It is Texas week, and the flagship spent the hour building the case that the Rebels are walking into Austin with a bigger edge than the odds suggest. The headline is a banged-up Longhorn pass rush that could turn Trinidad Chambliss loose, a defensive lineman in Will Echoles who is quietly the best player on the roster, and a reminder that the team ranked No. 19 was No. 1 in the country less than two weeks ago. Here are the best parts. Hotty Toddy.
The Colin Simmons "gift" for Trinidad Chambliss
Reports out of Austin have Texas edge rusher Colin Simmons likely out with a high ankle sprain, and that changes the whole math of this game. Simmons has 10.5 of Texas’s 19 sacks — 55 percent of the entire pass rush from one man. Chambliss, meanwhile, has been sacked just five times in six games behind a line that gives up fewer sacks than anyone in the SEC. "Colin Simmons has 55% of Texas’s sacks, and Trinidad Chambliss has been sacked five times all year," as Steven put it. "That, my friends, is the gift."
Take Simmons off the field and the rest of that defense has averaged about a sack and a half a game. That means Chambliss gets to climb a clean pocket, work to his second and third reads, and keep the improvisation in his back pocket instead of leaning on it. A quarterback completing better than 67 percent with a touchdown pass in 19 straight games does not need much more of an invitation than that.
Why Will Echoles is so hard to block
If you go by NFL draft boards, Will Echoles is the name at the top of the Ole Miss list, and he is the hardest man on this defense to deal with. At 6-3, 315 he gets off the ball like someone eighty pounds lighter, and the people who block him every day say the same thing: he is a very large human who moves very fast, and he is strong and smart on top of it — all maxed out, with no weakness to attack. Pro Football Focus has him as the highest-graded player on the Ole Miss defense through six games.
The tell is that the defense goes where he goes. When he is getting pressure — a sack and two breakups against Missouri — the Rebels held the Tigers to 39 rushing yards. On Saturday he lines up against a Texas front that has already surrendered 17 sacks, and he sets the table for Kam Franklin, Blake Purchase and Jehiem Oatis around him. Stop the run on early downs and let Echoles hunt on third-and-long, and this could be his night.
Don’t let the No. 19 fool you
This is still an over-talented Texas team that sat at No. 1 just 11 days ago, with 11 preseason All-SEC selections and a quarterback its head coach has publicly floated as a possible top overall pick. Vegas has the Longhorns as a 3.5-point home favorite, and with their backs against the wall — another loss ends their playoff hopes — Ole Miss is going to get their very best shot in a night game in Austin.
What is actually broken is the stuff talent fixes fastest. Texas converted 56 percent of its third downs early in the year and just 22 percent (8 of 36) over the last three games, and it has not forced a single takeaway in that stretch. Third down and turnovers flip in a hurry, so the job for the Rebels is simple to say and hard to do: make sure Texas does not put it back together this week.
Also on the show
Ole Miss legend Bill Flowers joined the show for Texas week and kept coming back to the running game as the separator. "When you have Lacy in that game, he is a true difference maker," Flowers said of Kewan Lacy — as much of one, in his view, as Chambliss is. The thing that gave him pause was the possibility of a Texas quarterback wrinkle, the kind of unknown that has burned Ole Miss before, but he left feeling good about where this team is.
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