. Perkins played 26 snaps at Florida and 37 against Vanderbilt. Willis argued that when both edges win, the linebackers play downhill and the corners stop covering for four seconds.
The offense called 34 passes and 35 runs for 213 passing yards and 196 rushing. Trinidad Chambliss threw three touchdown passes, to Deuce Alexander, Michael Smith and defensive tackle Jamarious Brown, and ran for a fourth. Makhi Frazier led the team with 73 yards on 13 carries. Antonio Kite made his first interception as a Rebel, and Vanderbilt managed 103 rushing yards.
Golding said some players had been half in and half out, and that it took embarrassment to fix it. Willis put Saturday at roughly 75 percent of this team’s ceiling and called the September loss worth it: a defeat with a bye week behind it is a lesson, a November one a resume killer. Missouri visits Oxford Saturday, with the market making Ole Miss a 6.5-point favorite.
Photo: Trinidad Chambliss, September 19, 2026, at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Petre Thomas-Imagn Images.
Adapted from the October 12, 2026 episode of Locked On Ole Miss, hosted by Steven Willis, part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Watch the full episode.