Ole Miss ran for 257 yards against Missouri on Oct. 17, a month after managing 63 against LSU. A Missouri back with 200-yard games in back-to-back weeks finished with 39 yards on 20 carries, and Vanderbilt had been held to 100 the week before. The Rebels play at Texas on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. CT on ABC.
Locked On Ole Miss host Steven Willis opened Friday’s episode on the offensive line, asking former Ole Miss offensive lineman Todd Wade what had changed. Wade’s answer was that nothing schematic had. The jump came, he argued, from leverage, movement at the point of attack and finished blocks.
Wade said the group is working its combo blocks better and finishing on defenders, and he credited the open week after the Florida loss. That stretch mattered more than any player getting healthy, he argued, because it let both sides find what was going wrong. He also pushed back on the idea that the line had been the problem: the pass protection has been clean all season, and the run game was the only holdup.
Willis pointed to the design around it, including a shotgun toss sweep run repeatedly and formations that outnumbered Missouri to one side. Wade said the same held defensively, where the scheme did not change but the effort and the rotation did, with Kam Franklin taking edge snaps alongside Blake Purchase.
Willis framed Texas as a wounded animal, and Wade agreed the Longhorns most likely must win to stay alive. Wade said their offensive line has been inconsistent all year, that Saturday comes down to that unit against the Ole Miss front, and that running the ball is how the Rebels take pressure off Trinidad Chambliss. Ole Miss goes in as an underdog. Wade predicted 34-31, Rebels.
Photo: Trinidad Chambliss, September 6, 2026, at Nissan Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Steve Roberts-Imagn Images.
Adapted from the October 23, 2026 episode of Locked On Ole Miss, hosted by Steven Willis, part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Watch the full episode.